Welcome to LTWL 168: Death and Desire in South Asia, with Professor Richard S. Cohen.
The class meets on Monday and Wednesday, from 5:00 – 6:20, in the Literature Building, room 335.
Please consult the upper tabs for information that normally would appear on a printed syllabus: a course description, schedule of readings, information on class policies, grading, and assignments, and my office hours and email. I strongly recommend that you read through all these pages at the beginning of the quarter.
Also please note that you will need a password in order to access the Online Readings. I will give you this password in class.
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This class investigates the link between desire and death in classical and modern Hindu thought. In the most elementary formulation, this link is expressed as follows: Human beings are subject to death because they have desires; by controlling desire, human beings can escape death. This correlation between desire and death holds true for men and women alike, but it leads to disparate constructions of gender. Men are expected to practice self-control, while women are expected to submit themselves to the control of men.
To tease out the many cultural and intellectual dimensions of desire/death, this class treats the following topics: the relationship between the sexes; the construction of gender identities; practices associated with the reduction of sexual desire; practices associated with the arousal of sexual pleasure; practices associated with the harnessing of desire for the attainment of immortality (i.e., Tantra). We will investigate these issues by looking at stories of the Hindu gods (especially Rama, Krishna, and Shiva), as well as by looking at the lives of contemporary South Asian men and women, in literature and film.