Contemporray India

ENG: CONTEMPORARY INDIAN LIT & FILM

Title : Technology and the New City

Instructor: Ajanta Sircar sa1194@georgetown.edu

Office: New North 319 / office hours: Tue/Thurs: 2:00 -3:00

Course Goals and Description

This course is mapped across three broad conceptual domains: critical theory, postcolonial theory and film/literature (the ‘ways of seeing debate’). Course work will involve weekly readings, assignments, and discussion; two critical papers, and a final take-home project that involves creative/ original application of the major themes/ texts covered in the course to any book/ film of your choice.

Course Objectives

* Students will advance their understanding of some foundational ideas of modern Western culture.

* Students will advance their understanding of the critical and intimate interrelationship between knowledge/power/geographical space. More generally, they will develop a way of thinking directly relevant to their everyday lives as they appreciate how the new complex weave of digital/ electronic networks both perpetuates as well as reinflects a much older pattern of linkages between metropolis and colony(/satellite).

* Students will gain a foundation in some key concepts and theoretical debates on visual cultures as well as nationalism/ postcolonial theory.

* Students will have an opportunity to experiment with different ways of synthesizing course materials and will practice applying them in assignments, in-class activities and the final project. They will learn to formulate their own ideas and responses to key ideas and thinkers in the social sciences today. In doing so, they will gain an understanding of the of the implications of particular ways of representing other people and places in writing and visual images.

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Part One: Course Requirements

Course Set-up

We will meet every Monday and Wednesday , unless noted otherwise in the schedule.

In most cases, the course will be set up...