"Gender, Development, and Empowerment in India" students in Agra (December 2015). The course is part of the 2-credit unit C.U. in India and Southeast Asia course series.
Penn's South Asia Library Collection is recognized as one of the most significant libraries in the United States for research on South Asia.
We offer the largest number of South Asian languages available anywhere in the US, with 12 modern languages taught at multiple levels.
The Department offers instruction in Beginning Sitar and Tabla. Here, instructor Aqeel Bhatti demonstrates the Tabla for the students of the 2015 Startalk Hindi-Urdu Summer Program.
The graduate curriculum is enriched by the bi-weekly South Asia Colloquium, which features both world-renowned scholars and graduate student works-in-progress.
Students and Faculty from several of the University’s schools and regional studies departments discuss the reasons to study and engage with the histories, languages and cultures of the world. These studies support the deepening of students’ intellectual and personal development while simultaneously enhancing their cosmopolitanism. Students deem these as pre-requisites for success in their studies, careers and lives beyond Penn.
South Asia Studies is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the past and contemporary life of one-fifth of the world’s population.
The PhD and MA Graduate program gives students a broad understanding of the study of South Asia, deep knowledge of particular fields of interest, and training in South Asian languages as the basis for original research to prepare for academia or other professional careers.
The South Asia Studies Department is a close-knit community of interdisciplinary scholars that combines expertise in the languages, literatures, histories, and cultures of South Asia.
The study of South Asia at Penn has a tradition stretching back over a hundred years. The department has trained generations of leaders in the field and remains one of the most distinguished places to study South Asia in the United States. Today the South Asia Studies Department is a close-knit community of interdisciplinary scholars that combines expertise in the languages, literatures, histories, and cultures of South Asia. The Department prides itself in its ability to meet a variety of training and learning needs.
Tabaqat-i Nasiri, Juzjani, Ghur, and Afghanistan have been the key text, person, and places in my mind and heart for the past couple of years, with thinkning and writing on them in my dissertation in the contexts of development of Islamic society in South Asia, Eastern Iran, and Central Asia, roughly the period between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. I also have deep interests in Islamic intellectual history, world history, biographical history, geography, and translation.
South Asia Studies