Time and History in South Asia

This course explores key concepts and themes around the temporal cultures of South Asia, with an emphasis on the transition from the middle ages to modernity. We will study the philosophical/scientific understandings of time and history in South Asia, and how the West read (or misread) these temporal traditions. Topics include: the philosophical debates around cyclical and linear time; the development of historical thinking outside Europe; the impact of colonialism on medieval understandings of time and history; the challenges to our sense of 'future' due to the current climate crisis. The goal is to think of South Asia not merely as subject to Western epistemologies and temporalities, but also as an important site where our current concepts and propositions about time and history were developed.