The Center for South Asia is delighted to announce this year’s winners for our Undergraduate Paper Awards! Each year, participating IRIS centers award up to $1000 for the best undergraduate student writing in respective world areas. This year, our two CSA Undergraduate Paper Award winners are: “Investigating the 2002 Ethnic Conflict in Ahmedabad” by Amita …
Samantha Helle, Conservation Biology PhD Student, was awarded a Boren Fellowship! Helle will use the Boren Fellowship to help fund research on the endangered tiger population across the world, but specifically in Nepal. She is no stranger to the jungle, as she has already visited Nepal several times. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Helle has …
CSA is now accepting applications for half-year FLAS awards for Fall 2021 or Spring 2022. Students studying any South Asia language at UW-Madison may apply: Hindi, Persian, Tibetan, or Urdu. We also encourage students who plan to enroll in our new Tamil course for 2021-2022. Interested students should review the FAQ for eligibility guidelines before applying. Please …
Her campus legacy? The first South Asian a cappella singing group As a freshman, Mahima Bhattar noticed there was no a cappella singing team among the South Asian performing arts student organizations. She soon rectified that, founding Wisconsin Waale (Vaa-lay) as a sophomore. The name means “Wisconsin people” in Hindi. “We wanted to make sure …
We are excited to announce the UW Madison College Year in India and Nepal Archive Project! The project will document the stories of alumni who participated on the College Year in India and Nepal programs. Participants are invited to share their written stories, along with any photos, videos, or audio recordings they may wish to …
Alan Lee, a dissertator in the Department of Anthropology who studies the archaeology of blacksmithing and iron working in Early Historic South Asia (approx. 500 BCE), was awarded a 2021 Exceptional Service Teaching Assistant Award. Read more.
Mitra Sharafi, Professor of Law and Center for South Asia faculty member, has been awarded a 2021 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Students commend Sharafi for her classroom innovation — in particular, her carefully cultivated skill at facilitating classroom discussion. Over the years she has come to focus more and more on the importance of visual …
UW–Madison’s COVID-19 multilingual site was highlighted by Voice of America’s Tibetan news as a great example of how linguistic diversity and inclusion are recognized and honored by the university. Safety tips, questions about testing, updates on vaccine availability — all are important information that people need to have access to and understand, no matter what language they speak. Besides English and Tibetan, UW–Madison’s COVID-19 Response website also offers translations in Spanish, Hmong, Chinese and Nepali, thanks to Cultural Linguistic Services.
On the final day of remote classes last fall, students in one of Assistant Professor Mou Banerjee’s history courses surprised her with a gesture that nearly brought her to tears. One by one, the students held up homemade posters in front of their computer cameras, revealing a series of heartfelt thank-you messages. “We could all …
Todd Michelson-Ambelang, Associate Lecturer and Bibliographer for Scandinavian Humanities, Classics, Jewish, and South Asian Studies, together with a team of interdisciplinary collaborators across UW–Madison, have been awarded $5 million by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a multi-year project to advance anti-racist practices and pedagogy in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM).