Welcome to the home of South Asia at UB!
The University at Buffalo offers courses and sponsors events connected with South Asia’s literature, history, languages, and other areas of scholarly interest. Since the establishment of the Asian Studies Program in 1994, faculty and students from a variety of academic disciplines have come together from across the university to promote research on Asia’s diverse societies and cultures. In 2009, the South Asia curriculum at UB received a major boost through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) program. The grant, entitled “Building the South Asia Program at the University at Buffalo,” has allowed the Asian Studies Program to offer new courses and develop faculty expertise. As one of the newest members of the American Institute of India Studies, the Asian Studies Program continues to expand the opportunities available to its students and faculty to carry out research projects about and in South Asia.
UB currently has partnerships with six academic institutions in India. UB and Amrita run a dual Master’s degree program in Management of Information Technology and Services at Amrita’s Bangalore campus (read about it here) and recently established the UB/Amrita Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute, based in Kerala. The institute will focus on identified needs and joint areas of research interest, including HIV/AIDS, trauma, extreme events and disaster management, community development, mental health, and alcohol abuse. Banaras Hindu University is the alma mater of UB’s president, Dr. Satish Tripathi, and the home institution of J-1 visiting scholars Manish Arora, who taught India design principles and Indian advertising in Spring 2010, and Dr. Gangatharan Alagappan, who taught Modern Indian History and Contemporary Asian Societies in Spring 2011. Students interested in pursuing research on South Asia with a faculty member are encouraged to visit the the UB CURCA listing of research opportunities and the links page of this website.