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.
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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 171: Constructions of Gender, Sexuality, and the Family in South Asian Cultures
This course will provide you with a comprehensive historical overview of gender issues as they are represented in the great textual traditions of South Asia (these categories include Vedic materials, medical literature, treatises on law and sexual behavior, and texts that outline the great debates over questions of gender identity and salvation preserved for us in certain Jaina and Buddhist materials). To make these classical texts more relevant, readings in recent anthropological studies of religion, performance, and kinship will also be included to enable you to trace recurring themes, images, and symbols. You will thereby gain a sense of continuity of traditions and attitudes as well as generative innovations and contemporary variants and divergences within them.
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.