How will these courses equip you?

Most of our journey into intellectual life begins with a desire to read some thinker or the other or with a curiosity about an intellectual tradition. There is nothing wrong with such aspirational readings or forays into a tradition. But reading a text by Marx, Wittgenstein or Foucault will not be intellectually fruitful until one is able to grasp their problems and we will not grasp their problems unless we have a sense of the problem we want to wrestle with. Similarly, we cannot simply hope to understand Allama and Akkamahadevi, or access Buddhist tradition by a casual reading of the texts. 

Although the courses/seminars offered here are not about any of these thinkers or the texts of Indian traditions, the research skills you will learn and the problematics you begin to understand will help you engage productively with the thinkers you aspire to read and the traditions you seek to access. The courses will require you to write reflective notes engaging with texts and problems discussed in the course and a longer essay in which you will attempt to develop an argument, using the resources provided in the course. There will be ample scope to present your views orally and engage critically and empathetically with the views of other participants. 

•