Azim Premji University

Admissions 2023

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BA in History

Engaging with India’s myriad pasts to understand ourselves in relationship with the world. 

Introduction

The study of history teaches us that the past is always contested. In India, we encounter these myriad contested pasts in our everyday lives.

The History programme aims to inculcate historical consciousness amongst its students. It prepares students to examine the past in a clear, comprehensive, and critical manner. Our courses will familiarize students with different periods and themes within Indian history. We train students to examine historical arguments and claims independently to assess their validity. Students are exposed to a range of primary sources, such as inscriptions, texts, architecture, and the archives. We also teach students to communicate History in diverse contexts, across different platforms, and to speak to History from their own experiences.

Download Brochure

Visit our History microsite for further details of the programme, links to digital archives and other interesting online sources of history.

Find fees, financial aid, and scholarship details, here.

For the application process and timelines, please find the details, here.

Understand more about our selection process, here.

Find more details about the eligibility criteria for Undergraduate programmes, here.

WE BRING YOU INTERDISCIPLINARY OPENNESS

Our degree encourages you to explore and follow your interests. We design our courses to ensure that you can specialise in a subject of your choice while learning a variety of subjects across disciplines.

A COMMON CURRICULUM FOR ALL STUDENTS

You will meet all your classmates at the beginning of your degree to build all the tools you need for your three years of study. This includes foundational courses, an understanding of India, interdisciplinary studies, and a workshop in creative expressions.

WE OFFER ACADEMIC ASSISTANCE

We provide active academic assistance and ensure that you are able to meet the requirements of the academic programme to fulfil your aspirations.

WE ENSURE FINANCIAL SUPPORT 

We ensure that no student has to drop out of university because of financial trouble or social disadvantage. We provide financial assistance to deserving students.

Image Credit: Dr Sharmadip Basu

Living on campus

We believe that learning happens both inside and outside the classroom. In living together, you can meet and encounter diverse people from different social and cultural backgrounds and experiences. Our campus has a range of activities from discussion groups to sports and clubs for our students and faculty to interact with each other and build meaningful relationships over their years of study.

Know more about what it is like at our Campus.

Know more about the Bengaluru campus, here.

Know more about Azim Premji University at Bhopal, here.

Course structure

In our classrooms, we train you to grow familiar with different kinds of archives and primary sources that make up the practice of history. We will explore different theoretical and empirical fields of enquiry within the discipline. We believe that it is important to understand the past as an active part of material and discursive lives.

We bring in opportunities for practicing history with some archaeology, oral history, heritage and folklore. Our courses have an interdisciplinary openness, bringing in sociology, economics, environmental science, political science, cultural studies and literature into our examination of history. You will learn about different historical periods across specific topics that examine society, culture, politics, religion and ecology. We will study different times and spaces and take a close look at the lives of marginalised communities. These courses will train you to think historically, working with facts to analyse and critically evaluate the past in relation to the present.

We will train you to read, write and think critically, and to examine ideas of ethical responsibility and action. Reading and writing matter not only for your study of history but for future careers, and written and oral communication across a range of platforms are an important part of this programme.

Please visit this page to learn more about our four-year undergraduate programmes.

You will meet all your classmates at the beginning of the year for these set of courses. These courses help you understand the broader contexts of each discipline and the porous borders between them. We help you build all the tools you will need for your years of study in the undergraduate programme. 

We introduce you to different modes of thought and themes, including writing and communication skills, strong critical abilities, a facility for language, and the ability to connect ideas across fields of study and inquiry.

We encourage you to make links between your chosen field of study and the world in which we live.

  • Foundations

    These courses will help you develop a toolkit to prepare for your undergraduate study. You will develop your critical reading and writing skills and communication abilities.

    The key areas you will work on are language capacities, reading, writing and speaking. We will work with different forms of writing, ranging from autobiographical writing to mappings and note-taking. These classes will include classroom discussions, presentations, collaborative works, group work and practicums.

  • Creative Expressions

    In this set of courses, you will explore embodied ways of learning through a sustained practice of an art form or a sport. You could choose from a variety of interests including, but not limited to woodwork, martial arts, music, theatre, dance, yoga and visual art.

  • Understanding India

    In these courses, we will explore the nature and diversity of the Indian experience. We study the vast diversity of historical, cultural and linguistic aspects that define Indianness.

    You will learn to understand how the subcontinent has changed in its environment, across geography, geology and territory. We will think together about debates on the people who live here, their culture, and the larger questions around population and inequality. Most importantly, we examine the many structures that organise Indian society.

Core courses develop domain knowledge, hone methodological skills, and teach key historiographical debates, with a focus on reading, writing, and critical thinking.

An important aspect of our course is that we believe it is important not only to understand the role of history in society but to preserve and conserve historical knowledge. The role of tradition and heritage whether in museums of urban planning, or art and architecture in archives and folklore, or oral histories, are a very important part of this programme. 

These elective courses are for you to pursue a particular interest in a set of themes or methods to deepen your knowledge of history as a discipline. We have thematically oriented courses across historical periods. 

You can choose two elective courses each semester that are on offer. You are required to take a mix of writing courses, or a field and practice based course. 

You can choose one minor as your area of study. All the courses will be about current Indian and global scenarios, be it social, political, cultural or ecological condition

  • Data, Democracy and Development

    The set of courses will orient you to think about data as an essential part of building empathy and democratic values. We ensure you have the requisite tools for data collection, analysis, presentation, and dissemination so that you can construct the right platforms and build technologies that embody democratic principles. These courses will foster a culture of investigation with data, keeping in mind questions of ethics and politics.

  • Development

    Development aims to create social conditions for individual and social well being. How are development issues framed and what issues are involved in bringing about social change? What are the theoretical, conceptual and practical contestations around the political project that is development? This set of courses explores the many interdisciplinary fields like the humanities, social sciences, science and technology that inform development challenges.

  • Sports and Fitness

    We believe that a regimen of physical activity can have a powerful effect on an individual's physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Sport can be used as an effective tool to help an individual learn crucial life skills and also to build an empathetic, equitable community. In these set of courses, we want you to have a powerful experience of sport not just as a physical activity but as a way to build yourself and your social surroundings. We also want to teach you ways in which you can create these transformational experiences for others.

  • Climate Studies

    These courses will help you develop the knowledge necessary to understand the earth’s climate systems. You will examine and analyse the role of human activity on the earth’s climate and its effects on the present and future climate scenarios, and identify the effects of climate change on biodiversity through the lens of historical changes in the Holocene. We hope you will apply systems thinking to examine the origins of the climate crisis and proposed solutions and grow comfortable with civic engagement and transfer of knowledge and resources for climate solutions at different levels.

  • Media and Democracy

    Over the course of time, human communication has been mediated by market-driven technology and gadgets. In turn, these forms of communications shape the public sphere in which ideas of what we are circulate. Modernity has had a close relationship with communication technologies.

    This is a set of courses to help you understand what role media and technologies play in shaping democracy, democratic policies and publics in India. We live in a world of unprecedented access to information. Media and communication have the capacity to deepen democracy but also the ability to foster anti-democratic politics.

  • Education

    In this set of courses, you will learn the nature and content of education, and its context and structure, especially in India. We begin by a broad overview of what a democratic conception of education entails, and what the values and ethics that define educational structures are. We examine aspects of education that encourage learning and the role of a teacher in the learning process. will explore and evaluate classroom practices and environments and learn how educational processes determine what is worth teaching.

Total 24 credits

Faculty

All Programme faculty →

  • Language

    English

  • School

    School of Arts & Sciences