By: Muziah Kargbo
Hello once again, this is the second part of the email interview I conducted with the Deol sisters. The first part was an interview with senior Preeya Deol, who went in depth about herself and her interests in South Asia. Similarly, her sisters, Anissa and Siarra Deol, also expressed an interest in South Asia and were gracious enough to provide their own input and experiences with the department. Their answers are as follows:
Anissa Deol
I’m a freshman at UNC with a double major in Journalism and PWAD.
I’ve only taken one ASIA class and it’s a first year seminar. The name of the class is India through the Lens of Master Filmmakers [ASIA 61] taught by Prof. Pamela Lothspeich. The class comes together after watching a film every week and talks about the basic plot summary and narrative and then after that, we dive deeper into issues that are addressed or hinted at during the films, such as social structure, lower class workers, communism, and women’s roles in society. Additionally, we do close readings from the textbook “Film Art,” where we read about the makings of some films and other research papers that have been written about Indian films, such as the economical side and the pros and cons of Bollywood itself.
I recommend this class because it allowed everyone to engage in the class and even if you hadn’t seen the movie that week, the professor still allowed you to talk and give input. We also learnt more historical based stuff before each film, so we would know what we would be watching.
If specifically talking about ASIA classes, I would definitely recommend this seminar to first year students to take. In the future I also want to take more ASIA classes because I’m very interested in the history of Asia, specifically countries like Japan, Korea and parts of southern India.
Siarra Deol
Siarra Deol, currently a junior majoring in Peace, War, and Defense and Hispanic Linguistics with a minor in Hindi-Urdu.
ASIA 262- Nation, Film, and Novel in Modern India
PWAD/ASIA 331- Cracking India: Partition and Its Legacy in South Asia
HNUR 101/HNUR 102-Elementary Hindi-Urdu
HNUR 203/HNUR 204- Intermediate Hindi-Urdu
HNUR 305/HNUR 306- Advanced Hindi-Urdu
I would definitely recommend PWAD 331 because it focuses on a topic that is not really discussed on a global scale. People do not truly understand what happened during the partition in India. For example, how families were split, people lost everything and women were destroyed. In this class, we watched films and read interesting novels and short stories that shed light on violence, women or/and religion during the Partition. For example, one of the films we watched was titled “Earth,” where it showed how religion and violence were incorporated.
Thank you both for your responses and have a good rest of the time at UNC!