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Premodern History of South and Southeast Asia

Vak
2024-2025

Admission requirements

None.

Description

This course provides a long-term History of South and Southeast Asia from 3500 BCE to 1850 CE. After a historiographical (sources & concepts) and geopolitical (la longue durée) introduction the lectures engage (in chronological sequence) with themes that connect the various regions of South and Southeast Asia. We will compare the most prominent regional developments of settlement, state-formation and cultural developments and connect them through various trans-regional processes of migration, trade and conquest.

The course will also reflect on the unity and diversity of the SSEA region as a whole by discussing three regional varieties of globalization: Indianization, Islamization and Colonization

Course objectives

Students will gain basic knowledge of the main historiographical concept and discussions and of the developments of the pre-modern history of South and Southeast Asian history. They will be able to understand what long-term conditions and historical processes unified and divided the SSEA macro-region. Students will gain a sense that history itself is not somewhere out there but part of an ongoing process.

Timetable

The timetables are available through My Timetable.

Mode of instruction

  • Lecture

Attendance is not obligatory for lectures. The conveners do not need to be informed in case of missed classes. Information and knowledge provided in the lectures greatly contribute to the subsequent courses of the programme and their contents will be part of the examination. In order to pass the course, students are strongly advised to attend all sessions.

Assessment method

Assessment

For the entire course, there will be just one written examination.

Resit

There is one opportunity for a re-sit of the entire course (100%).

Inspection and feedback

How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.

The course can be followed as an elective at the level of 300 in which students don’t do the written exam but write a comparative essay of 2000 words (incl. bibliography and footnotes) about the premodern history of SSEA and that of either Europe or East Asia. This assignment will be explained in a separate class during the course and the deadline for submitting is the date of the written exam (deadline for resit is the same as the resit for the written exam). The assignment is at the 300 level and requires “research” and “witing communication“ as additional the skills.

Reading list

  • Herman Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India (London & New York: Routledge 2016 – sixth edition)

  • Anthony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads (Oxford: Blackwell, 2015)

Registration

Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website

Registration À la carte education, Contract teaching and Exchange

Information for those interested in taking this course in context of À la carte education (without taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.

Information for those interested in taking this course in context of Contract teaching (with taking examinations), eg. about costs, registration and conditions.
For the registration of exchange students contact Humanities International Office.

Contact

  • For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.

  • For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office Herta Mohr

Remarks

None.