Indian Culture and Society Free Course:help

[Edeltraud Harzer Clear]

Dear Professor Caixeiro,
We often have to do such courses in the US. I can share only
from my own experience. If you care this was my approach
in one of the instances I faced.

First I decided what the main topics had to be. Say
I chose ten topics and I had ten weeks for a term. (I am
simplifying this a bit.) Then I decided on the order of the
topics: history of South Asia, religions (obviously you can use
more than one week or time segment if you want to cover Hindu,
Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic traditions), literatures,
languages (including demography, geography), art and architecture
(which could include paleography), political ideas, society
and so forth.

I think of the students as of an intelligent and educated audience,
but unfamiliar with subjects on India. As an example for an inspiration
I would recommend the little book of lectures of A.L.Basham, called
THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF CLASSICAL HINDUISM, Oxford University
Press 1992.

Once I had a rough outline of my syllabus, I would ask myself what is it
I would like the students to know after they finished the course. I came
up with the Bhagavadgita (I am sure that there must be translations
into Portugese, besides the students probably also read other
European languages, so there certainly will be some translation
available in the library.)Or any of the epics, whether from the Sanskrit
or Tamil; or M.K. Gandhi's MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH.

If you have a chance to obtain films or videos on some of the
aspects that you will be teaching, that is always helpful, since
you'll be talking about a world beyond the students' imagination.

If you would like to pursue this further you can write to me
directly on my email address:
eclear at uts.cc.utexas.edu

Good luck.

Edeltraud Harzer Clear

Asian Studies
Univ. of Texas
Austin, Texas, USA

>Dear Collegues
>
>I was asked to teach a free Course on Indian Society and Culture to
>students from a big variety of courses: Philosophy, Linguistics,
>Anthropology,History, etc.The course is open to all the students of the
>University. Before I know wich are the backgroud of my students I was asked
>to write a previous programme. My problem is how to elaborate a programme
>for students of such a diverse background and without any knowledge   about
>indian cultura. The ignorance about India in Portugal is generalised. I
>have already teached a couse on Indian Cultura and Society to students of
>Antropology wich was easear for me as I am an antropologist though with a
>very strong componente of Indology, knowledge of Sanskrit , hindi, Indian
>liteature, philosophy and history.
>By chance any of you ever had to teach such a kind of course to students
>with various educational background? Could someone give me some sugestions
>on the content of the progrmma and how to start? I would like to give a
>general and integrated knowledge of Indian cultura, its past and relation
>to the present culture and society in order to motivate students to work on
>Indian matters.
>
>
>Thanks for help
>and patience with frivolous inquiry.
>
>Mariana Caixeiro
>e-mail:mcc.bissau at sol.gtelecom.gw
>