COML 3860 - [Literature and Film of South Asia]

(crosslisted)
(also ASIAN 3387, PMA 3761, VISST 3870)(GB) (LA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015.

A. Banerjee.

A survey of literary and filmic texts from the area encompassing present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Discussions are organized around issues such as nation and narrative; historiography; secularism and religious nationalism; gender; marginalized and diasporic identities. All texts are in English translation/ subtitles.
Though focused on the twentieth century, the course will engage epic and folkloric discourses in context. Authors to be studied range from canonical figures of Rabindranath Tagore, M. K. Gandhi, Ismat Chughtai, and Sadat Hasan Manto to contemporary literary pioneers such as Mahasweta Devi, Kishwar Naheed, K. R. Ananthamurthy, and Taslima Nasreen. Films include auteur and independent cinema, Bombay potboilers, and documentaries.