2016-17 Academic Catalog

The objective of this course is to analyse the historical institutions, practices and traditions that define the position of women in India. We consider the various ways in which the trope of the Goddess has been used for and by Indian women in colonial and post-colonial India; the colonial state's supposed rescue of Indian women; the position and role of European women in colonial India; how women's bodies come to embody and signify community honor and become sites of communal contest. We explore the making of Mother India; the connection between nation, territory and the female form; and the ways in which women have been represented in history as well as Indian cinema.