Ancients and Moderns: Africa and South Asia

Catalog description

How might the comparative global humanities help us understand the cultural traditions of Africa and South Asia? Culturally significant texts (and text equivalents) will allow us to compare different answers to abiding human questions, such as (a) Where do we come from? Why do origins matter? (b) Which features define human (as opposed to divine and animal) being? (c) Which features define community? What is the role of gender, religion, race/ethnicity, language or geography in creating group identity? In what ways are such social identities determined by a sense of the past, whether we call it history, mythology, tradition or collective memory? (d) What role do different media - whether written, spoken, otherwise performed, or visual - play in conveying a sense of the past from one generation to another? In the course of our readings and analysis we shall question the very nature of literature in relation to non-written media, the coherence of supposed traditions, and the usefulness of rubrics such as collective memory. In what ways is our access to such cultural productions framed by colonial histories, with their discrepant experiences and perspectives? By what means can we try to get beyond such constraints? Readings are drawn from (inter alia) the Ramayana; the Bhagavad-Gita; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; and Chimamanda Adichie, 'The headstrong historian'.