The caste system functions as a pervasive force within rural and urban spaces in India. This seminar will familiarise students with the various depictions of caste that play a pivotal role in contemporary Indian literature. This class will read three texts to grasp how caste functions within mundane and extraordinary circumstances. In Manu Joseph’s Serious Men, the students will be introduced to caste-based hierarchies and discrimination in modern urban contexts, while Perumal Murugan’s Pyre portrays the violent repression of inter-caste relationships in a rural village. Furthermore, students will critically engage with Dalit feminist traditions through a close reading of Bama’s seminal text, Karruku. By contextualizing these texts through the works of Ambedkar, Fanon, Spivak, and contemporary Indian feminist scholars such as Shailja Paik, Sharmila Rege, and Susie Tharu, this seminar seeks to foreground questions of caste-based exploitation, erasure of non-brahmin identities, subalternity, othering, and counter-resistance.