Youth, Society and Literature

Semester and Year Offered: Monsoon 2011

Course Coordinator and Team: Vikram Singh Thakur, Bhoomika Meiling

Email of course coordinator: vikram[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

Pre-requisites: None

Aim: This course showcases the dynamics between youth and society through literary and cultural texts. The main texts of the course will focus on the social spaces that youth inhabit and the contemporary issues that they encounter while navigating those spaces. Some of the issues that are likely to be discussed while reading these texts would be: campus spaces, education, identity politics, love, friendship, relationships, communalism, religion, terrorism, substance abuse, media and technology.

Course Outcomes: By the end of the course

1. The students will learn to critically engage with literary and cultural texts that pertain to their own immediate reality and lives, as well as the society they inhabit.
2. They will be able to demonstrate reflective thinking by engaging with various issues that are faced by them.
3. Multicultural understanding of varied concerns of youth around the world would enable them to comprehend various moral, ethical and political movements of the world.
4. They will demonstrate an ability to formulate academic arguments by theorising lived experience.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

Module I: Youth and relationship.

Module II: Youth, communalism and terrorism.

Module III: Youth, substance abuse and AIDS.

Module IV: Youth, campus and education

Module V: Youth, identity and politics

Module 1 deals with the dimension of relationships.Through a series of readings that belong to different genres the course aims to get the students start reflecting on the various kinds of relationships that they find themselves in.

Module 2 deals with youth, substance abuse and AIDS.

Module 3 explores Youth, communalism and terrorism.

Module 4 investigates the relationship of Youth, campus and education

Module 5 examines the interrelation of Youth, Identity and Politics

Assessment Details with weights:

• Mid semester exam (30%)
• Presentation (30%)
• End semester exam (30%)
• Class participation (10%

Reading List:

1. Federico Falco, In Utah There are Mountains too
2. Jose Garcia Villa, Footnote to Youth
3. Elsa Marston, Santa Claus in Baghdad
4. M.G. Vassanji, Leaving
5. Mark Halliday, Graded Paper
6. Miller Williams, Thinking about Bill, Dead of AIDS
7. Onir, My Brother … Nikhil
8. Anonymous, My Name is “Meth”
9. Alex Broun, 10000 Cigarettes
10. Manoj Mitta and H.S.Phoolka, “Personal Fallout”, When a Tree
11. Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath
12. Sadat Hasan Manto, Khol Do (Open It)
13. PUDR, Courting Disaster: A Report on Inter-Caste Marriages,
14. Society and State
15. Vandana Shiva, Solidarity Against All Forms of Terrorism
16. Mahesh Elkunchwar, Holi
17. Lone Scherfig, An Education
18. J. M. Coetzee, Youth
19. Agnes Smedley, “I Learn About the World” (from Daughter of Earth)
20. Anurag Kashyap, Ghulaa

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE: