Course Description

bell hooks describes “[t]he heartbeat of critical thinking [as] the longing to know—to understand  how life works.” This course is designed to create careful readers. It seeks to engage with questions  that shape and reshape our worldview(s) through a series of planned reading and writing sessions  over 10 weeks.

In an ever-evolving cultural hotpot, most of us are left grappling with events that are difficult to  make sense of. When the Royal Challengers’ Bangalore won the IPL last year, 11 people died in its  celebration. What followed was a barrage of opinions. People speak before they think. Now, as war  slowly dismantles the lives of auto drivers in Indian cities, what are we to focus on? How does one  locate the head or tail of a problem? We’re living in an unfortunate marriage of the domino effect  and the Russian Doll phenomenon. One problem nestles within the other; the third one triggers  the fourth. And popular culture: that simmering, maddening Frankenstein is perpetually  responding to and shaping our response to the events of the everyday. The readings in the course  are merely indicative: they form a skeleton around which we will discuss matters of the everyday.  Each reading in the course acts as a prompt, a starting point that will lead to discussions in the  classroom. The question we will collectively ask: what does it mean to be a person?

This course is designed to make students critical readers of cultural texts. Ranging from films, and  documentaries, to essays, and short stories, the course attempts a critique of the popular and to  understand with clarity, what is the Sign of Our Times? Primarily a reading and writing course, it is  designed to equip students with skills such as expository and argumentative writing, in addition to  close reading and critical thinking. This standalone course acts as a companion to the B.A. LLB  (hons.), B.A. (hons.) and the LLB curricula.

The course will move back and forth between writing work, reading exercises, Socratic discussions,  response papers with regular feedback given during office hours.