Dalpat Rajpurohit

*Attention*

This course will include 3 weeks of in-person instruction beginning on November 3rd, and concluding on November 19th. All other instruction will be conducted online at the specified time.

In this course we will discuss the songs of major saints and their role in shaping the religious communities of India. Bhakti (or Devotion)–which is passionate love towards god–is very much a part of the religious lives of Indians and their popular culture. Bhakti is often thought to be a movement against restrictive social and scriptural norms. Looking critically at the idea of this so called “Bhakti movement”–that is understood as a force binding the south to the north, together with other parts of India–we will read and compare devotional songs from different geographical and linguistic regions of India from the 9^th to 18^th century. These include: Kabīr, Tulsīdās and Sūrdās (from the northern side of India), Mīrā (Rajasthan), Narsiṁha Mehtā (Gujarat), Tukārām (Maharashtra), Nānak (Punjab), Rāmprasād (Bengal) and Āṇṭāl from Tamil Nadu. The list is not exhaustive, but these selections will give us a good introduction to how holy men and women expressed their religiosity through the medium of songs and poetry over the centuries. All these works will be studied in translations. 

Description:

This course offers and introduction to six prominent themes in Hindi literature. It investigates topics like realism, forgetting and remembering the partition of India, life in the urban middle class and changes in family values, as well as literary voice in the community that is traditionally known as ‘untouchables.’ It will also explore some of popular poetry of Kabir and Rahim near the end of the semester.

In each class we will focus on a text of film in the original Hindi. Students will prepare in advance the assigned readings with a supplied glossary. For each them, there will be an interactive class discussion in Hindi. Students will be expected to write responses on the theme covered and build up their advanced level vocabulary and grammar. At the end of each week a class email will explain everything that the students need to prepare for the following week, including readings and the format of the upcoming quiz. Students with two years of Hindi, or equivalent knowledge, are eligible to take this course.

Goals:

-Get acquainted with expressing forms of Hindi through literature and build up you literary language skills.

-Read a variety of Hindi short stories on important societal aspects of Northern India.

-Discuss in Hindi the main themes covered in literature and cinema.

This course is an introduction to South Asian cultures and histories, especially to areas of study pursued in the Department of Asian Studies and at UT-Austin. Students will be introduced to major thinkers, ideas, histories, issues, and movements of South Asia. While a clear set of factual information will be integral to the course, the equally important goal of the course is to learn how to engage South Asia on terms similar to other courses in the liberal arts. Stated plainly, we want to do more than learn about South Asia; we want to learn from it as well.  The institutional and traditional obstacle to this approach stems from the simple fact that most American students, whatever their ethnic origins, are taught that “our” intellectual heritage begins with the Greeks and ends with contemporary European and American thinkers. Who “we” are and what makes us a “we,” however, is not as clear as it seems. Most of us are simply not taught how and why to understand South Asian (or other area) literatures, art, religion, law, or other cultural expressions as sources for our own humanistic and ethical development. Thus, the primary goal of this course is to train students in how to “read” South Asia in such a way that it can mean something to them, rather than merely being what other people do—not to make South Asia “ours,” but to take the ideas, history, and people of South Asia seriously.

This class offers a survey of Hindi autobiographical writing. Our writers include well-known public figures such as the painter M.F. Hussain ("the Picasso of India"), Mahatma Gandhi, the revolutionary and freedom-fighter Yashpal, a little-known station-master from Rajasthan, an Indian spy in a Pakistani jail, novelist and screenplay-writer Krishan Chander, poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, prime minister Chandrashekhar, musician Allaudin Khan, Dalit author Kausalya Baisantri, screenplay writer & lyricist Javed Akhtar, and Hindi & Punjabi lyrical poet Amrita Pritam. We will sample their works, discuss their use of language and their techniques for writing about "the self", and will read secondary literature about the genre of Autobiography both in India and more generally. Students will also experiment with the genre by writing about their own lives in Hindi.

This course introduces literary, religious, and courtly cultures of early modern India (1500-1800). We will read scholarly writings to get a historical and theoretical background of this period. In addition to this scholarship, we will read primary sources in translation: including memoirs of emperors, Sufi romances, devotional and courtly poetry, merchants accounts, and the nationalist construction of an Indian past. The goal of this course is to engage students with a broad range of texts to inform them of the traditions on their own terms while linking the discussion to current scholarship on the subject matter.

Goals:

• To get acquainted with major literary and religious traditions as well as the history of early-modern India.
• To discuss the historical, religious, mythological, and cultural aspects of literary works.
• To improve critical thinking and academic writing skills by reading, discussing, and writing about multidisciplinary secondary sources.

Study of specific subjects related to Hindi culture as reflected in its literary productions and other modes of expression.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Hindi 312L with a grade of at least C.

In this course we will discuss the songs of major saints and their role in shaping the religious communities of India. Bhakti (or Devotion)–which is passionate love towards god–is very much a part of the religious lives of Indians and their popular culture. Bhakti is often thought to be a movement against restrictive social and scriptural norms. Looking critically at the idea of this so called “Bhakti movement”–that is understood as a force binding the south to the north, together with other parts of India–we will read and compare devotional songs from different geographical and linguistic regions of India from the 9^th to 18^th century. These include: Kabīr, Tulsīdās and Sūrdās (from the northern side of India), Mīrā (Rajasthan), Narsiṁha Mehtā (Gujarat), Tukārām (Maharashtra), Nānak (Punjab), Rāmprasād (Bengal) and Āṇṭāl from Tamil Nadu. The list is not exhaustive, but these selections will give us a good introduction to how holy men and women expressed their religiosity through the medium of songs and poetry over the centuries. All these works will be studied in translations. 

This course offers an introduction to four prominent discourses in contemporary Hindi literature. We will cover writings from Women as well as compositions coming from marginalized communities such as Dalit, Tribal, and Transgender groups. For the past couple of decades, the literary representation and identity formation of women and the Dalit community have been current in the discourse of Hindi literature. Tribal groups and transgender communities, however, have not received the same critical attention in Hindi literature. The lack of a discourse for the latter groups raises important questions about social attitudes, legal classifications, and the struggle for survival of communities on the margins of society.

For these topics we will focus on a representative text in the original Hindi. Students will prepare in advance the assigned readings with a supplied glossary or translation. For each subject, there will be an interactive class discussion in Hindi. Students will be expected to write responses on themes covered and build up their advanced vocabulary and grammar. At the end of each week a class email will inform students with upcoming readings and assignments.

Study of specific subjects related to Hindi culture as reflected in its literary productions and other modes of expression.  Specific offerings are listed in the Course Schedule.  Prerequisite: Hindi 312L with a grade of at least C.