Harvard offers a diverse range of courses on South Asia, spanning language, history, politics, economics, religion, and beyond. Explore a selection of Fall 2025 offerings below. For the latest updates, please consult the Course Catalog. We’ll continue to expand this list as new courses are announced.
Courses Fall 2025
A History of Love: Modern South and Southeast Asia
HIST 137 Sudarshana Chanda
Description: How do we study a history of love? And how does love manifest and endure across boundaries? In this seminar we will ask how Asians, mainly from South and Southeast Asia, pursued boundary-crossing love in Asia and in the diaspora in the 19th and 20th centuries. Moving thematically after an introductory week, we will study how love manifests across various boundaries, such as ethnicity, race, religion, caste, gender/sex. By looking at a range of primary sources – love letters, matrimonial advertisements, podcasts, short stories, and films – we will think critically through ideas of love and how they have been articulated.
Additional Info: Fulfills “Beyond North America” History requirement; enrollment limited to 15 students.
Modern South Asian and Indian Ocean History and Historiography
HIST 2693 Sugata Bose
Description: This seminar is designed as a graduate-level examination of trends and debates in historical research and writing on modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Topics include different modes of representing the past, culture and power in colonial and nationalist history and historiography, methods and schools of history, the inter-regional and global connections of the subcontinent, and varieties of post-colonial historical writing.
Additional Info: Consent of instructor required; geared toward graduate students.
Introduction To The Hindu Calendar As A Lived Experience
SAS 108 Radha Blinderman
Description: This course introduces Hinduism as a lived experience by exploring the Hindu calendar (Pañcāṅga or Pañjikā). Students trace religious life through festivals, fasts, and rituals, observing how the same events are celebrated differently across regions and theological traditions. Emphasis is placed on religious pluralism, mythology, caste, and cross-religious celebrations.
Additional Info: Must be taken for a letter grade; no auditors allowed.
Buddhism, In Theory and Practice
HDS 3830 Janet Gyatso
Description: This class offers an overview of key themes in Buddhist thought and practice across South, Central, and East Asia, such as meditation, emotion, ethics, and creativity. Texts include both classical and modern literature, including engagements with Transcendentalism and socially engaged Buddhism.
Additional Info: Jointly offered with RELIGION 1714 in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.
The Commercial Revolution in the Islamic Middle Ages
HIST 1904 Lorenzo Bondioli
Description: This course examines the Medieval Islamic Commercial Revolution and the rise of a global trade network spanning Afro-Eurasia. Students engage with merchant-produced primary sources to understand technologies, tastes, and institutional developments that prefigured globalization.
Additional Info: Fulfills either “Pre-1750” or “Beyond North America” History requirement.
Psychology of Yoga
COLOGSAS 1626 Swayam Bagaria
This course introduces students to the philosophical and psychological study of yoga. While primarily considered in the West as a somatic practice, yoga has historically and even contemporarily been an umbrella term for a host of cognitive, conative, and affective skills and orientations that one can train oneself in towards practical and non-practical ends. This course brings together selected readings from the philosophical and historical corpus of yoga with scholarship in cognitive sciences, psychology, neuroscience, and psychiatry to invite students to think about yoga as a practice of living rather than a cluster of somatic techniques.
Art of Indian Esoteric Buddhism
HAA 282K Jinah Kim
Description: A graduate seminar exploring Indian Esoteric Buddhist art and ritual (ca. 800–1200 CE), focusing on visualization practices, tantric iconography, and women in tantric traditions. Includes comparative case studies and critical engagement with scholarly debates.
Additional Info: Primarily for graduate students; some seats reserved.
Asia and Asians at Harvard
HIST 1966 Sugata Bose
Description: This course investigates Harvard’s historical relationship with Asia, including the experiences of Asian faculty and students, the university’s policy influence, and the institutionalization of Asian Studies. Students will design their own research projects.
Additional Info: Meets “Beyond North America” History requirement.
Advanced Colloquial Tibetan
TIBET 106AR Leonard van der Kuijp
Description: A language course focused on advanced spoken Tibetan. Not open to auditors. Designed for students with prior Tibetan coursework or equivalent proficiency.
Additional Info: First meeting time to be posted on the South Asian Studies website: sas.fas.harvard.edu
Advanced Philosophical Sanskrit
SANSKRIT 200R Patrick Cummins
Description: A seminar focused on reading and interpreting classical Sanskrit kāvya (poetry). Emphasizes collaborative reading, analysis of literary devices, and appreciation of aesthetic value.
Additional Info: Letter grade only; no auditors permitted.
The Lotus Sutra: Engaging a Buddhist Scripture
HDS 3244 Charles Hallisey
Description: A close reading of the Lotus Sutra, examining its historical, interpretive, and devotional contexts across Buddhist Asia. Emphasis on its sectarian and ecumenical receptions and the interpretive demands of a single scripture.
Additional Info: Focused on a single Buddhist scripture within HDS’s broader scriptural interpretation series.
Languages
Harvard regularly offers courses in many languages related to South Asia, including, Hindi-Urdu, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Tibetan (Classical), Tibetan (Colloquial), and Tamil.
Are you a Harvard faculty member with a course you’d like included in our list? Tell us about it! Email mittalsai@fas.harvard.edu.
