Excerpt by Afkaheen Alam from The Excalibur, 21 November 2024
This academic year, the English department is offering two new courses in two subjects that have seen an increase in demand among students over recent years.
Professor Vikrant Dadawala, newly appointed assistant professor, is teaching the South Asian Literature and Introduction to Postcolonial Literature courses. He previously taught at Harvard University, where he received the 2023 Alan Heimert Teaching Prize.
Dadawala says these are not superficial courses. 鈥淔or instance, [in] the South Asian Lit course, I don鈥檛 want it to be a course where you just read a couple of trendy books from the last five or ten years,鈥 he shares. He wants his students to 鈥渞eally dig deeply from the well of this absolutely mysterious and diverse part of the world that has seen so much human interaction between different civilizations, and that has left its traces on all of this art, culture, and religion.鈥
The South Asian Literature course examines a wide variety of works ranging from ancient Sanskrit hymns and Sufi love songs, to memoirs written by former Untouchables, and stories of migration and resilience. Students will explore important questions, such as, 鈥榃hat makes Islam in South Asia different from Islam in the Middle East?鈥 and 鈥榃hy is South Asian poetry obsessed with romantic love, despite the prevalence of arranged marriages?鈥
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