LIT 549 - Memory and Modernity in the Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean has been a site of cultural exchange across continents for several millennia, but it has often been marginalized from discussions of modernity based on Euro-American and trans-Atlantic models. What does it mean to be modern in the context of the Indian Ocean, a region crisscrossed by multiple empires, competing religions, and movements of migrants, merchants, slaves, pilgrims, and soldiers? How have individuals and communities in the Indian Ocean been framed by larger transnational processes like colonization, decolonization, slavery, trade, migration, and displacement? How do the non-Western sources of globalization and transnationalism in the Indian Ocean provide modes for thinking about alternative experiences of modernity? Using literature as the primary mode of thinking, this course will consider the ways in which the unique history of circulation of people, objects, and ideas in the Indian Ocean shapes ideas of modernity distinct from those developed in the West. This course will draw on readings from literary studies, history, anthropology, philosophy, and critical race studies to form a contextually informed approach to the study of the literature from the region. The course aims to rethink major concepts associated with modernity such as nation, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and globalization in relation to the categories of race, gender, ethnicity, caste, and religion in the Indian Ocean context.

Unit(s): 0.5
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Graduate course. Offered fall 2026.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Identify interactions and influences among various disciplines, fields, theories, analytical strategies, and source materials.
Deploy skills, methods, and knowledge developed in coursework.
Demonstrate close, analytical interpretations of source materials in one’s writing.
Express oneself articulately in oral discussion and in presentational modes when appropriate, and express oneself articulately in writing.