Indian Ocean Syllabus, Spring 2023 (original) (raw)

This course is designed to introduce the Indian Ocean as a region linking the Middle East, East Africa, South and Southeast Asia. With a focus on both continuities and rupture, we study select cultures and societies brought into contact through interregional migration and travel across the Indian Ocean over a broad arc of history. Different types of people-nobles, merchants, soldiers, statesmen, sailors, laborers, scholars, slaves-experienced mobility in different ways. How did different groups of people represent such mobilities? What kinds of cooperation, accommodation, or conflict did different Indian Ocean encounters engender? Using an array of different primary sources, we look at particular case studies and their broader social and cultural contexts. At the heart of the course is attention to the ways in which primary sources provide access to the historical meanings of their contexts of production. We read humanities and social science scholarship, as well as primary sources ranging from manuscript illustrations, sailor's stories, merchant letters, travelogues, pilgrimage accounts, colonial documents, memoirs, and diplomatic accounts.