As part of the knowledge-sharing effort of the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project, below please find syllabi shared by WSIP seminar members. As we receive more syllabi, we may organize them by topic. In the meantime, syllabi appear alphabetically by author’s last name.
Clicking on a course title will direct you to a PDF version of that syllabus.
Art History 295: Women in South Asian Art (Jinah Kim, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University)
This course explores manifold issues related to female representations in South Asia from the Mohenjodaro (2600-1900 B.C.E.) to the present. One of the main goals of the course is to understand the cultural and social significance of the prominence of goddesses and their cult in South Asia, especially in India. In this regard, we will examine mythologies and iconographies of different goddesses and the historical development of their cult, while exploring the relationship between the prominence of goddesses and women’s social status in pre-modern India. We will also scrutinize visual representations of female body in South Asia and critically reassess the Orientalizing perspective that emphasizes femininity of South Asian art. Sensuous sculptures of goddesses and courtesans from ancient South Asia are so visually provocative that they sometimes serve as a representative of South Asian art in the West. What is the significance of the sensuous representations of female body in relation to women’s status in ancient India? Are they public and private displays of male fantasy, rendering the female body as an object of desire? Or is it an acknowledgement of the female power unique to South Asian cultural traditions? How are we to understand seemingly contradicting views of the femininity in South Asian art? We will examine a few key examples of “erotica Indica,” including the prevalent use of erotic imagery from medieval temples for illustrating the Kama sutra in the West. The last two classes of the course will be devoted to analyzing the political use of female imagery, especially of powerful goddesses in colonial and post-independence India, based on our understanding of goddesses and female representations in pre-modern India. The readings for this course are interdisciplinary, and we will cover a wide range of materials from ancient clay toys, to medieval sculptures of goddesses, to miniature paintings, to an interpretive animated cartoon of the famous Hindu epic, Rāmāyana, and to award-winning contemporary films.
History 605: Readings in World History Since 1400 (John Higginson, History Department, UMass Amherst)
Our course begins with a glance at the world before the dramatic geographical shift of the lines of power and wealth from the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to the North Atlantic countries of Western Europe at the close of the fifteenth century. There was no single reason for the shift from the countries bordering the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to those on the northern coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Nor did it happen all at once. But by the end of the eighteenth-century, from the vantage point of European observers like Adam Smith, it appeared to be permanent and indelible. Meanwhile Qin Lung, the Qing Emperor of China, thought it hardly worthy of notice. What made for such a disparity in perspectives? Much of our work this semester will be focused such questions. The course ends with an examination of the world since the global shift of lines of power and wealth from societies ringing the North Atlantic to those framed by the Asian North Pacific. The course will also focus on how the practical application of powerful forces such as fossil fuels, international networks of organized crime, nuclear power, micro processing and genetic engineering have affected this transition. At its conclusion, the course will pay particular attention to the challenge that North Pacific Asian economic performance and a global resurgence of Islam offer to continued western dominance of global affairs.
History 751: European/Muslim Encounters in the Pre-Modern World (Virginia H. Aksan, History Department, McMaster University)
This seminar explores the historical origins and evolution of East/West (Europe/Islam) relations, concentrating on a number of themes such as perceptions of religious difference (Christianity and Islam), the narratives of warfare (crusades and jihads), the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Orient and the “Turk” in European thought (17th-19th centuries), and the politics and representations of eastern and western empires & cultures until the present. This is largely a course on the history and circulation of ideas.
English 300: Pirates and Mutineers: Treasure, Slavery, Rebellion, and MP3s (Joselyn Almeida-Beveridge, English Department, UMass Amherst)
How have the representations of piracy and rebellion evolved alongside the laws that regulate global markets? In this course, we examine literary, historiographic, and cinematic representations of pirates and mutineers in light of the legal and economic ramifications of their activities. This interdisciplinary approach helps us understand why battles against piracy are waged with as much intensity now as in the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s. We look at the lives, deeds, and legal trials of legendary pirates as well as 20th and 21st century representations of piracy and mutiny like Mutiny in the Bounty (1935) and Stephen Spielberg’s Amistad (1997). The course ends with a brief exploration of the contemporary debate on cyberpiracy and intellectual property.