COML6207 - Reading Caste Critically

This seminar explores trends and shifts in interdisciplinary scholarship on the caste question. It serves as an introduction to foundational texts and debates in the history of critical caste studies in fields like sociology, history, Indology, and political philosophy. The course will also engage various methods, pedagogical tools, and conceptual frameworks that have emerged out of anti-oppressive writings and anti-caste transformative politics. The course draws on primary and secondary source material, from the 19th century to the present, to examine how questions of labor, gender and sexuality, colonialism, socio-religious reform, and Ambedkarite politics have shaped discourse around both caste and the politics of its annihilation.