ANTH 399: Issues in Anthropology
ANTH 399-001: The Ramayana:The Many Lives of a South Asian Epic
(Fall 2016)
03:00 PM to 04:15 PM MW
Nguyen Engineering Building 1109
Section Information for Fall 2016
This course will study the Ramayana, the great epic of South Asia and South-East Asia, as literature, translation, and living culture. We will view it not as any single, bound book but rather as a story that has metastasized into hundreds, perhaps thousands of versions – in dozens of languages – as poetry, folk performance, painting, television mega-serial, comic book, political diatribe. We’ll ground ourselves by learning the tale from accessible contemporary sources, opening up our conversations about translations into English, then go further, with readings that help us understand the Ramayana as a place where a vast and fragmented but also very inclusive culture works out its various obsessions, passions, arguments and social conflicts. Eventually, we’ll be ready to experiment with and produce our own Ramayanas…. In other words, we’ll use this epic poem and tale as a fascinating, weird, profound and deeply enjoyable way of helping us understand and come to grips with contemporary South Asia and the relations between its pasts, presents, and futures. Instructor: Vivek Narayanan
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Course Information from the University Catalog
Credits: 3
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.
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