CBP214 | Borderlands : Places, Lives and Objects from the margins of the history

This seminar will study borderlands as places of history making and history thinking. On the one hand, the seminar will expand the knowledge of imperial histories from a borderland perspective, on the other hand the seminar will ground itself in decentered and decolonial methods of historical thinking. As is often told, history takes place at the centers of political and cultural power, or what a historian of South Asia has called the problem of “coherent core” regions. It has also been suggested that the regions that lack a “coherent core” often fall out of the historical glance. However, the questions that arise are, how do people from these regions think about history? How do they situate themselves vis-à-vis the “coherent core regions” or the centers of political power? Does the core look coherent from these borderland places? Or, do fractures and cracks become more visible from the margins of history?

In this seminar we will answer these questions along with a thorough study of borderland as an epistemological category – where did borderland as a concept and knowledge originate? To whom does the conceptual category of borderland make sense? And, how do we understand borderland vis-à-vis conceptual categories like frontier and contact zones? The seminar will draw insights from a wide range of case studies including Highlands Asia, Inner Asia, the Indian Ocean region, and the arid and dry deserts of the Indian Subcontinent. We will study historical texts, literature, and visual materials from the early medieval period to the mid-twentieth century in South Asian History. The seminar will incorporate methods and analysis from Cultural History, Material History, Oral History & Folklore Studies, Borderland Studies, Migration Studies, and the History of Art and Architecture.