BA (Hons) History Curriculum

SoLS academic journey exposes students to diverse ways of knowing and communicating, going beyond disciplinary silos. The first year of SoLS offers foundation courses to cultivate ways of thinking and pluralistic ways of communicating that move across fields. They don’t just introduce content—they reshape how students approach knowledge itself. The capabilities students learn from these foundation courses prepare them for learning the complexities of different major and minor disciplines.

We start adult life by looking at the world we inherit from the society around us, a framework for understanding the world that can be so familiar to us that it’s hard to notice its existence. The FCs will show students how to uncover their assumptions about the world and challenge them. Students will also add to their understanding of the world and their understanding of themselves. The courses span from the nature of the self to how India became a modern nation-state. Along the way, students will pick up the abilities to thrive in their major and minor courses and far beyond, thus viewing learning as a lifelong venture.

• Writing Seminar I and II
• Thinking and Imagination
• Self and Identity
• Research Methods: Quantitative and Qualitative
• Empires, Cultures and Environment: A longue durée history of Indian Subcontinent
• Paradigms in Science
• Sustainability Science: Social and Planetary Design
• Thinking with Computer
• Themes in Indian Politics
• Creative Expression
• Modern Practice of Imagination
• Introduction to Majors (offered in 1st and 2nd Semester)
• Curriculum Seminar

Along with Foundation courses, the interdisciplinary foundation of learning also gets expanded through interdisciplinary elective baskets. These interdisciplinary courses enable students to bring their specific major disciplinary learning to analyse and engage with themes and subjects.

The inter-disciplinary course on ‘Borders, Wars and Violence’, brings together perspectives from sociology, anthropology, political economy, social psychology and political philosophy to understand the nature of violence and the debates surrounding its various forms. In the early social science literature, eruption of violence was seen as exceptional and inimical to social order. However, we need to realise that violence is endemic and often constitutive of social life. Social order is maintained through violence, albeit through formal and institutionalised means. Violence is primarily social—constructed and produced to advance certain collective or sectional goals.

There is a notable shift in the study of wars. The traditional theories of international relations have proved increasingly inadequate as local conflicts and civil wars have become far more frequent than those between states. The new wars differ from conventional wars in many ways. The course takes note of these new developments in conceptualising wars.

Borders often figure as spaces of cultural exchange, as much as sites of separation and violence. Apart from territorial boundaries, there are also cultural and social borders which separate and unite people through categorisations and distinctions. Borderlands, thus, are regions adjoining borders that emerge as zones of distinct legalities, cultures and populations. In this course, we will also try to understand the defining characteristics of borders and borderlands. Through a study of the ethnographies of everyday life in the borderlands, students will be able to come to terms with critical concepts such as space, region, refugee, migrant, identity, nationhood and belongingness.

This course will examine the historical and contemporary Delhi through its culture, chaos and charm. From glorious historical narratives to everyday chatter: the story of any city is a story of its polymorphous population and its erratic space. The impulse to record the city is as old as the cities themselves. We will go through various such ‘records’ of Delhi –– fiction, film and non-fiction –– to reflect upon how the national capital has changed over the years. As we survey these changes, we will examine the various old and new forms of selfhood and sociality within the city. Who are Dilliwallahs? Who does Delhi belong to? The texts and films in this course will include both, those originally written and produced in English and translations into English, allowing us to reflect upon the linguistic diversity of the city. Each language represents a people who have changed Delhi and continue to, to this day. While thinking about the space and the people of Delhi as told by the films, stories, poems and essays, we will navigate through the various aspects that underpin the city: aspiration, opportunity, love, violence, noise, wonder and magic.

The course will provide an historical and anthropological survey of South Asia’s Muslim communities:

i) who are the South Asian Muslims?
ii) and what it has meant — and continues to mean — to be Muslim in South Asia.

The growth of Islam in South Asia has been one of the more important geopolitical developments of the past millennium. It began in the 7th and 8th centuries, when Arab-Muslim traders settled on the subcontinent’s southwestern coast. Now, one third of the world’s Muslims live in South Asia, which has become a major source of Islamic ideas and organisations across the world.

This course explores the historical development, religious traditions, social structures and cultural expressions of Islam and Muslim societies in South Asia (present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Emphasising Islam as a lived and dynamic tradition, students will study how Muslim identities and practices are shaped through everyday life, ritual observance, popular devotion and diverse forms of cultural production, including art, film and literature. Through engagement with various methods, historical and anthropological, students will develop an understanding of the dynamism of Islam in the South Asian context.