Teaching the Past in Pakistan

This talk draws upon Taymiya Zaman's experiences teaching Mughal history at the undergraduate level in Lahore and her recent work with "The History Project," to design textbooks for children between the ages of 12 and 16 that she hopes to introduce in schools in India and Pakistan. By reading both Pakistani and Indian accounts of the events, people, and movements that shaped the struggle for independence, students will learn how to think critically about the past. This talk addresses the challenges of introducing the complexity of historical method into school textbooks and the potential of history to address deeply ingrained notions of self and other in South Asia.

Taymiya R. Zaman received her Ph.D. in History (2007) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She joined the University of San Francisco in 2007 where she teaches classes on the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires and the making of modern South Asia and the Middle East. Her current research interests include historical memory in South Asia, the interconnections between life writing and history, and the transition from subjects to citizens in British India. She also writes narrative non-fiction and fiction and is the chief historian for "The History Project," which is an India-Pakistan collaborative venture that introduces students on both sides of the border to contrasting narratives about Partition featured in state-sponsored history textbooks.