This course will introduce students to South Asian print cultures that shaped, mediated, and intervened across geographies, between the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. The course will examine “globalization” as a process sustained through textual flows that combined pre-colonial Persianate, Islamicate, and the Indian ocean world(s), with modern technological changes. The readings offer a capacious view of how Muslim readers in South Asia imagined themselves as part of a global Islamic public sphere in relation to intellectual, legal, financial, religious, and literary debates. The course will thus alert students to South-South intellectual networks that have either not been seen as “worldly” enough or obscured by methodological nationalism.

Each week features a specific theme in relation to South Asian print culture and the world. The instructor will be responsible for laying down contextual and thematic concerns highlighted in the readings, following which the students will be expected to participate in discussions and short presentations.