CWS Core Courses

CWS-E-001
Introduction to  Creative Writing “From Where You Dream”
Credits: 3

Prof. Pankaj Challa
Course Description: Where does art come from? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler says that art “does not come from the mind” but from “the place where you dream.” That said, we will in equal respects make use of and challenge Butler’s notion: the critical and the creative are often interlinked in the writer’s process. Students will both produce their own creative texts and critically examine peer and published work in order to expose the inner mechanisms of the text.

CWS-E-002
Writing Caste: Self, Body, Representation
Credits: 3

Prof. Shivani Kapoor
Course Description: This course is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students from any discipline with an interest in understanding the debates on caste in modern Indian politics and society. The course will introduce core issues in the politics of caste and examine complex debates within these ideas through writings on and about caste. Writing is fundamentally a political act since the process of writing and producing ideas contains within itself deep contestations over self, body, voice, representation and claims. Writing has thus been central to the way in which the politics of caste in India has unfolded, especially in the realm of anti-caste struggles and movements for social justice. Dalit literature, autobiographical writings, and essays produced by key figures in the anti-caste movement have been great moments of describing and theorizing the experiences of caste and caste-based discrimination. It is thus important to understand the politics of caste and anti-caste movements through the writings of and about the movement. The course is organised around five thematic ideas which respectively examine.

1. Writings on caste in Hindu scriptures
2. Colonial interventions in caste through the practices of documentation, archiving and writing
3. Caste and its place in modern politics focusing on debates of representation
4. Intersecting caste with other identities such as gender, language and body through autobiographical writing
5. Examining issues of self and voice through debates on writing and publishing on caste

CWS-E-003
Writing Sounds: Research and Arts Practice in Sound and Listening
Credits: 3

Prof. Shubhasree Bhattacharyya

Course Description:
Designed around the idea of the “Listening Session Series” begun in O. P. Jindal Global University in the Spring of 2019, this course is meant for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in pursuing artistic research writing on music and sounds. The course is designed as a series of workshops enabling learners to engage with spaces in terms of sounds and to produce sound stories in the form of multisensory pieces combining audio recordings and written words. Questioning the conventional and limited understanding of a text as a purely literary site of research this course uses methods of reading and writing combining more than one medium of expression. The audio recordings and the written word do not exist in separation from each other in the course outputs. On the contrary they complement each other to address two primary concerns – Can writing about the senses alter our ways of envisioning writing? Can the act of reading become an act of listening?

Sound walks in the campus and its vicinities, audio recordings, individual and collaborative writing, and in-depth listening sessions form the core activities of the course. These workshops also introduce learners to the interdisciplinary field of “Sound Studies” familiarizing them with contemporary sound art practices. The workshops culminate in a “Listening Session” where selections from the sound stories are presented/played.

CWS 001 Introduction to Creative Writing
Credits: 3

Prof. Pankaj Challa
Course Description: Where does art come from? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler says that art “does not come from the mind” but from “the place where you dream.” That said, we will in equal respects make use of and challenge Butler’s notion: the critical and the creative are often interlinked in the writer’s process. Students will both produce their own creative texts and critically examine peer and published work in order to expose the inner mechanisms of the text.

CWS 002 Introduction to Screenwriting
Credits: 3

Prof. Pankaj Challa

Course Description:
In this course, we will explore some basics of the craft of screenwriting. We will define the key elements of a screenplay: Scene, dialog, action, and try to understand their function. We will discuss the industry format, always keeping in mind that format and function are intertwined in screenplays. At the end of the course, you will turn in a fully developed Sequence/Short Act (about 12-15 pages, screenplay format).

CWS 003 Smell and Touch: a sensory approach to the city
Credits: 3

Prof. Mohammad Sayeed

Course Description:
Smell and touch are often regarded as ‘inferior’ senses and too subjective to be considered for artistic production and intellectual critique. So much so, that they even struggle to determine their meaning with evidence in the cultural and legal sphere. Most of the visual -centric cultures think of them as mythical, magical, emotional and sensual and not rational enough to be object or method of the scientific discourse. They are often governed and kept contained with ‘distancing’ becoming the buzzword and deodorization sprit of the time. 

However, the recent scholarship on sensory urbanism has highlighted the significant role that smell and touch play in the organization of the social world. For example, social relations of caste and gender get inscribed in the notions of smell and touch and thus mark the depths of the body. Similarly, in Tunisian revolution the fragrance of jasmine becomes the fragrance of the uprising creating a non-verbal and non-sonic method to build solidarity. This course charts the methods to study and write smell and touch, in their material presence as well as their cultural signification. Building on theoretical literature as well as ethnographic cases, the course aims to familiarize students with historical and contemporary direction in the sensory research.

Unit 1: Challenging the hierarchy of senses
Unit 2: Materiality and metaphor
Unit 3: Social relations of senses

BFXU-03-BCM-GCE3460 Ethnographies of the World
Credits: 3

Prof. Mohammad Sayeed (co-taught with Prof. Syed Mohammad Faisal)

Course Description:
This course will introduce students to various regions of the world through their cultural practices and diverse ways of living. Students will read ethnographic tracts from different parts of the world that will expose them to the ‘inner’ life of a society and challenge the ‘view from a distance’ that is mostly shaped by the political role a region plays on the world stage. . Challenging pre-given notions of social structure and history the course will make students appreciate how various cultures build practice interpersonal relations, religious rituals and forms, health and economic transactions. By the end of the course students will be able to understand and employ the comparative-culture method to appreciate the diversity of human experience. In anthropological spirit the course will equip students to focus on various ways in which one can be human. Each week excerpts from a particular ethnographic text will be prescribed for reading.

CWS 001 Caste and the Politics of Writing
Credits: 3 

Prof. Shivani Kapoor
Course Description: This course is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students from any discipline with an interest in understanding the debates on caste in modern Indian politics and society. The course will introduce core issues in the politics of caste and examine complex debates within these ideas through writings on and about caste. Writing is fundamentally a political act since the process of writing and producing ideas contains within itself deep contestations over self, body, voice, representation, and claims. Writing has thus been central to the politics of caste in India where significant interventions have been made in anti-caste struggles, and in demands for emancipation and justice, through writing and making claims for the self and the community. This course thus examines the politics of caste through some of these texts. The course is organised around four thematic ideas which respectively examine.

1. Writing and Writing Back: Claims and Counterclaims to Caste
2. Colonialism and Caste: Writing Changes
3. Debates on Voice: Writing the Self and Writing Others
4. Writing the Public: Claims of Representation

CWS 002 Introduction to Screenwriting
Credits: 3

Prof. Pankaj Challa
Course Description: In this course, we will explore some basics of the craft of screenwriting. We will define the key elements of a screenplay: Scene, dialog, action, and try to understand their function. We will discuss the industry format, always keeping in mind that format and function are intertwined in screenplays. At the end of the course, you will turn in a fully developed Sequence/Short Act (about 12-15 pages, screenplay format).

CWS 003 Memoir Essay
Credits: 3

Prof. Shubhasree Bhattacharyya
Course Description: Foregrounding the Memoir Essay within the larger matrix of the essay form, this workshop intensive course enables students to bridge the seeming gap prevalent in writing methodologies of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Departing from the position of the Memoir Essay as being a purely personal narrative, this course situates the genre in its myriad connections with lived experiences as well as formative social factors that contribute to the same. Personal memories as a function of time and the human mind are as important to this course as are the methods required in writing the same. The methodology is process oriented and by the end of the course the students are expected to come up with their individual styles of writing in this genre thereby shaping the field both in terms of content and form.