BA Liberal Studies Curriculum
Structure and Curriculum
Our three-year and four-year undergraduate curriculum equips students with intensive disciplinary training while preparing them to think and communicate effectively with diverse audiences. The table below offers an overview of our credit structure.
| Course | Minimum Credit Requirement | |
| 3-year UG | 4-year UG | |
| Major | 60 credits | 80 credits |
| Minor | 24 | 32 |
| Interdisciplinary Foundation Courses | 15-17 | 17 |
| Collegiate Communication | 8 | 8 |
| Vocational and Soft Skill Training | 9 | 9 |
| Summer Internship | 2-4 | 2-4 |
| Research/Dissertation | – | 12 |
| Total Credits | 120 credits | 160 credits |
Students can also choose to do a double major degree. To be awarded a double major, a student must secure at least 40% credits from the second major discipline for the 3-year/4-year UG degree.
Students can also choose to do a double major degree. A student has to secure a minimum of 40% credits from the second major discipline for the 3-year/4-year UG degree to be awarded a double major.
CURRICULUM
Students will complete the required foundational courses during their first three semesters while exploring their intellectual interests through electives. The second and third years will be devoted to major and minor coursework, while the fourth and final years will focus on individual research, internships, and vocational training.
OUR FOUNDATION COURSES AT A GLANCE
The foundation courses aim to give students a firm beginning in the liberal arts. They cover a broad range of topics, from understanding the self to knowing how the world around them was shaped. The capabilities students learn from these foundation courses will be further used and developed in their major and minor courses.
The FCs provide students with a firm beginning in the liberal arts. We start adult life by looking at the world we inherit from the society around us, a framework for understanding the world that can be so familiar to us that it’s hard to notice its existence. The FCs will show students how to uncover their assumptions about the world and challenge them. Students will also add to their understanding of the world and their understanding of themselves. The courses span from the nature of the self to how India became a modern nation-state. Along the way, students will pick up the abilities to thrive in their major and minor courses and far beyond, thus viewing learning as a lifelong venture.
- Writing Seminar I and II
- Reason and Logic
- South Asia in Global History
- Self and Identity
- Research Methods: Quantitative and Qualitative
- India and its Environs
- Paradigms in Science
- Introduction to Majors (offered in 1st and 2nd Semester)
- Curriculum Seminar
During your fourth semester, you will work closely with your faculty mentor to choose a major or a double major from the following disciplines:
- Economics
- History
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Sociology
Foundation Courses at SoLS
This is a survey course that aims to introduce students to the various historical processes that shaped the society, culture, economy and political landscapes of South Asia over two millennia, and especially over the last 1000 years. From ancient times, South Asia had been an important space in a wider world, forming Asia’s vast land bridge between the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean. In fact we realise that after 1500 it becomes even more impractical to separate social change in South Asia from histories that travel the globe. The boundaries that now appear to define the South Asian region and its constituent nation states came into being only recently.Therefore in studying social change in South Asia, including its economic, political, and cultural dimensions, the course will pay attention to the mobility of people, commodities and ideas that have played an important role in shaping the histories of this region.
‘This sentence is false’. Is that true or false? In this course, students will come up with their own solutions to these by developing their own, precise languages. Further, students will learn to evaluate logics, and see how the history and culture of different parts of the world have shaped thought about logic and reason.
This is a two-semester sequence that aims to help students trust their writing process and with time and practice, develop their unique authorial voice. Critical reading, thinking, writing and speaking are the primary skills that define a Liberal Studies student. The courses are premised on intensive reading, open discussion, active listening, and a commitment to the writing and rewriting process. We will learn that good writing is ultimately an individual and collective effort that stems from the ability to read closely, give and receive feedback with care, and revise drafts. We will pay attention to the multiple meanings and implications of words, how sources are furnished as evidence, styles of narration and the construction of compelling arguments.
The course elaborates the relationship between self and identity by posing some broad questions: What constitutes our private, psychic world? How is the psychic world related to the socio-political world in which we live with others? Why do we identify with certain groups and not with others? What do desire, fantasy, love and hate have to do with how we experience the self and the world? We will also try to understand what makes us both unique and normative as individuals and how we navigate class, caste, gender and sexual identities, as well as our personal prejudices and biases in our everyday lives. Through experiential exercises we will reflect on some fundamental questions such as, “Who am I?”; “What makes me, me?”; “How do I relate to myself/others/events?”. We will also analyse selected films and fictional texts to pay attention to how they portray entanglements between psychic, social and historical worlds.
India and its Environ course aims to offer students a broad understanding of how environment shapes our society and how societal development interacts with the environment. We will begin with exploring ecological attributes of India. This exploration will lead us to engage with different concepts of nature across time. Then, we will delve into how colonial period has shaped environment to attain colonizers’ needs. This will help students to understand the way political-economic decisions always have bearings on the environment. Then we will move to the Post-independence of India to discover how the vision of nation building has been planned around India’s natural resources. Students will be encouraged to critically evaluate these strategic plans by extending ethical consideration towards the environment. The course will offer an awareness that the present and future environmental challenges have their roots in the decisions that as a society we have taken in the past.
In the modern world, anyone who wants to change society for the better must be able to read and understand what constitutes data. This course introduces students to qualitative methods of conducting research and to statistics and data science.
In this course, students will learn to apply their skills in the liberal arts to understanding science. Delving into science textbooks and historical scientific research papers, they will come to their own conclusions to questions such as: How does the scientific method work? Does science deserve its social prestige? What is the relationship between beauty and truth? How do we interpret the correct interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? Are scientific theories true, or merely useful instruments? Why did Copernicus’s idea develop as it did? By the end of the course, students should be able and comfortable in working towards critically evaluating scientific claims.