The Department of South Asian Studies offers courses in Hindi-Urdu, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Tibetan (Classical) (Colloquial) as well as other South Asian languages. Offerings rang in level from introductory language courses to graduate seminars.
South Asian Studies faculty also teach courses in other departments and programs at Harvard, including Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Freshman Seminars, General Education, History, History of Art and Architecture, Music, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Religion.
Browse All Courses
South Asian Studies course listings can be found in the Harvard Course Catalog. To aid in your course search, Q guides course evaluation data (HarvardKey required) are helpful in supplying student feedback about courses.
Featured Course: SAS 104: The Body in Indian Medicine and Myth
What does it mean to inhabit a body in India? This is the primary question that we will attempt to answer during the course of the semester in this seminar. The readings and discussion over the course of the term will parallel the development of the human being from conception, infancy and childhood, adulthood and sexuality, and will end with aging and death. We will take an interdisciplinary approach, and will examine textual materials from an extensive range of sources and time periods. Sources will include selections in translation from medical literature from India’s Āyurvedic traditions as well as readings from religious narratives that deal directly with issues of embodiment and provide powerful metaphors for it. We will also be drawing largely on sociological and anthropological studies of the different forms that embodiment takes, from metaphysical issues on what it means to be “alive” or “dead” and the human body’s connection to land and landscape to careful explorations of
the body’s outer surfaces in terms of ritual, ascetic, and strictly sartorial concerns with adornment and fashion. We will also explore the fascinating interfaces between bodybuilding and nation building in India.
Language Tutorials
Nepali, Thai, Colloquial Tibetan, and other South Asian languages (Bahasa Indonesia, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Tamil, Tibetan (Classical), Hindi-Urdu, Sindhi, Punjabi, Nepali, Burmese, and Tibetan (Colloquial)) may also be offered through our language tutorial program. With an emphasis on written expression, reading comprehension, and oral fluency, languages in the tutorial program are offered by petition when there is demonstrated curricular or academic need on the part of an undergraduate or GSAS graduate student, and when suitable instruction can be arranged. These tutorials need to be approved by the Office of Undergraduate Education. Students must submit a petition in advance of the desired term of study. In the petition, students must demonstrate a strong academic need to take the language and explain how the language study would fit into their overall academic plan. Career and heritage interest in studying the language is not sufficient for approval.