Content Courses
University of California, Berkeley
2021 Fall
Memory and Devotion: the stories of bhakti poet-saints
In the fourteenth-century, a new form of religious expression, called bhakti, exploded in the multicultural, multilingual, and religiously diverse region of North India. Bhakti emphasized personal devotion over formal learning and religious institutions. This course examines the hagiographies, or biographical stories, of bhakti saints who lived between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. The poetry of bhakti saints mixed expressions of devotion with biting criticism of social norms. The process of creating biographical stories about these poet-saints is a process of remembering. Throughout the semester we will examine how memory is shaped and what it means to remember under specific historical circumstances.
University of California, Berkeley
2021 Spring (online)
Methods of Reading: kinship and family in precolonial South Asia
In 1641 a Jain merchant and poet from North India finished writing his life-story. This merchant and poet named Banārasīdās wrote in a refined literary style about family feuds, failed business ventures, and big political changes such as the death of emperors and the rise of new ones. Focusing on early modern North India, in this course, we will consider what it means to read a text as a historical source and what references to gender and the family tell us about history.
University of California, Berkeley
2019 Spring
Sanskrit and its Afterlives
Is Sanskrit a dead language? Who has the authority to speak about or on behalf of Sanskrit? These are questions which continue to fuel heated debates in newspapers in India and across social media. In this course, we will start by building a common vocabulary of Sanskrit literary texts while attending to how ideas of power play out. We will then turn to the question of scholarly power and Sanskrit’s relationship to colonialism and nationalism. We will finish the course by reading the contemporary memoir of a Sanskrit-Pandit and his struggle to navigate conflicting ideologies within his community.
University of California, Berkeley
2016 Fall; 2015 Fall
Genre-hopping in Sanskrit Literature in Translation
What is Sanskrit literature? “It has something to do with religion—the Vedas and all that, right? And then there is the Ramayan, the Mahabharat and that Kalidasa guy?” Even the 8th century Sanskrit poet, Dharmakīrti, had trouble getting out from under the shadow of the epics, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata:
Vālmīki dammed the sea with rocks
put into place by monkeys,
and Vyāsa filled it with the arrows shot by Pārtha;
yet neither is suspected of hyperbole.
On the other hand, I weigh both word and sense
And yet the public sneers and scorns my work
O Reputation, I salute thee![1]
This course will expose you to a wide range of styles and genres from classical Sanskrit literature at the height of its prominence as a literary medium (1st to 12th century CE). We will read stories of love, works for the stage, political thrillers, historical chronicles, and vulgar satire. You will find some of the works thrilling and others tedious. The primary goals for this course are 1) to move beyond our personal tastes and probe the texts with an open mind 2) To learn how to ground analysis and interpretation in cultural and historical context so that we can start asking questions like: Why does this literature matter? For whom did it matter? Why would someone write this text; where does it fit within the larger tradition of Sanskrit literature?
[1] Ingalls, Sanskrit Poetry, from Vidyākara’s Treasury, 316 vs. 1726. Translated by Daniel Ingalls.