Module Catalogue 2025/26

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

Students who are interested in non-European history or in how being a man or a woman depends on social expectations will enjoy this module, which uses workshops, seminars and film screenings to discuss a very important aspect of Asian societies: how did the empire shape modernity in the non-Western world by changing gender relations. Empire and violence went hand in hand through much of modern history but students get few opportunities to explore how violence and race combined to create specific patterns of violence. On the one hand, the British Empire created a tradition of criticizing gender discrimination in India challenged some forms of violence towards Indian women, such as the practice of burning widows - sati. On the other hand, it declared that some Indian men were effeminate while simultaneously recruiting large numbers of South Asian men in the armies that fought the British Empire's war and died on the fields of the First World War. Understanding this complex and paradoxical pattern of imperial violence and how it shaped modern ideas of being a man or a woman is important to understand not just South Asian history but also modern global Britain and our place in it.

Debates about ‘traditional’ Indian society and efforts to reform and modernize it often became debates about how Indian women should be treated and whether Indian men would be allowed in certain clubs and whether they could fight against white soldiers. British Rule in India was known for the banning of Sati in the early nineteenth century. Sati was the practice of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands and was believed by missionaries to signify the low position of women in Indian society. Laws were passed by the British colonial government to prohibit Sati or widow-immolation and to prevent child-marriage. This course will ask whether these debates were about preventing violence towards Indian women or to strengthen British rule in South Asia.

This module will ask how South Asian men's bodies were treated differently - in times of war, were they used as canon fodder? In times of peace, were they believed to require less care in settings such as hospitals? How did the bodies of colonized people respond - did they comply or seek to escape? The module will examine the issues that arose regarding masculinity, feminism through an examination of themes such as restriction of movement of bodies, creating a sense of self, what consent in marriage meant and how colonialism, nationalism and feminism created new ideas about what it meant to be a modern man and a modern woman in the British Empire. Although the empire has gone away, these forms of modern masculinity and feminity continue to shape our present in an increasingly globalized world.

As this is a special subject, support will be provided to understand how to use primary sources to reconstruct the viewpoints of different historical actors and to reflect on perspectives from different disciplines and times and regions.

The aims of the module are:
1) To explore the role that gender can play in fashioning identities in the British Empire and South Asia.
2) To provide an opportunity to acquire a sound general knowledge of the subject, reading widely and critically in the primary and secondary literature associated with it and to develop the capacity for independent study.
3) To provide an opportunity to investigate in some depth selected problems in South Asian history, including the appraisal of selected source material and the critical examination of current historiography.

Outline Of Syllabus

Week-by-week topics may differ from the following:

- Introduction: Colonialism in South Asia
- Embodiment: How the Imperial Experts thought of Colonized Bodies
- Indian Bodies in Harm’s Way: Colonialism and Sati (Widow Burning)
- Indian Bodies in Harm’s Way: Indian Soldiers in the First World War
- Making India Modern: How to create modern Gender Relations in the Age of Empire
- Embodiment: Thinking History with the Body
- Colonial Bodies in Hospitals - Veiled Indian Women and Soldiers in Pain
- Age of Consent Debates: Defending Violence as Love in Marriage
- Purdah: Veiling and segregation of women
- Writing about the Self: Indian Women’s Autobiographies and Fanon's ideas in Black Skin, White Masks
- Fighting Gender Inequality: Feminism, Nationalism and Imperialism

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

• Students will learn about the role of gender in shaping historical developments
• Students will develop a critical understanding of the history and historiography on selected
women’s issues in colonial South Asia
• Students will understand modernity and imperialism are closely linked
• Students will develop a deeper understanding of how gendered subjectivities and identities were
fashioned in the British Empire and South Asia

Intended Skill Outcomes

Subject-specific or Professional Skills:

• Students will develop their bibliographic and library skills
• Students should become more proficient in interpreting varied historiographical positions
• Students will learn to appraise the role of bias in primary sources

Cognitive or Intellectual Skills:

• Students are expected to improve their ability to read quickly and with an eye for the distinction
between the particular and the general
• To improve their research skills, developing their ability to collect and process textual information,
with analytical skills being developed through analysis of multiple texts with differing viewpoints
• Students should develop their ability to present arguments clearly and succinctly both on paper
and orally

Key Skills:

• Students will learn to manage their time
• Communication skills will be developed
• Group work skills will be developed through small group activity during seminars
• Students will be able to demonstrate an ability to challenge received conclusions

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

Seminars encourage independent study and promote improvements in oral communication, problem-solving skills and adaptability. There will be a series of seminars that cover the introduction to the module, alongside discussion of primary sources. Preparation for the main seminar series will require students to undertake a programme of private reading relating to South Asian culture and society. This will require good time management and personal responsibility for learning. Seminar preparation will require the student to read and analyse critically a wide range of literature. A workshop on primary source exercises, as well as reading and research exercises, will prepare students for the assessments.


Drop-in surgeries will ensure that students can seek guidance on each theme/topic for assessment but also for challenges to topics.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

A formative written exercise reflecting on studying gender history will prepare students for the perspectives this module encourages. A documentary commentary will test knowledge and understanding of the texts set for the module. The ability to compare and contrast related source texts on a common subject will be developed. The essay will test ability to research, develop, and communicate an argument about a particular subject. This calls for both general knowledge and a detailed understanding of sources relating to the course topics.

Work submitted during the delivery of the module forms a means of determining student progress. Submitted work tests intended knowledge and skills outcomes, and develops key skills in research, reading and writing.

General Notes

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