Universität Wien

140159 VO Women in Modern India (2017S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 14 - Orientalistik, Afrikanistik, Indologie und Tibetologie
Moodle

Details

Language: English

Examination dates

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Monday 03.04. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25
  • Monday 24.04. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25
  • Monday 08.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25
  • Monday 15.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25
  • Monday 22.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25
  • Monday 29.05. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25
  • Monday 12.06. 10:00 - 12:00 Seminarraum 1 ISTB UniCampus Hof 2 2B-O1-25

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Short Description of the Course

This lecture course focuses on questions of women in modern India, with a particular emphasis on the colonial period and on the public sphere. While recognizing that every aspect of reality is gendered, this course adopts an interdisciplinary approach, challenging the ideological presuppositions of the so-called gender neutral methodologies, as well as the boundaries of disciplines imposed by such methodologies. The course is thematic in nature, and moves back and forth chronologically. It examines a wide range of questions and debates on social reforms, women’s education, their participation in national movements, their relationship to popular cultures, questions of sexualities and masculinities, and the problematic of dichotomies presupposed between the private and the public, specifically in terms of gender relations. It traces literary and social traditions, elite voices and popular culture, the rhetoric and the ground realities, which together, through complex historical processes, mark women both in the private and the public sphere. While reviewing the larger patriarchies prevalent in modern India, it also analyses the complex relationship of women, both as victims and agents, as objects and subjects, to issues like nationalism and fundamentalism.

Assessment and permitted materials

Assessment
The course will be assessed through a final written examination of one hour.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

The teaching will be supported through the University of Vienna’s Moodle
website for this course. The Moodle site will provide lecture outlines and some specific readings. Others must be taken from the library. The library has
a shelf of reference books for this course that are restricted for use in the library.

Reading list

Required Readings:

Forbes, Geraldine, Women in Modern India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Gupta, Charu, ed., Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste and Communalism, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012.
Kumar, Radha, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1990, London: Verso, 1993.

There will be some other additional readings for all topics, which will be specified.

Schedule of Topics, Lectures and Readings:

1. Gendering Reforms and Nationalism: A Broad Historiography
Read: Forbes (Introduction: 1-9); Gupta, ed. (‘Introduction’: 1-36); Kumar (Introduction: 1-6).

2. Women and Social Reform Movements in Colonial India: Sati Debates, Widow Remarriage, Age of Consent
Read: Forbes (Chapt. 1: 10-31); Gupta, ed. (Andrea Major, ‘Constested Sacrifice’: 57-81. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Wicked Widows’: 82-108); Kumar (Chapt. 2: 7-32).

3. Educating the Woman: Better Wives and Mothers?
Read: Forbes (Chapt. 2: 32-63); Gupta, ed. (Gail Minault, ‘Educated Muslim Women’: 109-35); Kumar (Chapt. 3: 95-134).

4. Women, Print and Popular Culture
Read: Forbes (Chapt. 6: 157-88); Gupta, ed. (Anshu Malhotra, ‘Print and Bazaari Literature’: 159-87. Lata Singh, ‘Theatre and Gender in Colonial India’: 188-214)

5. Gender and Caste
Read: Gupta, ed. (Prem Chowdhry, ‘Flucturating Fortunes of Wives’: 215-38 & Anupama Rao, ‘Caste, Colonialism and the Reform of Gender’: 239-64)

6. Women in the Nationalist Movement: Gandhi and the Women’s Question
Read: Forbes (Chapt. 5: 121-56); Kumar (Chapts 4-5: 53-95).

7. Gender, Religious Identities and Everyday Life
Read: Gupta, ed. (Pradip K. Datta, ‘Women, Abductions and Religious Identities’: 265-86); Kumar (Chapt. 10: 160-71)

8. Constructing Nations on Women’s Bodies: Partition
Read: Forbes (Chapt. 7” 189-222); Gupta, ed. (Nonica Datta, ‘Memory and History’: 287-316).

Association in the course directory

BA13, IMAK5A, MAK5, EC-1-1

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:34