Teaching
During my teaching career I have taught, either solely or as part of a larger teaching team, approximately three dozen different history modules, from first year to postgraduate courses. My teaching has ranged from South Asia to Britain and to broader imperial, colonial, transnational, and global history, and has covered a wide variety of subjects, including law and society, the history of violence, gender and sexuality, nations and nationalism, Indian cinema and postcolonial theory.
At the first-year level, I have taught modules on global history. These include “Empires in Global History”, “The Origins of the Modern World" (which interrogates the role of both the global south and north in constructing the modern world) and a team-taught first year module that I co-developed on “The Global History of the Present”, which explores the global histories that have shaped contemporary events. I teach such modules primarily through a wide range of primary materials such as journals, fiction, art, music, films, and advertisements, including materials from my own research.
At the second- and third-year level I have taught modules on a broad array of subjects, including “The History of Violence”, “Modern India: From the Arrival of the British to Bollywood and Beyond”, “Colonialism and Culture in South Asia”, “The Indian Freedom Struggle(s): Contending Ideologies of Freedom”, “Cinema and the Nation in Modern India” (a course on post-colonial India taught through popular Hindi films), “The Twentieth-Century World”, Britain, Britishness, and the British Empire”, “Empire and the Fashioning of Identities”, “Gender and Empire”, and “Obscenity, Blasphemy, Sedition: Censorship in Modern Culture”,. Drawing predominantly on different colonial contexts, particularly India and Australia, as well as Britain, such modules take a transnational or comparative approach to their subject matter and draw upon a variety of primary sources.
I have, in addition, taught a multiplicity of undergraduate modules on historiography (including on postcolonialism and history), approaches to history, and the uses of the past, and supervised numerous undergraduate theses. I have also contributed to MA programmes on: cultural history; twentieth-century history; health, culture and society; and global history, along with supervising MA theses. I have, furthermore, supervised PhD students on a range of subjects, both on South Asia and other contexts (including Britain, the U.S., and Libya; and on subjects ranging from infanticide in early modern Britain to the role of museums in propagating imperial and colonial violence), since as a supervisor I have been keen to broaden my supervisory remit to include students with an interest in the various theoretical concerns that shape my own research.
Indian History
I have a wide range of teaching interests. My main interest is colonial and post-colonial India. I teach modules that explore subjects ranging from the nature of the colonial 'encounter' between Britain and India to various struggles for freedom in colonial India (i.e., not just the independence struggle but struggles over religion, caste, gender, and the form that the new nation-state should take - or even struggles over whether nationalism was a boon or a curse for India, and the alternative visions that were posited to it), and how the nation was fashioned after independence in 1947 through Bollywood films (and how Bollywood films, in turn, helped to shape visions of the nation).
My modules engage with an array of methodologies, historiographical approaches and theories, including cultural history (print culture, obscenity, censorship, and Indian cinema), gender history, social history, politics and the state, the history of violence, states of exception, sovereign power, governmentality, and globalisation.
Global History
I am the convener for the History Department's first-year module "HIST 114: The Global History of the Present", which aims to address questions such as: How do we explain the global surge to power of right-wing political parties, as well as of new forms of popular resistance to such politics? What is fuelling the growth of isolationist politics, such as the Brexit vote, at a time when cooperation between nation-states is arguably more vital than ever before? What are the origins of protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, and what do they reveal about race and racism in the contemporary world? How do we account for the rise of global terrorism, and its appeal to generally young and marginalised men? What are the causes of climate change, and why does it seem to be disproportionately affecting the global south?
This module explores such contemporary issues and debates through considering the relationship between the past and the world in which we live. In light of the tremendous impact that modern imperialism and colonialism have had in shaping such a world the module focuses, in particular, on questions relating to race, empire and their legacies. By exploring some of the ways in which historical investigation enriches urgent contemporary debates the module aims to introduce students to a range of new ways of approaching the past, both in terms of subject matter and of new approaches to history, and to broaden students’ historical understanding of both western and non-western history (or what scholars refer to as the global north and south) and the myriad connections between them. In addition, therefore, to preparing students for the range of subject matter, geographical areas and approaches that they will be able to study in the second and third years of their degree programme this module also aims to make students better global citizens.
The History of Violence
Violence is a phenomenon that historians have long had a hard time grappling with – or perhaps a better way of putting it is that they have long avoided grappling with it. Historical works on subjects such as wars, colonialism, violent crime, terrorism, or even genocide are generally oddly silent on the nature of violence itself, its origins, and its impact on human minds, bodies and societies. Other subjects – such as violence against women, children or animals – have been largely relegated to historical subfields such as women’s history, or even to entirely different disciplines, such as women or gender studies.
The aim of my third year special subject module on 'The History of Violence' is, firstly, to interrogate violence as an historical force and to consider its causes, rationales, forms, impacts, and consequences. Beginning with an exploration of the transition, beginning in the eighteenth century, from violence to discipline as the chief mode of managing subjects, the module will go on to explore not only different forms of violence - such as war, conquest and colonization, genocide and massacre (including violence against animals), torture, terrorism, gendered violence, racial violence, and structural violence – but the impact of violence on individuals, groups, and societies.
The module also aims, secondly, to make us question why some aspects of the history of violence (or why some forms of violence, or violence against particular groups of people) attract more historical and popular attention than others – as in the case of the Holocaust as opposed to other genocides, such as the virtual extermination of indigenous peoples in contexts such as the Americas or Australia, or the deaths of as many as 60 million people in European colonies or semi-colonies in the late nineteenth century in state-fostered famines. This module will therefore be wide-ranging in geographical as well as thematic scope.
I also teach the history of violence, particularly torture and gendered violence, in other modules, including HIST 105/106 and HIST 520.
Modules for 2024-25
CAPSTONE PROJECT
Module code: HLAC705
Role: Teaching
CRITICAL MEDICAL HUMANITIES
Module code: HLAC701
Role: Teaching
CRITICAL MEDICAL HUMANITIES
Module code: HLAC711
Role: Teaching
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Module code: HIST507
Role: Teaching
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Module code: HIST527
Role: Teaching
HISTORY DISSERTATION
Module code: HIST396
Role: Teaching
HISTORY MATTERS
Module code: HIST105
Role: Teaching
HOW TO INVENT A NATION
Module code: HIST240
Role: Module Co-ordinator
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
Module code: HLAC704
Role: Teaching
RESEARCH PROJECT DEVELOPMENT BY DIRECTED STUDY
Module code: HLAC504
Role: Teaching
THE GLOBAL HISTORY OF THE PRESENT
Module code: HIST114
Role: Teaching
THE HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
Module code: HIST395
Role: Module Co-ordinator