Aisha Valiulla

Home to nearly one-fourth of the world¿s population today, South Asia is a vast and chronically understudied region. This survey course will cover over two hundred years of the history of South Asia, a region that includes modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and India, and South Asian communities and diasporas that we encounter around the world today. From the mid-eighteenth century to the present, South Asia has undergone numerous transitions¿from Mughal sovereignty to British colonial rule, from colony-state to independence and post-colonial nation-building and the creation of new nation-states. In this course, we will explore a range of themes that defined, shaped, and transformed this diverse region, such as imperialism, British colonialism and its mercantile roots, religion and communalism, the questions of statehood, authority, and belonging, and the long-lasting legacy of the struggle for independence and Partition that still haunt South Asia today. Alongside such macro-scale topics, we will also dive into discourses of caste, gender, religion, culture, and ethnicity, as visualized through art, architecture, textiles, film, fiction, and poetry.

For many people, the premodern Islamic world is a fabled Arabian Nights-type place, with princesses, domes, genies, and adventure. Popular depictions such as Aladdin (1992) emphasize deserts and palaces, sword and horse. But what was it really like? This course analyzes medieval Islamic history from the advent of Islam (7th CE) up to the aftermath of the Mongol conquests (13th CE) to understand the political, cultural, and socio-religious contours of the medieval Islamic world. Through the eyes of scholars, travelers, slaves, and merchants, we will explore pluralism, mobility, and cosmopolitanism within the Dar al Islam, which stretched from Spain in the west to China in the east.