Introduction to Indian Civilizations · Middle Eastern, South Asian, And African Studies
Heavy textbook/primary source reading (I'd suggest doing the textbook reading since it will help for studying for the final; leave the primary sources as optional if your interested). Two 6-7 page essays with given topics tangentially related to the course. No midterm. Hard-ish hinal exam.
- attendance and participation; crossword in pairs; film reviews and a final creative assignment - professor encourages creative thinking and wants students to participate - just go to the discussion section if u have doubts
This class was a waste of my time last semester, apart from the fact that it goes towards a major requirement. The first 20-30 minutes were spent looking at Prof Pritchett's website, which she has compiled to have images of essentially all that is visual to do with India. It's a great website, a great source of information, but she'd rush through what we were seeing so fast that I'd have no idea what she was talking about. Furthermore, none of what she showed us or said in that part of the class was important for any part of the final exam (no midterm, which was nice). Then Prof Pritchett would lecture from her notes for the rest of class. This was the really painful bit, since she was trying to get across her clearly enormous knowledge as quickly as possible, making her lectures incredibly dense, confusing, and usually disorganized. Looking back over my notes while studying for exams, I often found that we'd be going in circles through time, going back to people we'd talked about at the beginning, and usually for no good reason. Often, Prof Pritchett would read to us long quotes from the textbook reading that we'd already done. This wouldn't be too bad except that Stein's History of India was incredibly dense and not particularly well-written. The copious assigned primary source readings were not important to your success in the class. I didn't do them for the second half of…
I love Prof Shukla. She's great and very accessible. Her lectures are engaging and the courseload is easy. There's no final written exam; you could choose between three creative assignments for your final project.
2 essays (6-7 pages each) 1 final, based off her website notes
The grading scheme is below. The grading itself was very generous and done by the TA. Movie Nights (10%): 4 times during the semester Weekly Section Meetings (20%): involves writing a discussion post ahead of the meeting Mid-term (25%): One 7-page essay graded generously One Crossword Puzzle (15%): if you showed up you got an A Final Project (30%): longer (10-12 page) essay OR writing an encyclopedia entry
The class is entirely confusing. The assigned readings are very long, dense, unrelated, and completely unnecessary. Pritchett divides her lectures into 2 halves: pretty picture time and Indian name time. The first half she shows maps of India, Indian Gods, heroes, and anything else she can get her hands on. She spews out names of Indian places and people, and you won't even be able to tell them apart. She doesn't understand that the class has no idea what's going on, and doesn't bother to write any of those names or places on the board. The second half she reads from her notes. Here she throws out so many names that it's impossible to follow. She has so many things to say and so little time that she tries to say everything and never actually teaches important things to the class. She never touches upon things that you might actually need to know for the final, or god forbid, the midterms. You must go to lecture, though, because you must turn a comment about the readings as a form of attendance. On the upside though, the readings are basically optional. She's like an Indian encyclopedia, she knows EVERYTHING about India, and I really mean everything. There are only 2 homework assignments: 2 essays, each 6-7 pages long. The midterm is taken directly from her website and she tells you everything you need to know. The TA's grade the essays, which is very unfortunate. One TA is a m…
Lectures are super boring but you can zone out and do other work. There's no participation grade for lectures, but she started taking attendance in the middle of the term. Weekly one-hour section meetings with a TA were super chill. Readings were assigned for each lecture but nobody read them lol. Four required movie nights throughout the term. tl;dr very boring but easy A for your global core
Final Exam, two 6-7 page papers (one each at midterm and the last week of class), attendance (turn in a 1 paragraph comment to record). Overall, if one keeps up fairly well over the semester, the workload is rather minimal
The previous reviewer obviously did not read the syllabus or exam prep instructions for the course. Firstly, I would like to correct the misstatements that were made: (1) The 125 items for memorization were not 'slide IDs'. They were terms (people, places, events, etc.) that she selected from the lectures and readings. She also gave us the terms fairly quickly after each class, so there isn't much excuse for not having time to find the appropriate information. The final had no visual component. (2) Attendance was not extra credit. Both Professor Pritchett and the TAs for the course were very amiable and willing to assist throughout the course. The lectures really supplemented the readings, highlighting the main points that students needed to know. This allowed for efficient skimming of the materials before class, as an in-depth understanding of the readings was not requisite. This style of learning helps fit to the professor's purpose in the course of giving student's conversation material for their Indian peers or for their future journeys to the subcontinent. Class time does lack a great cohesive structure, but that makes the class much more of a conversation about India rather than narrative. This really can be a positive or a negative, depending on the student. Overall, I would highly recommend this class.