HSTAS 317A/JSIS A 317A: HISTORY BY BOLLYWOOD
Canvas Site: https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1547864
Class meeting times: M/W, 1.30-3.20, NAN 181
Anand A. Yang SMI 316C
Office hours: M 12-1.30 pm, aay@uw.edu
and by appointment.
TA: Amaal Akhtar (amlakh@uw.edu)
This class explores the history of colonial South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) through Bollywood films. That is, it examines the history of British or colonial India from the late eighteenth century until 1947 when the subcontinent gained independence and was partitioned into the new nations of India and Pakistan. Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, emerged later in 1971.
The course approaches the rich and complex history of colonial India through Bollywood films, the popular Hindi language films produced in the city of Bombay, renamed Mumbai in 1995. It focuses on the ways in which these films, particularly the box office hits, imagined or represented India’s colonial past and shaped popular understandings of the past and present. Our concern is not so much with evaluating these films as (in)accurate historical accounts but with engaging cinema, to cite one film scholar, “as a repository of imaginaries and imaginary worlds, showing ways in which change is visualized in films, depicted in narratives, images and sounds where meanings are condensed, displaced by star images and intensified by melodrama.” Bollywood movies, much like those of Hollywood, perhaps even more so, attract mass audiences, profoundly inflect popular perceptions of the past and reflect the hopes and anxieties of their times.
Readings for this class are drawn from two main texts, both available online through the UW Library. So are many of the films we will be viewing (Odegaard, held on reserve, available for four-hour loans). Additional readings can also be accessed electronically, and most of the films via Amazon, Netflix, and other commercial companies.
The two texts are:
Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema
Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India
Requirements
In addition to viewing the weekly film assignment and completing the readings prior to the class meetings, you are expected to write:
5 BLOGS (weeks 3-9): In the week you are not writing a short response paper, you are expected to submit a brief blog entry on the film of the week. Your blogs should be 100 words or so, posted on the class canvas site by 12 noon Wednesday of the appropriate week. For example, the blog for week 3 is due by 12 noon Wednesday, April 13, 2022).
2 SHORT RESPONSE PAPERS (at least 500 words) about one of the films of the week (weeks 3-9; also due by 12 noon Wednesday of the appropriate week).
In other words, you can choose to submit blogs on weeks 3 and 4, for instance, then a short response paper on week 5, followed by blogs on weeks 6 and 7, another short response paper on week 8, and your fifth and final blog on week 9. Or some other permutation and combination of this mix as long as your short writing assignments total 5 blogs and 2 short papers.
In addition, you will be expected to write a FINAL PAPER (at least 2,500 words) due at the end of the term (Monday, June 6, by 5 pm). For the final paper you have to write about the momentous and tragic events relating to independence and partition in 1947 as portrayed in the films listed in the syllabus and as discussed in the scholarly literature.
GRADES will be based on:
Blog entries (5 total, beginning week 3, none in weeks you are doing short papers, and none in final week): Please post by Monday, 12 noon, prior to the class meeting. 20% of grade.
Short response papers (2 papers; 500 words minimum; weeks 3-9). 20% of grade
Final paper/presentation (discussing at least three films plus the readings on independence and partition in 1947; at least 2,500 words, due by June 6, 5 pm: 50% of grade.
Late papers will be penalized.
Class participation and discussion: 10% of grade
CLASS SCHEDULE
Week 1. March 28, 30.
Overview
Film and History
Overview of South Asian History
Week 2. April 4, 6.
Bollywood’s Visual and Sonic Culture
Grammar of Bollywood.
Visual and Verbal Language
Social and Cultural Context
FILM: Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001)
READING:
Ganti, chs. 1, 2, 4, 5
Metcalf & Metcalf, preface, chs. 1, 9
BLOGS BEGIN WEEK 3; SHORT RESPONSE PAPERS WEEKS 3-9
Week 3. April 11, 13
The Aftermath of Independence
A Different India?
Images of Newly Independent India
Social Films
FILM: Mother India (1957)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv032qeQvN0
READING:
Metcalf & Metcalf, ch. 8
Ramachanda Guha, India After Gandhi, read prologue
https://books.google.com/books?id=8FKepYC6wzwC&pg=PP13&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Week 4. April 18, 20
Precolonial India. Mughal Empire
Visions of Splendor
Indo-Islamic Culture and Civilization
FILM: Mughal-E-Azam (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7hP9UNp0Hw
OR Jodhaa Akbar (2008)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJukJ33ceEw
READING:
Ganti, ch. 3
Metcalf & Metcalf, ch. 2
Week 5. April 25, 27
Colonial India.
Structure and Ideology of Rule
Modalities of Power and Dominance
FILM: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyONHKeYb8g
READING:
Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, chapter 1, “Introduction,” pp. 3-15
Week 6. May 2, 4
Colonial Rule: Beginnings and Foundation
Late 18th Century
Establishment and Consolidation of British Rule
FILM: Thugs of Hindostan (2018). STREAM.
READING: P.J. Marshall, “The Setting for Empire,” ch. 1 in The Cambridge History of India: Bengal: The British Bridgehead, pp. 1-47
Metcalf & Metcalf, ch. 3
Week 7. May 9, 11
Anti-Colonial Resistance
Mutiny/Rebellion/Uprising of 1857
FILM: Mangal Pandey: The Rising (2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5zc8IdHPA
READING:
Metcalf & Metcalf, ch. 4
Peter Marshall, “India and the Great Rebellion”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/indian_rebellion_01.shtml
Jill Bender, “Introduction,” 1857
Crispin Bates, “Introduction,” to Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857, ed. C. Bates
Week 8. May 16, 18
1857: Gender and Resistance
Rani of Jhansi
The Aftermath of Revolt
FILM: Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (2019) (STREAM) OR The Warrior Queen of Jhansi (2019) OR Jhansi ki Rani (1952) (English version: The Tiger and the Flame)
READING:
Pamela Toler, “Who is Manikarnika”
https://www.historynet.com/who-is-marnikarnika-legendary-hindu-queen-lakshmi-bai.htm
Harleen Singh, “Introduction,” in Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India
Joyce Lebra, The Rani of Jhansi
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000473066?
Week 9. May 23, 25
Nationalist Movement.
Mass Mobilization
Gandhi and Nonviolence
Revolutionaries and Violence
FILM:1942: A Love Story (1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM8Wppmf4G4
Legend of Bhagat Singh (2002) (Stream)
OR Shaheed (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrmTj27AcT0
READING:
Metcalf & Metcalf, chs. 5, 6
Week 10. May 30 (No class), June 1
Independence and Partition
India and Pakistan
Bangladesh
FILM: Garm Hava (1973) (Stream) or Chhalia (1960) (Stream) or Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) (Stream) or Hey Ram (2000)
READING:
Metcalf & Metcalf, ch.. 7
David Gilmartin, “The Historiography of India’s Partition,”
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~sj6/gilmartin%20historiography%20of%20partition.pdf
William Dalrymple, “The Great Divide”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple
Complete reading: Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, read timeline, preface to the new edition, maps, and introduction to ch 6, pp. 1-127
https://www-jstor-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/stable/j.ctv1bzfp93
FINAL PAPER DUE: JUNE 6, 5 pm
Faculty mailboxes are located in 318 Smith. T.A. mailboxes in Smith 315, but these boxes are not secure and are only available when the office is open. Papers, notes, etc. for T.A.s should instead be delivered to T.A. offices. Faculty and T.A. office locations and hours are posted on a bulletin board outside of 315 Smith.
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A student who believes he or she has been improperly graded must first discuss the matter with the instructor. If the student is not satisfied with the instructor's explanation, the student, no later than ten days after his or her discussion with the instructor, may submit a written appeal to the Chair of the History Department with a copy of the appeal also sent to the instructor. Within 10 calendar days, the Chair consults with the instructor to ensure that the evaluation of the student's performance has not been arbitrary or capricious. Should the Chair believe the instructor's conduct to be arbitrary or capricious and the instructor declines to revise the grade, the Chair, with the approval of the voting members of his or her faculty, shall appoint an appropriate member, or members, of the faculty of the History Department to evaluate the performance of the student and assign a grade. The Dean and Provost should be informed of this action. Once a student submits a written appeal, this document and all subsequent actions on this appeal are recorded in written form for deposit in a History Department file.
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Your experience in this class is important to me. If you have already established accommodations with Disability Resources for Students (DRS), please communicate your approved accommodations to me at your earliest convenience so we can discuss your needs in this course.
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Instructors If you have any concerns about the course or the instructor in charge of the course, please see the instructor about these concerns as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking with the instructor or not satisfied with the response that you receive, contact the History Department’s Director of Academic Services, Tracy Maschman Morrissey, in Smith 315A. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive from Tracy, make an appointment with the Assistant to the Chair in Smith 308B to speak with the Chair. TAs If you have any concerns about the teaching assistant, please see them about these concerns as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking with the teaching assistant or not satisfied with the response that you receive, contact the instructor in charge of the course. If you are not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may follow the procedure previously outlined, or contact the Graduate School in G-1 Communications.
Rev. January 2020
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