HIS 271 - History of Science and Technology in Modern South Asia

Instructors
Chaudhuri, Tilburg

Ever since historians began to suggest that science “has a history,” they have been arguing about when it began, what constitutes it and what lies beyond the edges of “the West” or the strict purview of “colonial” technologies and systems of knowledge. More recently, scholars have asked why these histories of science and technology should be anthropocentric, thereby pushing beyond the edges of the human itself.
In the context of modern South Asia, debates about the historical, geographic and nonhuman constitution of science has, in turn, proven crucial to critical analysis of science itself. This reading-intensive course will cover a range of cutting edge and classic works that represent distinctive positions on questions of originality and derivative frameworks; the relationship between science and the state, technology and progress, empire and modernity and the status of science and technology in the contested political arena of the postcolonial nation. Throughout, the course will pay close attention to the ways in which big data, technologies of financial
inclusion and the structural casteism that shapes the social bases of science education and indeed, what is accorded the status of “science” reproduce exclusionary access along the fissures of gender, caste, race and class.

Satisfies History major and minor requirement.
Satisfies South Asian Studies minor requirement.
Satisfies Historical Thought Ways of Knowing requirement.
Satisfies Cultural Diversity Ways of Knowing requirement.