This upper-level seminar is designed to introduce students to post-modernism and deconstruction as they are applied in South Asian historiography. We will move quickly to the work of Edward Said, author of the widely acclaimed Orientalism (1978), but be more concerned with how the trenchant arguments in that work and others (especially of Michel Foucault) have resonated in recent considerations of and approaches to the South Asian past.  See the syllabus of readings below for more detail.

My general expectation for students in the course is that they have had significant curricular experience in southern Asian history, the history of the Middle East, and European Imperialism.  This curricular experience can be in History, Art History, Religion, Anthropology, and Literature.  It should be noted, however, that this is a History seminar, and the course approach reflects that disciplinary base.  I also assume that you are familiar with the work of Edward Said and Michel Foucault.

There are a few books you may wish to purchase.

• Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (New York, 1992)
• Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978)
• Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies (New York, Delhi, 1988)

The Grade:

• Short comments (20%):  Four two-page (500 word) comments on the readings, answering some or all of the questions for the week, due on Monday before the Tuesday evening class.  Students should choose four from five possible sets of readings:  Sep 17, Sep 24, Oct 1, Oct 8, Oct 22.  The goal is to organize your thoughts about the readings, to make connections between them, and to arrive at your own conclusions.  (And, inter alia, to give the instructor some idea of what you are thinking ahead of time.)

• Case study:  The Jesuit mission to Akbar (10%):  Write a four-page (1000 word) account of the Jesuit mission to Akbar, 1579-1583, due Nov 5 in class.

• Transition presentation (10%):  Students will make a 30 minute presentation at the end of each week's session, the topic of which is designed to prepare us for the coming week's readings.  The sessions are:  Sep 17, Sep 24, Oct 1.

• Respondent duties (10%:  In the final three or four weeks of the course, we will be reading about one another's research projects.  Each project will be assigned a student respondent, who will state the main objectives of the research, the nature of the approach, the nature of the sources being used, and his/her own criticisms and suggestions.  The respondent (along with the rest of the class) will have read the project author's final research statement, as well as the assigned readings for that week; s/he will also have met with the project author in advance of the seminar meeting, to clarify points of confusion.

• Research paper (40%):

1. First Project Statement (ungraded):  250 words, identifying the topic and the main primary sources.  Due Oct 16th, 11 a.m., in History Office.
2. Detailed proposal with bibliography (10%):  Four pages (1000 words), with bibliography identifying main primary and secondary sources.  This proposal should not only state the topic to be investigated, but the historiography around it and the approach being adopted.  It should also gesture toward an argument.  Due Nov 11 in History Office, 11 a.m.  This will be posted on Course Webboard as well.
3. Final paper (30%):  Twenty pages (5000 words), not including bibliography and notes.  Due Dec 5, in History Office, 11 a.m.

• Attendance/Participation (10%):  Attendance is mandatory.  Students are expected to take full part in the deliberations.

Amitav Ghosh visit to Wesleyan, 9-12 Sep
Ann Stoler at CHUM on Sep 30

Sep 3:  Introductions; course format.

Sep 10:  Beginning at the Beginning, or Orientalism before Orientalism

• What is Orient?al?ist?ism?  How does it relate to the modern?ist?ism?  Empire/Imperial/Imperialism?  What are the plusses and minuses of Orientalism?

 
• Read Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land.  How have Orientalists shaped the Levantine/Indian/NorthAfrican/Persian/Muslim/Jewish/Hindu past?

• Special Event:  Amitav Ghosh reading, The Glass Palace, World Music Hall, Sep 10, 5 p.m. [mandatory]

• Special Event:  Amitav Ghosh lecture, Russell House, Sep 11, 8 p.m.

The work of Michel Foucault was a major landmark in the history of the social sciences and humanities, and particularly in literary studies and history.  We all have read much of Foucault's work, and much work about Foucault.  How did Foucault pose a challenge to historical thinking?  What does it mean to be postmodern, or to adopt a postmodernist approach?  What is postmodernism's relationship to deconstruction?  What are the tools Foucault brought to bear in his writing?  What is a discourse?  What is a discipline?  How do they operate in history?  Are they agents?  Are there agents in history?

• Read the following:

Foucault Decoded: Notes from Underground
Hayden V. White
History and Theory, Vol. 12, No. 1. (1973), pp. 23-54.

Foucault, Structuralism, and the Ends of History
Allan Megill
The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 51, No. 3. (Sep., 1979), pp. 451-503.

Foucault's "History of the Present"
Michael S. Roth
History and Theory, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Feb., 1981), pp. 32-46.

The Reception of Foucault by Historians
Allan Megill
Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1987), pp. 117-141.

Historiography and Postmodernism
F. R. Ankersmit
History and Theory, Vol. 28, No. 2. (May, 1989), pp. 137-153

Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations
Perez Zagorin
History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3. (Oct., 1990), pp. 263-274.

Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations: Reply to Professor Zagorin
F. R. Ankersmit
History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3. (Oct., 1990), pp. 275-296.

Transition Presentation: Europe in the Middle East

What is Said’s understanding of postmodernism and deconstruction, and how does he bring it to bear in his critique of European understandings of the Other to the East?  In other words, how does postmodernism/deconstruction inform post-Orientalism?

• Said, Orientalism(1978)

Transition Presentation: Europe in Asia

• Ann Stoler, Russell House Lecture, 8 p.m.:  "Love Letters in Colonial Exile: Reading Empire through the Intimate"

Can we discern any patterns in the scholarly reception of Said's argument?  Does Said pose a greater threat to Area Studies, or to History?

Review of Orientalism
C. Ernest Dawn
The American Historical Review, Vol. 84, No. 5. (Dec., 1979), p. 1334.

Review of Orientalism
James Clifford
History and Theory, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Feb., 1980), pp. 204-223.

Review Symposium: Edward Said's "Orientalism"
Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 39, No. 3. (May, 1980)
Introduction, pp. 481-484
Robert A. Kapp
Nocturnal Labors in the Light of Day, pp. 485-493
Michael Dalby
Hermeneutics versus History, pp. 495-506
David Kopf
Orientalism and the Study of Japan, pp. 507-517
Richard H. Minear

Comments on Orientalism. Two Reviews
Amal Rassam, Ross Chambers
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 22, No. 4. (Oct., 1980), pp. 505-512.

Bernard Lewis, "The Question of Orientalism," New York Review of Books, June 24, 1982
Edward Said, Oleg Grabar, "Orientalism, an Exchange," New York Review of Books, August 12, 1982.

Transition Presentation:  British imperialism and Indian nationalism in southern Asia

What is a subaltern, and why has his (her?) study revolutionized Indian historiography?  Do the practitioner/exemplars of Subaltern Studies live up to the considerable theoretical promise?  Read:

• Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds.), Selected Subaltern Studies (New York, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988)

Oct 16:  First Project Statement due

• 250 words, identifying the topic and the main primary sources.  11 a.m., in History Office.

Who speaks for the Indian past(s)?  Have historians, in the wake of Foucault and Said and Guha and Spivak, escaped the shackles of Europe?  Do the new historians of India practice hermeneutically what they preach theoretically?  Are we any closer to the people of the past we seek to understand, whose worlds we seek to explain?  Is that the goal anymore?  Should it be?

Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for "Indian" Pasts?
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Representations, No. 37 (Winter, 1992), pp. 1-26

Castes of Mind
Nicholas B. Dirks
Representations, No. 37 (Winter, 1992), pp. 56-78.

Orientalist Constructions of India
Ronald Inden
Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3. (1986), pp. 401-446.

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography
Gyan Prakash
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 32, No. 2. (Apr., 1990), pp. 383-408.

After Orientalism: Culture, Criticism, and Politics in the Third World
Rosalind O'Hanlon, David Washbrook
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 34, No. 1. (Jan., 1992), pp. 141-167.

Can the "Subaltern" Ride? A Reply to O'Hanlon and Washbrook
Gyan Prakash
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 34, No. 1. (Jan., 1992), pp. 168-184.

Knowing the Country: Empire and Information in India
C. A. Bayly
Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 3-43.

Nov 5:  Case Study:  Akbar and the Jesuits

A core concern of Orientalism (and postmodernist historiography concerned with Asia) is the relationship between Europe and its Oriental others -- or, more precisely, the power dimension built into that relationship.  One of the earliest, and certainly most interesting, sustained and intimate occasions for European-Indian interaction occurred during the Jesuit mission to the Mughal court in the late 1570s and early 1580s, during the early phase of what one prominent historian of India called the "Vasco da Gama epoch of Indian history."  Write an account (1000 words) of the Jesuit mission based on the available primary sources (provided in photocopy).

• Abu'l Fazl, Ain-i-Akbari and Akbar-nama [selections]
• Badauni, Muntakhabu-t Tawarikh [selections]
• Monserrate's Commentary
• Jesuit Letters of Acquaviva, Henriques, and Monserrate, in Correia-Afonso, Letters from the Mughal Court

• Four pages (1000 words), plus bibliography identifying main primary and secondary sources.  This proposal should not only state the topic to be investigated, but the historiography around it and the approach being adopted.  It should also gesture toward an argument.  Due in History Office, 11 a.m.  Post on Course Webboard as well.

Nov 19, Nov 26, Dec 3:

Student projects:  The final three weeks are reserved for student research project presentations and discussion.  Each week we will consider the projects of ?? students.  Readings for each, consisting of approximately fifty pages of primary source material and thirty pages of theoretical/secondary source material, will be made available to the seminar participants.  The presentations will be structured as follows:  Each student project will be assigned a student respondent in advance.  That respondent will actually begin the presentation by articulating briefly what s/he sees as the main arguments of the work in question, followed by a thoughtful critique.  The critique should focus on the structure of the outline, the appropriateness of the research question(s) and the approach to resolve it (or them), and the relevance of primary and secondary sources.  The respondent should also raise his/her own questions and make useful suggestions.  Total time given to the respondent is twenty minutes.  The student researcher whose work is being dissected is then given twenty minutes to respond, after which the floor is open to general discussion.  The respondent's performance will be graded.

• Twenty pages (5000 words), not including bibliography and notes.  Due , in History Office, 11 a.m.