Module description
This module gives students the opportunity to study literary representations and dramatizations of the Indian political economy from the early 19th century to the present day. The first half of the module addresses the opium trade that bound together India, China and Britain in the 19th century. It examines how literary and political texts represent the effects of this trade on a range of actors and groups across regions, and its role in geopolitical shifts of power. The second half explores the liberalization of the Indian political economy since the 1990s and its dramatization in a variety of texts. The module gives students the opportunity to consider how literary texts experiment with different perspectives on some key processes in the daily life of economies, such as work, waste, toxicity, and poverty.
Assessment details
1 x 4,000 word essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
Students will gain knowledge and expertise in the historical background to the opium trade and the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 19th and 20th centuries. They will acquire grounding in the key themes, issues and ideas in these subjects, and will also acquire interdisciplinary skills in understanding how political economies are represented, dramatized and narrated in a range of literary texts and cultural productions.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, the students should have:
- Acquired a sound grounding in key themes, issues, comparisons and debates in the representations of the political economy of India as it relates to the history of the opium trade and the liberalization of its economy.
- Become familiar with important literary and ethnographic engagements with economic life in India in the 19th and 20th centuries from colonialism through to liberalisation.
- Acquired interdisciplinary skills on how political economies can be represented, narrated, and ethnographically produced in different kinds of texts, cultural productions and artefacts.
Teaching pattern
1 hour lecture and 1 hour seminar, weekly
Suggested reading list
Core readings
- Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (2008)
- M.K. Gandhi, A Guide to Health (1921)
- M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1909)
- Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822)
- Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004)
- Arvind Adiga, The White Tiger (2008)
- Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story (2014)
Additional Course Costs
Students may wish to purchase key texts; where possible material will be put up on KEATS.