This course foregrounds and examines the role of localities and regions in forging social, cultural and political identities and cartographies in South Asian history before and after colonial rule. The course examines the shifting relationship between localities, regions and empires from 1200-1800, and thereafter in the era of colonialism, nationalism and post colonial nation-states. The course is especially interested in how social groups from the margins shaped, or alternatively contested political and spatial articulations of region, locality and nations.