Jah?n-e-Urd? is a mandatory course which all students are required to complete at some point during their studies at Habib University. The course content also relates in a variety of thematic ways to other Habib Liberal Core courses such as ‘What is Modernity?’ (CORE 102), and ‘Pakistan and Modern South Asia’ (CORE 201), and helps develop insight into the university’s elective offerings in Urdu literature. Starting from contemporary Urdu prose and poetry to allow students immediate entry into the latest modern Urdu literary trends in the spaces they currently inhabit in their city and country, the course transitions into the early modern, pre-colonial era to allow students to sample the classical Urdu literary tradition which formed the literary and linguistic base for the emergence of later colonial and post-colonial developments. The course deliberately seeks not to present itself as a comprehensive or chronological survey of Urdu literature and its evolution, nor does it seek to pay homage to every ‘great’ or iconic Urdu writer that ever existed. Instead, it aims to build students’ reading, writing, and interpretive skills in Urdu, while developing their ability to comprehend and deeply engage with the role and functions of all major contemporary literary genres in Urdu [e.g. naz?m, g??azal, afs?nah, novel, mars?iyah] and gain some information about genres that were once popular and are now less so [mas?naw?, musaddas, mu??ammas, d?st?n].
