Details — 2019 India EL Information Session — May 1
| Date: 5/1 | Time: 12:30 pm |
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India EL 2019: Re-staging History as Media Event (EXL 594: 4 course credits) — led by professors Ishita Sinha Roy (Communication Studies) and Beth Watkins (Theater). Please attend any one of the Information sessions which will be held from 12:30 to 1:20 p.m. in Vukovich 203 (2nd floor) on May 1. If you cannot attend any of the information sessions, please email Professor Sinha Roy (iroy@allegheny.edu) for a separate meeting time. For the 2019 India EL information website, please click here.
From May 14 to June 03, 2019, take an unforgettable study abroad seminar, for 4 course credits, with Professors Sinha Roy and Watkins (COMRT) to study India’s experiments with globalization across its 5,000 year-old history. The course investigates how historical sites and narratives provide the ‘theatrical’ backdrop to contemporary media events. Explore how heritage arts and crafts are being revived by global markets, while tribal villages are organizing their own forms of cultural survival. Witness first hand how India is branding itself through its hospitality industry. We examine what unfolding events in India can help us realize about similar trends in the U.S.. In the process we also practice how to avoid interpreting other cultures through the lens of our own cultural biases and values. Through specific case studies: the “Nirbhaya rape” (and its theatrical re-enactment), the recent Padmaavat film controversy, ‘love-jihad’ court ruling, and nation-branding, the course helps participants develop an understanding of how re-presentations of the past in popular culture are dramatic re-enactments of old antagonisms on the national/global stage.
This seminar is open to students from all disciplines, from first-years to rising seniors, who are full-time students at Allegheny College, and meet the college requirements for participating. There are no academic pre-requirements. Students who graduate in May 2019 are not eligible for the EL.