Courses

This course is an ethnographic and historical introduction to the construction of gender and feminist theory in the South Asian context. We will focus on textual and visual material, primarily ethnographies and films, to provide a critique of normative representations of the "South Asian woman". These readings will be used to reveal the complex social and historical configurations that institute and obscure gendered experiences and representations within the colonial imagination and their colonized others. A significant motif of this course will be to develop alternative ways of knowing and understanding gender construction, sexual relations, and community formation in South Asia.