New Course Offerings Enrich South Asian Studies Curriculum

Secrets and gender in modern literary prose, place and landscape in visual culture, struggles for equality, and gods and the theater in India are among an exciting array of new course offerings focused on South Asia during the 2012-2013 academic year.  In addition, through the Center for Language Study, the coming year will see Bengali offered for the first time at Yale via state-of-the-art videoconferencing with Cornell. 

In total, over forty courses will be offered which focus on South Asia and South Asian languages.  This includes twenty-five courses listed or cross-listed for the South Asian Studies Major.  These courses are offered across disciplines and programs, including Art History, Comparative Literature, Economics, Environmental Studies, Film, History, Political Science, Religious Studies, Theater Studies and of course South Asian Studies.  In addition to previously offered courses, visiting scholars and newly hired faculty bring to Yale a slew of new course offerings.

For the first time in 2012-2013, Yale will offer language instruction in Bengali through a video-conferencing link with Cornell.  Harnessing cutting-edge interactive technology resources maintained by Yale’s Center for Language Study, the joint initiative will allow Yale students to take full advantage of Cornell’s distinguished Bengali program through dedicated instruction specifically tailored to the interactive teleconferencing medium.  Introductory Bengali will be taught in the Fall and Spring Semesters by Sreemati Mukherjee, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell.  Yale students enrolled in the course will attend a regular class in a designated classroom, outfitted with videoconferencing technology, where they will be able to interact with the instructor and students enrolled in the class at Cornell.  Introductory Bengali will be one of eight language courses taught at Yale through video-conferencing technology as part of a collaborative initiative among Yale, Cornell and Columbia.

The arrival on campus of post-doctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and newly hired faculty promises an exciting set of new course offerings on South Asia in the coming academic year to complement the already rich curriculum taught by current faculty members.  Post-doctoral fellow Dipti Khera will offer two courses, SAST 373/ HSAR 463: Cross-Cultural Encounters in South Asian Art and History (Fall 2012) and SAST 273/HSAR 329: Visualizing Place, Landscape and Travel in South Asia (Spring 2013).  Shailaja Paik, Malathy Singh Visiting Lecturer in South Asian Studies, will offer SAST 325/HIST 318: Modern Indian History (Fall 2012) and SAST 324/HIST 319/FILM 313: India on Film (Spring 2013).  Ashok Acharya, the Rice Visiting Lecturer in Global Justice and South Asian Studies will offer SAST 246: Diversity and Struggles for Equality in South Asia (Fall 2012), and Jennifer Bussell, Visiting Assistant Professor of South Asian Politics, will teach SAST 343/GLBL 319: Political Economy of Natural Disasters.  In addition to these new offerings, Christophe Jaffrelot will return to Yale to co-teach SAST 341b/PLSC 442: Development in South Asia with Tariq Thachil.  Newly hired faculty further expands course offerings in Comparative Literature and Religious Studies.  Benjamin Conisbee Baer joins the Department of Comparative Literature, through which he will teach SAST 374/LITR274: Modern Literature in South Asia (Fall 2012) and SAST 461/LITR 156: Indian Texts and Contexts (Spring 2013).  Vasudha Dalmia, whose appointment as Yale’s first professor of modern Hinduism begins in January 2013, will teach RLST 117/THST117: Gods and the Theater in India and RLST 320: Gandhi and Hinduism.

A succinct listing of language and non-language course offerings related to South Asia may be accessed here, or by consulting the Yale College Programs of Study https://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/ or the Online Course Information System http://students.yale.edu/oci/search.jsp.