Foundation Courses

Foundation Courses:

The official Ashoka website.

  • Social and Political Formations (Monsoon 2017)

Professor: Vinay Sitapati

This course dealt with basic concepts of politics and had a theme of Religion and Politics. It covered religious political parties from all across the globe, including the Republicans in America, the Jana Sangh and BJP in India, the AKP in Turkey, and Likud in Israel. You can read my final paper on the Jana Sangh and BJP here.

  • Trends in History (Monsoon 2017)

Professor: Gwen Kelly

This course dealt with the different trends in history and how history has been perceived through the ages.

  • Indian Civilizations (Monsoon 2017)

Professor : Alexander Bruce Watson

This course dealt with the different philosophical traits of the Indian Civilizations, from the ancient Vedas right up to the Islamic Movements. It also included all alternate movements, like the Sufi movement and Bhakti movements. You can read my paper for the course here.

  • Great Books (Spring 2018)

Professor: Mahesh Rangarajan.

This course covered a set of important books about the environment. They were:

    1. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

    2. Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle

    3. Frances De Waal, Our Inner Ape

    4. Erik Eckholm, Losing Ground

    5. Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity

    6. John McNeill, Something New Under The Sun

    7. EO Wilson, Half Earth

    8. Mahmood Mamdani, The Myth of Population Control

You can read my papers for this course here.

  • Quantitative Reasoning and Mathematical Thinking (Spring 2018)

Professor: Krishna Maddaly

This course covered basic mathematical and quantitative concepts.

  • Environmental Studies (Monsoon 2020)

Professor: Alexander Philips

This course looked at the intersection of environment and literary, political, and cultural discourse surrounding the same. Some of the texts we read for the course were:

  1. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons”

  2. Lynn White, “The Historic Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”

  3. David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature

  4. Anita Desai, The Village by the Sea

  5. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

  6. Philippe Squarzoni, Climate Changed

  7. Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement

  8. Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts

  9. Vandana Shiva, Earth Democracy

  10. Ursula LeGuin, The Word for World is Forest