Introduction

Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language which serves as the primary vehicle of communication for over one hundred million people in Pakistan , India , and sizable migrant communities. Grammatically identical to Hindi though bearing a slightly heavier loan vocabulary from Persian, Arabic, and Turkic, Urdu is written in the South Asian evolution of the Perso-Arabic script known as nasta'liq , modified and expanded to incorporate a distinctively South Asian phonology . While Urdu is one of the world's leading languages of Muslim erudition, many of its leading protagonists have been Hindu and Sikh authors taking full advantage of Urdu's rich expressive medium.

Urdu has developed a preeminent position in South Asia as a language of literary genius, as well as a major medium of communication in the daily lives of people. It is an official language of Pakistan , where it is a link language and probably the most widely understood language across all regions. It is also one of the national languages of India . Urdu today is utilized in virtually all forms of contemporary media, from satellite news, internet magazines, and blogs; to the Indian film industry and Pakistani pop; to penny publications and pulp fiction; to the madrasa curriculum. The intricate poetic culture of Urdu is world class by any standard, with poets such as Mirza Ghalib, 'Allama Iqbal, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz being among the most famous, while prose authors such as Premchand, Sa'adat Hasan Manto, and Ismat Chughtai are also widely acclaimed. The courses offered at Penn aim to familiarize students with a sample of as many of Urdu's past and contemporary usages as possible.

Courses:

Beginning (1 st and 2 nd semesters)

Intermediate (1 st and 2 nd semesters)

Advanced: Urdu Media in the Age of Globalization

Advanced: Religion in the Urdu Public Sphere

Advanced: Partition Literature and Media

Advanced: Urdu Satire:- Humor, the Absurd, and the Carnivalesque

Course Descriptions

Contact the instructor for the most current course times and rooms.

Beginning Urdu: SAST-401.
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Rubab Qureshi
Two-credit, two-semester course

Course description: This course is a systematic introduction to Urdu language and culture for beginners. The course aims at developing listening comprehension and a real life interactive speaking ability in a variety of everyday topics. The Urdu script is introduced from the very beginning. The target language is presented in its total socio-cultural context for achieving a meaningful and operational control of the language. Students acquire basic rules for structural and socio-cultural appropriateness. Students are expected to learn a vocabulary of about 1200 words during two semesters. The final evaluation will be based on class participation, performance in quizzes and tests, and completed assignments.

Intermediate Urdu: SAST-421
Prerequisites: Beginning Urdu or its equivalent proficiency
Instructor: Rubab Qureshi
Two-credit, two-semester course

Course description: In Intermediate Urdu, the curriculum focuses on the development of reading, listening and speaking skills. Authentic texts in the three skills include conversations, short stories, and presentations of current events, articles, films and plays. There is a continuous emphasis on vocabulary development and students are expected to add about five hundred new words to their active vocabulary per semester. The rules of grammar for structural accuracy and socio-cultural propriety are parts of the course objectives. Class activities include students' short presentations, role-plays, and conversations. The final evaluation rests on class participation, performance in quizzes and tests, and completed assignments.

Advanced Urdu: SAST-441
Prerequisites: Intermediate Urdu or its equivalent proficiency
Instructor: Rubab Qureshi
One-credit, one-semester course; content of the course varies by semester. For more information contact the instructor.

Course description: Advanced courses are designed to explore one particular facet of Urdu's range in depth, often through multi-media exposure and use of authentic materials. Recent courses:

Urdu Media in the Age of Globalization . We will be working with a variety of new Urdu media such as blogs, satellite transmissions, and radio and TV talk shows, as well as contemporary news outlets from South Asia, the UK , and the US . We will also cover contemporary performing arts: dramas, music, etc. Besides the three-fold skills set of reading, writing, and listening, students will develop skills in Urdu computing using Unicode fonts, as well as proprietary software. Finally, there will be a selection of critical readings in English designed to contextualize these media in academic debates. (Fall 2006)

Religion in the Urdu Public Sphere. The goals of this course will be to familiarize students with specific vocabulary and interpretive tools to access discourses surrounding religion in Urdu, especially after the development of mass printing. We will be working with religious materials, and materials about religion. This will include devotional poetry in writing and musical performance, as well as contemporary scholarly writing in Islamic genres such as tafsir, fiqh, sirat, hagiography of South Asian pirs , public address, etc., as well as sources from other traditions. We will also explore texts dealing with subaltern religious expression. Finally, we will look at prominent public discourses about religion, from sources as diverse as short story writing, liberal historiography, and call-in talk shows, which have become major forums for debate recently. (Spring 2007)

Partition Literature and Media The events at Partition represent a breakdown of ordinary social conventions, one in which many social conflicts and contradictions-involving gender, nation, religion, honor, community, caste/class, and ethnicity, among others-were thrown into sharp relief. Many social ideologies were tranformed, creating a challenging legacy for the societies of the two new states. This course is intended to use both the starkness and the confusion of Partition as a focal point to explore a few of the most interesting and powerful pieces of Urdu prose work produced in the 20th century. These include debates over how people have portrayed nations and nationalism; and debates about how history must be written to represent the experiences and actions of individuals left out of colonial, "national," or state-centered histories-especially women, and members of dominated classes, castes, or minorities. (Fall 2007)

Urdu Satire: Humor, the Absurd, and the Carnivalesque (Spring 2008) description forthcoming.

Other Advanced and/or Readings courses which have been offered at Penn recently have focused in on Ghazal, Marsiya, Masnavi, and the Novel.

Resources

Click here for links and course materials