Cover page, Angare [Sparks] (Lucknow: Nizami Press, c. 1932). Link
Radical Fictions:
Literary Modernisms in South Asia
Asian 498/English 540
Winter 2022
TTh 2:30-4:20 PM PST
Instructor: Jennifer Dubrow
Associate Professor of Urdu, Asian Languages and Literature
Office hours: TTh 4:30-5 PM and by appointment. Zoom ID for office hour: https://washington.zoom.us/j/97230752680
Zoom link for online classes: : https://washington.zoom.us/j/97137493966
Course description:
“Radical changes are taking place in Indian society. … We believe that the new literature of India must deal with the basic problems of our existence today," declared the South Asian writer Mulk Raj Anand in 1939. Following the development of the "new modernist studies" from the 1990s onward, this course surveys the development of South Asian literary modernisms in their multiple languages, centers, and associated literary movements. We will engage with theories of the "world" and bring a renewed emphasis on comparative thinking to the study of South Asian modernisms. Our course will largely focus on modernist writing from the 1930s to the 1950s, the main period of modernism in Hindi and Urdu, two major South Asian languages. We will also study Rabindranath Tagore's 1919 Gitanjali, for which Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (the first Asian to do so), and a foundational moment for global Anglophone literature and early 20th-century internationalism.
This course follows recent scholarship that seeks to expand definitions of modernism beyond a relatively small set of formal criteria developed in the 1940s through the 1960s. We shall consider South Asian modernisms in Hindi and Urdu as defined by formal experimentation and exhibiting a modernist "temper" or "mode" that explores and critiques modernity. Following scholarship on other colonial and postcolonial modernisms, this course also explores the radical political and anti-colonial ambitions of South Asian modernisms, as well as the effects of independence and Partition in 1947.
This course is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It is ideal for students looking for training in non-Anglophone global modernist cultures, and/or 20th-century South Asian literatures. No experience with South Asia is necessary, and all works will be read in English translation. Students with a background in related disciplines such as English, comparative literature, art history, history, anthropology, religion, and urban studies are welcome.
Required books:
It is recommended that you purchase the following 3 books for this course (in order of their use in class):
1. Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmed Ali, Rashid Jahan, and Mahmud-uz-Zafar, Angaaray, trans. Snehal Shingavi (Gurgaon: Penguin Books, 2014). The book has been ordered through the UW Bookstore, and may also be available through local libraries.
2. Saadat Hasan Manto, My Name is Radha, trans. Muhammad Umar Memon (Gurgaon: Penguin Books, 2016). The book is available on Kindle, and also as used paperbacks on Amazon. We will not be reading the whole book, but 8-10 selections from it. I have scans of several of these, and if necessary can make scans available for all the readings from this book.
3. Mohan Rakesh, Another Life: Thirteen Stories and a Play, ed. Carlo Coppola (New York: Harper Perennial, 2016). The book is available on Kindle, as a paperback, and as an audio book on Amazon.
All other readings will be made available through this website.
Note on Teaching Modality for Winter Quarter 2022:
Due to COVID-19, this course will meet in a hybrid format (subject to change). We will meet synchronously online over Zoom for the month of January, in accordance with UW policy. The COVID situation is changing rapidly. We will reassess at the end of January, and if possible, will meet in person from February on.
Course Objectives:
- To become familiar with some major texts, centers, and movements of South Asian literary modernisms
- To develop a critical perspective toward the field of new modernist studies and its applicability to South Asia
- To practice and develop strategies for presenting readings and leading class discussion
- To reflect on global modernisms pedagogy by designing a course description and 2 weeks of a syllabus for your own course on global modernisms
- To reflect critically on approaches to global modernisms covered in this course and apply them to a modernist text from this course or related to your research