Studying books from different cultures, time periods and languages, the Great Books course introduces students to multiple ways of thinking and being in the world. Complex questions about sexuality, conflict, self, identity and science are navigated with reference to books, and fragments of books, from across geographies and chronologies These books and questions form the core of the course and its explorations.
Department: Undergraduate Writing Programme (ICT/CT) | Semester: Monsoon 2024
Great Books FC-0601-6
A large number of “great” novels, across canons and languages, center “the marriage plot” in their telling. Using Vikram Seth’s classic novel A Suitable Boy as an anchor text, and drawing from a wide range of readings that both challenge and exemplify this theory, we learn to examine this premise critically. What else spills out from under the orderly structure of the marriage plots, what unhappy endings haunt the ostensible happy endings? How do radical novelists upend the idea of the novel as a suitable genre – to continue our play on the title of the anchor text – while keeping its specific pleasure intact? How do radical readers work with these texts in times of repression, revolution, or pandemic? And, finally, what happens when the genre must be smashed wide open to create new spaces for marginal voices?
We will spend the semester reading together, writing consistently, and asking serious questions.
(We will also, occasionally, eat cake and meet guest speakers.)
Semester: Monsoon 2024
Books that act as political beacons are the focus of this course. Each one is a stellar
example of the genre we know as narrative non-fiction, and each one has been cited and
referred to by generations of scholars, practitioners, activists, and students for whom
equity and social justice are of importance. Over time, these books have taken on a
talismanic importance and yet, they age well with the times and remain supremely
relevant. Is that something to celebrate in terms of the prescience of the books
themselves, or to lament in terms of how the world does not seem to become a more
equitable place even over the decades since these books were read for the first time:
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas; B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste; James
Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks; bell hooks,
All About Love: New Visions.
Department: English | Semester: Monsoon 2024
In this course, we will address the question “What is sexuality” by reading some of the many books that have shaped our current ideas of the subject. These books will range across chronologies, cultures, and disciplines, starting with classical and medieval Indic texts — the Kamasutra, Sufi poetry — to ancient Greek and Roman classics — the Symposium, the Metamorphoses. We will also read philosophical texts like the Discourse on Method, biological texts like The Origin of Species, psychoanalytical texts like The Interpretation of Dreams, and literary texts like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Together, these “great books” will allow us to trace threads that have gone into our current ways of thinking about sexuality.
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Department: History | Semester: Monsoon 2024
The Great Books course in Monsoon 2024 will cover the following books in this order.
- Isa Upanishad (RM)
- King Oedipus by Sophocles (RM)
- Babur Nama by Babur(RM)
- Light of Asia by Edward Arnold (GKG)
- The Post Office by Rabindranath Tagore(GKG)
- Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf (RM)
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (GKG).
Faculty Name: Ananya Vajpeyi
Semester: Monsoon 2024
The Political Foundations of Modern India
This FC introduces undergraduates to key texts from the 20th century that together provide an overview of the political foundations of modern India. The texts are as follows:
- M.K. Gandhi: Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule (with an introduction by Anthony Parel)
- Rabindranath Tagore: The Home and the World (novella, with an introduction by Anita Desai)
- Rabindranath Tagore: Three Essays on Nationalism (with an introduction by Ramachandra Guha)
- Ashis Nandy: Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (with a new preface by the author)
- Allama Iqbal: Shikwa and Jawab e Shikwa (2 long poems, with an introduction by Khushwant Singh)
- B.R. Ambedkar: Annihilation of Caste (with an introduction by Syed Sayeed)
- Jawaharlal Nehru: The Discovery of India (selections) (with an introduction by Sunil Khilnani)
- Saadat Hasan Manto: Short Stories (selected stories) (various translators)
- Maulana Azad: India Wins Freedom (selections) (with an introduction by Louis Fischer)
- U.R. Ananthamurthy: Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man (novella, with an introduction by A.K. Ramanujan)
BACKGROUND READINGS:
- Ramachandra Guha, Makers of Modern India
- Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian
- Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India
- Pankaj Mishra, Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond
Faculty Name: Dilip Simeon
Semester: Monsoon 2024
It is a truism that words mean something, and that they count for a great deal in life. However, the relation between thought, reality and time has always been a matter of debate. The Greek word theoria meant contemplation, the act of looking, which later acquired the sense of an intelligible explanation based on observation and reasoning. Historia meant inquiry, the search for knowledge; and it evolved over time to mean investigations and accounts of past events. Philosophia meant the love of wisdom. In contrast, sophistry referred to skilful rhetoric, the art of persuasion. These words, which relate to human experience in its deepest sense, prompt my choice of great books. As to why this is so should become clear in due course. The books are:
- Simon Leys; The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays, (2011)
- Tibor Szamuely; The Russian Tradition; (1974)
- Margaret Chatterjee; Gandhi and the Challenge of Religious Diversity; (2005)
- Albert Camus; The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt; (1951)
- Mark Lilla; The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics; (2001)
- Stanley Rosen; Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (1969)
The first three books deal (in part) with history; with what is called tradition; and the treatment of these themes in political writing and fiction. The latter three deal with philosophical issues directly. I will introduce students to these books, and specify certain chapters for required reading. Their scholarship will educate us and prompt us toward further study. Some will illuminate important historical events; others will raise issues common to human experience regardless of time and place.
devapriya.roy@ashoka.edu.in
