During the 2025/2026 term two semester, HIST 390A: Early Modern Punjabi Language Texts, taught by Dr. Anne Murphy, is being conducted online in tandem with an undergraduate class taught by Dr. Ali Usman Qasmi at Lahore University for Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. Students read the same core text in both scripts that Punjabi is written in: Gurmukhi (commonly used in the Indian Punjab) and Shahmukhi (commonly used in Pakistan). Though it is not a requirement for the class, students are also invited to learn a script that is unfamiliar to them, with help from instructors!
About the Course
HIST 390A explores the early modern Punjabi-language text, Hīr by Waris Shah (ca. 1767). In this class, students read selections of Waris Shah’s text in Punjabi, and explore secondary literature in English on the historical contexts for the text, as well as more broadly on Sufi (Islamic mystical) narrative traditions in the early modern vernacular languages of north India/Pakistan, and their historical contexts. Waris Shah’s Hīr is available in both Gurmukhi (the script utilized for Punjabi in India) and Shahmukhi (the Perso-Arabic script used for Urdu and Persian, which is utilized to write Punjabi in Pakistan).
Find out more here.