Essentials of Political Theory

This course will introduce students to classical and contemporary political theory along the following lines:

Basic concepts such as power; the state; freedom; equality: moral, legal, material equalities; justice: egalitarian, libertarian theories of justice; democracy; citizenship.

Classical ideologies like liberalism: contractarianism, rights-based liberalism, utilitarianism; conservatism; socialism: utopian socialism, scientific socialism; anarchism; nationalism: liberalism and nationalism, socialism and nationalism; fascism.

Contemporary ideologies like feminism: liberal, socialist, radical, black, philosophical feminisms; multiculturalism: culture, race, ethnicity, religion; ecologism: environmental crisis, land ethic, deep ecology; fundamentalism: fundamentalism and religion, modernity and tradition, fundamentalism, democracy and violence.

Contemporary ideas such as human rights: human rights conventions, relativism v/s universalism, group rights; civil disobedience: civil disobedience and law breaking, civil disobedience and democracy, civil rights movement; terrorism: political violence v/s terrorism.

Theories and Thinkers: The Concept of Culture

The course allows students to understand the evolution of the concept of “Culture.” Various thinkers have provided ideas and interpreted culture using new paradigms. As the word is one of the most overused in the English language, the implications of using it in varied contexts need to be investigated. Students are introduced to key thinkers, the context in which these thinkers developed the theories, and the relevance of allowing the concept to evolve further.

Introduction to Literary Studies

This course introduces students to the theory and practice of reading literary texts. It comprises two components: understanding genres and reading literary criticism.The former will require students to read select literary texts in the broad genres of poetry, prose (fiction and non-fiction) and drama, and learn to identify their generic characteristics. The latter component will consist of modules of major critical thinking about the nature of literary art.

The traditions and movements of literary criticism will be historicised, and students would be required to evaluate the texts they read in Component I through the lens of the critics they encounter in Component II (writers, thinkers, and movements).

Foundational Linguistics

This course introduces graduate students in liberal arts to the core areas of linguistics: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics and also the fundamental questions, research findings and debates which inform linguistic research in its state-of-the-art form.

The course will be focused on data analysis, reasoning, linguistic experimentation and argumentation so as to provide to students with foundational knowledge of linguistics leading to an appreciation of the core ideas which continue to guide the discipline.

Historical Studies

This course will familiarize students to the fascinating complexity embedded in the debates, trends and methodologies that are shaping cutting edge research and pedagogic outcomes in the historical discipline.

Course content includes the following modules: Why Historical Studies? An Introduction; Art and History: How to See the Past and the Present; Archives of Artistic Practices; Art, History, and the Anthropocene; Approaches to International Diplomatic History writing; Events, Wars and Historical Documentation; Global History and Historiography; Access to Historical Resources internationally: Archiving, Sources and Resources

Debates in Philosophy

This course introduces some central and practicable philosophical concepts. It traces the evolution of these concepts and delves into select contemporary debates surrounding them. The concepts to be discussed have been chosen to expose students to the major sub-disciplines of philosophy viz. metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

Debates in philosophy are of interest pedagogically as they are informed by insights from other disciplines, and are driven by often contrasting intuitions about what we value. A study of these debates, then, will hone two important philosophical capabilities: the ability to synthesise different viewpoints on central philosophical concerns, and to spot evaluative assumptions in the arguments that drive them.

Digital Humanties: Theories in Practice

The course introduces students to the theories, debates, and tools that relate to the Digital Humanities. It consists of two related components.

The first acquaints students with the history of the field, the conditions of its emergence, and an overview of current debates and practices. Students learn about the relationship of data to intellectual property, sustainability, privacy, and ethical use; heritage computing and digital scholarly editing; standards of mapping, archiving, preservation and documentation of cultural objects, texts, languages, and geographies; digital communities and the public humanities. They also evaluate web content, user experience and information architecture.

The second (practical) component requires students to familiarize themselves with a selection of computational tools requiring no prior programming knowledge but useful in Digital Humanities projects. Students taking the course are expected to be able to identify areas of digital intervention in questions and topics that humanities scholarship engages with as part of regular disciplinary and interdisciplinary inquiry.

Hands-on exposure to learning open source and online computational tools in practical laboratory assignments enables learners to envisage innovative and creative research scenarios for a richer understanding of histories, cultures, and societies in a global context. The course also prepares students to incorporate acquired skills in project implementation in the final year of study.

International Relations and Diplomacy

With growing interdependence, technological advances and the rise of social media, the study of international politics and diplomacy has become an indispensable subject of analysis. The objective of this course is therefore to introduce students to the major concepts, approaches and issues in world politics and contemporary diplomacy.

The first part of the course allows students the opportunity to critically debate and discuss the major approaches and ideas that shape international relations. The second part of the course provides an in-depth understanding of the international issues, the processes and outcomes of interactions between states and trans-national actors. This part of the course will enable students to develop critical thinking and understanding of the applicability of major theoretical perspectives to policy responses.

Cultural Studies: Theories and Concepts in the Indian Context

This course will introduce students to some of the key debates and concepts in Cultural Studies in the context of modern India. One of the chief concerns of cultural studies is to analyze the shifting power relations that constitute the means by which culture or cultural artifacts in their various forms are produced and circulated. Cultural Studies has, for this purpose, drawn from various politically engaged practices like semiotics, feminist theory, ethnography, post-structuralism and so on to study the production and circulation of cultural hegemony and agency under certain political, social and economic conditions.

This is very evident in the Indian context where cultural studies has been the site of inter-disciplinarity and cultural pluralism, drawing from various interpretations of and debates on post-colonial theory, subaltern studies, Marxism and post-Marxism, nationalism and post-nationalism. This course will explore the following themes: caste and communalism, class, gender and citizenship and their fraught intersections that have been sites of social and political critique.