India’s Identities is a course that travels to Kerala and Tamil Nadu, two states in Southern India. This course emphasizes the diversity of contemporary Indian Identities, devoting particular attention to religion, caste and gender. Once the course has begun we’re going to be visiting religious spaces associated with Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions. We’ll be coming into contact with Indians from all different caste backgrounds, education levels and occupations.We’ll be looking at the cultural expectations attached to gender, seeing to what degree caste matters in modern India, and analyzing the complex interactions of tradition and modernity in the world’s largest democracy.
During the last few months we, the Elon students, have been participating in a one-credit course to provide us with the background necessary to fully experience the beautiful and bustling country we’ll be visiting. We’ve done a series of readings about religion, gender and caste. Not only have they been informative, we’re also learning information that will appear at least in part in our site and issue papers that will act as our textbook on the course. The Maryville students, while they don’t have a set pre-departure course, have been learning a great deal about the issues as well and will be writing the other half of our course readings that will help guide our class. We’ll be posting about our adventures as we travel, so look forward to relatively frequent posts!
Our itinerary can be accessed by clicking on the ITINERARY tab above; this page also includes a clock that shows the current time in India. You can see where we will be traveling on our MAP page.
Below are our fantastic professors. Read more about them on our “meet the students” page.
(Amy Allocco and Brian Pennington)
India's Identities 