Harvard offers a diverse range of courses on South Asia, spanning language, history, politics, economics, religion, and beyond. Explore a selection of Fall 2026 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 2026
Modern South Asia
HIST 36 Sugata Bose
Description: This course provides the historical depth in which to understand modern and contemporary South Asia in broad Indian Ocean and global contexts. It explores the history, culture, and political economy of the subcontinent which provides a fascinating laboratory to study such themes as colonialism, nationalism, partition, the modern state, democracy development, religious identities, and relations between Asia and the West. Significant use of primary written sources (in English) and multi-media presentations.
Additional Info: This course meets the “Beyond North America” History Concentration requirement. Former course number “Hist 1036.”
Translating India: History, Theory, Craft
SAS 170 Martha Selby
Description: This seminar will introduce students to the art of literary translation through a wide variety of approaches. Over the course of the semester, we will read various tracts, articles, and books on the theory and craft of translation from a wide range of Euro-American and South Asian stances and viewpoints. We will analyze editions of various classics from India that have been translated into English repeatedly, paying particular attention to the political nature of the act and art of translation in its colonial and post-colonial contexts. This seminar will also have a practical component, and one session each week will allow students to present translations-in-progress to their peers for comment and critique.
Additional Info: No auditors will be permitted. Enrolled students must take the course for a letter grade.
Rhythm in Cross-Cultural Perspective
MUSIC 158W Richard Wolf
Description: This course will explore rhythm, meter, and more broadly, musical time, by critically comparing three ways in which concepts of rhythm reach us as students, scholars, and listeners: 1) Local theories of rhythm, as generated by practitioners and theorists with respect to a particular repertoire or style; 2) More general scholarly discourses and debates on the nature of rhythm; and 3) Our perceptions of rhythmic process as we listen to a variety of musical examples drawn from Asia (West, Central and South), Africa, and Europe. Undergraduate and graduate students with sensitive ears and a desire to be surprised are welcome.
Topics in World Music
MUSIC 190RW Richard Wolf
Description: Music in Islamic Contexts: South and Central Asia/Iran. This course focuses on the arts of sound practiced by Muslims in South and Central Asia (including Iran), and on procedures of recitation that grow from pre-Islamic roots among Arabic-speaking peoples. The purposes are two-fold: one is to understand from a musically informed perspective a set of interrlated musical practices that cut across these areas. The second is to understand how different ideologies, philosophies and texts – associated with Islam locally, nationally, and internationally – shape local understandings and constructions of sound.
Pāṇṇini Is Only a Click Away: Introduction to Grammar as a Knowledge System (II)
SANSKRIT 207BR Radha Blinderman
Description: Often considered to be the last among influential new Pāṇinīya thinkers, Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa does not only build on Bharṭrhari’s non-dualism, but also accommodates the concept of an Īśvara within his own semantic theory. Unlike Kauṇḍa Bhaṭṭa, he also seeks to refute the old and new Naiyāyikas’ position that Īśvara’s desire is the basis for direct expression (śakti), which itself constitutes linguistic convention (saṅketa). By separating the two concepts, Nāgeśa carves out a unique space for Īśvara within a Pāṇinīya’s philosophy of language, which otherwise was exclusively dominated by the concepts of Śabdabrahman and sphoṭa. This course will also focus on portions of the Dhātvartha chapter in Nāgeśa’s larger version of the Mañjūṣā, where he connects the theory of action and deliberations on existence (sattā) with his concept of the world as an illusory transformation (vivarta) of Brahman.
Prerequisite: Prior Knowledge of Sanskrit Required. Must be taken for a letter grade.
Bollywood and Beyond: Commercial Cinema, Language and Culture in South Asia
HIND-URD 123 Richard Delacy
This course examines concepts of personhood, community and culture in South Asia as expressed in contemporary film and literature. Works in Hindi-Urdu and in translation will be examined with emphasis on language as an index of cultural difference and of broad social shifts, notably the transformation of audiences from citizens to culture-consumers. Knowledge of Hindi-Urdu is not required. However, there will be a section for students with intermediate proficiency utilizing language materials.
Additional Info: Students who enroll in the language section of this course may count it towards a citation in Hindi-Urdu. No auditors will be permitted. Enrolled students must take the course for a letter grade.
An Introduction to Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Intellectual History
TIBET 191 Leonard van der Kuijp
Description: Ever since the formal introduction of Indian and Chinese Buddhism in eighth century Tibet, the Tibetan acculurtaion and incultration of the various schools of thought created a very lively intellectual environment. This course seeks to tease out some of the major developments that took place from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries.scholarship .
Readings in Tibetan Catalogs, Inventories, Histories (dkar chag)
TIBET 245A Leonard van der Kuijp
Description: Of the many types of literary genres that were part of Tibetan literature broadly defined, the dkar chag is defintely the most flexible of all genres and can cover a wide range of treatises This course will examine the literary reach and range of the dkar chag as the gterm courses through the centuries of Tibetan literary activity.
Additional Info: No auditors. Must be taken for a letter grade.
Animals in a Posthuman World: A New Buddhist Ethics
HDS 3247 / RELIGION 1761 Janet Gyatso
Description: This course will explore the grounds for compassion, ethical commitment, and kinds of human self-restraint in light of an increasing appreciation for the value of animal life. The course will work through new adaptations of Buddhist attention and meditation techniques to elevate our affective connection with — and moral obligation to — our animal kin on planet Earth. This will entail close scrutiny of some amazing animal videos in class, as well as outdoor attention assignments. Also contributing to our deliberations will be robust discussion of human-animal living conditions and human exploitation of animal resources. All along the way, we will reflect on readings in Western philosophical ethics, critical theory, and anthropology as they intersect, or not, with the Buddhist metaphysics of interdependence and the phenomenology of compassion.
Additional Info: Jointly offered with RELIGION 1714 in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences.
Medieval Islam: An Age of Revolutions
HIST 34 Lorenzo Bondioli
Description: This course covers a millennium of history unfolding between Morocco and Indonesia. You will learn how the rise of one of the largest empires in human history, the Islamic Caliphate, forever changed the face of Afro-Eurasia, and how the societies that emerged out of this historical Big Bang initiated some of the most revolutionary transformations of the medieval period. This is the story of the astonishing achievement of mighty empires, pious mystics, and adventurous merchants, but also of the unsung toil of the common people who made medieval Islamic civilization possible: the peasants, the workers, the women, the enslaved.
Additional Info: This course can meet either the “Pre-1750” or the “Beyond North America” History Concentration requirement, but not both. Former course number “Hist 1134.” This course can be used to fulfill the Foundational, History, and Thought & Religion distribution requirements for the undergraduate secondary field in Medieval Studies. This class requires students to enroll in an untimed, placeholder section during registration and to submit time preferences. Sections will be assigned immediately after registration based on student interest and preferences.
The Medieval Islamic Commercial Revolution
HIST 1934 Lorenzo Bondioli
Description: Unfolding across Afro-Eurasia, the Medieval Islamic Commercial Revolution (800-1200 CE) wove together a world system of unprecedented reach and strength, as new trade networks extended across land and sea to join the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, North and Sub Saharan Africa, Central and South Asia. We will follow the lives and business activities of the merchants who brought about this historic transformation, using their letters, accounts, books, and material objects to investigate the rise of new trade routes, the development of novel commercial and financial institutions, the forms of labor and investment that undergirded this moment of globalization before globalization.
Additional Info: This course meets either the “Pre-1750” or the “Beyond North America” History Concentration requirement or the seminar requirement, but not more than one. This course can be used to fulfill the History distribution requirement for the undergraduate secondary field in Medieval Studies. It also can be counted towards the requirements for the graduate secondary field in Medieval Studies.
Art of Monsoon Asia: Interconnected Histories
HAA 81 Jinah Kim
Description: Monsoon Asia refers to the area of the globe where climates are determined or profoundly affected by the monsoon, from the Himalayas, to the islands of Indian Ocean, all the way to the Japanese archipelago. Focusing on the impact of monsoons in South and Southeast Asia, the course explores the common patterns and traits of the art of Monsoon Asia. How was the monsoon and its impact conceptualized in art?
The main learning goal of the course is to understand how artistic means were harnessed to conceptualize, cope with, and tame environmental challenges posed by monsoons and long-distance travels, often facilitated by the monsoon winds, in pre-modern times. From water management to water symbolism, from impressive temples that mark auspicious arrivals to itinerant objects like ivories and amulets that moved with travelers across Monsoon Asia, we will look at diverse sites and objects that date between the fifth through the sixteenth centuries and attempt to connect the dots between ports and uncover hidden narratives of long-distance travels and travails of dealing with environmental challenges in pre-modern times. The course challenges the diffusionist model of influence in understanding trans-regional interactions and introduces ways to discuss interconnected histories using digital tools. The course will introduce basic tools of digital art history and students will be asked to contribute to a course exhibition site with annotated maps and research pages as part of their final projects.
Additional Info: This course can be used to fulfill the Arts distribution requirement for the undergraduate secondary field in Medieval Studies. This course can be counted towards the requirements for the graduate secondary field in Medieval Studies.
Buddhist Stories: Narrative, Narrative Ethics, and Moral Anthropology
HDS 3956 Charles Hallisey
This course is a practicum on reading Buddhist stories, learning from them, and living with them. We will engage some exemplary Buddhist stories from three orientations: how to read them well using resources of Narratology; how to use them in moral reflection and ethical understanding; and how they can illuminate who we are as moral beings and help us develop richer lives. We will also explore the connection between narrative ethics and other forms of ethical reflection as well as the relevance of recent cognitive studies about “the moral brain.” The Buddhist stories will be selected from across the Buddhist world and from different time periods.
Additional Info: No previous study of Buddhism is expected.
Reading Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Today, Here
HDS 3216 Charles Hallisey
Description: Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar was a key political leader and thinker as well as a religious leader and thinker in twentieth century India. Dr. Ambedkar is remembered as a political thinker for his central role in crafting the Constitution of the Republic of India while he is remembered as a religious leader for his conversion to Buddhism in 1956 together with more than 350,000 followers, marking a public rejection by Dalits of continuing caste discrimination in independent India. Dr. Ambedkar’s political and religious thought is subtle and manifold and, centrally concerned with rethinking the place of religion in multireligious societies, it goes far beyond what these two memories, on their own, might suggest. Rejecting any reduction of religion to identity, Dr. Ambedkar combined criticism of religion with a deep sympathy and appreciation of it. He especially helps us to develop critiques and understandings of religion as a political phenomenon in multireligious societies. This colloquium will explore Dr. Ambedkar as a political and religious thinker who can be a teacher to us today, here.
Additional Info: Enrollment for this course is limited. Incoming and returning students who want to take the course should send an email to both of the instructors saying why they want to take the course. Incoming and returning students before 23 August will be notified of permission to take the course on 24 August; anyone who petitions after 23 August will be notified before the Crimson Cart deadline, as space permits.
Architectures of Cloth
HAA 173P Maria Gough
Description: This comparative seminar examines the major role of textiles in architectural theory and practice, with a primary focus on India and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. Our objective is to think historically and cross-culturally about a subject—the concept of architextiles—that has resurfaced in recent decades. Key topics include: Mughal textile architecture; typologies of the tent and other mobile structures in colonial and postcolonial India; Gottfried Semper’s theorization of textiles as the origin of architecture; Bauhaus Weaving Workshop & the architecture of cloth; Arts and Crafts Movement within specific geographical contexts; Anni Albers’s concept of the “pliable plane”; fabric partitions in the architecture and exhibition designs of Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe; collaborations between textile designers and architects, such as Mrinalini Mukherjee and Ranjit Singh, and Nelly Sethna and Joseph Allen Stein; and Frei Otto-inspired temporary exhibition pavilions and the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. We will study textiles, samples, and original publications first-hand at the Harvard Art Museums and the Graduate School of Design. Field trips TBA. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
Additional Info: Information on how to petition, including deadlines and what to include, can be found on the course Canvas site. Please refer to this before submitting your petition. Enrollment limited. Priority given to concentrators in the History of Art and Architecture.
The Energy-Climate Transition
IGA 413M Henry Lee
Description: This module will look at three of the most important and current questions in the on-going energy transition. 1. What are the policies shaping China’s energy transition and will they be sufficient to meet China’s on-going energy and environmental goals ?; 2. Will India be able to make a meaningful transition away from its dependence on coal? and 3. What are the challenges to developing an electricity grid that manages the transition to hyperscale discrete loads (data centers), renewable energy, and an electric transportation system? The module will be a combination of lectures and student projects.
Central Asia in Global Politics
GOV 1783 Instructor TBD
Description: The course is designed as an in-depth study of the place of Central Asia in Eurasian and global politics, and the policies of key external actors, such as Russia, the United States, China, the European Union, Turkey, Iran, Japan, South Korea and India, toward the region. Students are familiarized with the ways Central Asia has been contextualized both in scholarly sources and media. We will dwell on the changing geopolitical dynamics of the region and analyze how developments there are intertwined with bigger contexts and stories, including nuclear non-proliferation and state-building, political Islam and democracy promotion, energy markets and climate change, the war in Ukraine and diversification of licit and illicit trade flows. We will define similarities and differences in the foreign policies of Central Asian states and discuss the future prospects of the region.
Anthropology of Death and Immortality
ANTHRO 1698 Anya Bernstein
Description: This course will explore how different cultures imagine death and the afterlife, drawing on insights from the anthropology of religion, medicine, science, and politics. Based on readings that range from classical ethnographies of death and dying in India, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and Japan to contemporary debates surrounding death in North America and Europe, we will discuss cultural theories on what constitutes the moment of death and what happens after. The topics covered include conceptualizations of the body and mind, ideas of the spirit world, shamanism, witchcraft, mortuary rituals, royal and communist corpses, relic veneration, organ donation, end-of-life care, concepts of biopolitics and bare life, technoscientific immortality, and political lives of dead bodies.
Natural Disasters
GENED 1098 Brendan Meade
Description: What makes our planet so dangerous?From Mexico to India, San Francisco to Tokyo, natural disasters have shaped both the surface of our planet and the development of civilizations. These catastrophes claim thousands of lives and cause tens of billions of dollars in damage each year, and the impact of natural disasters is only increasing as a result of human population growth and urbanization. This course uses the methods and skills associated with earth science to help you to develop an understanding of both the causes and impacts of these events. Readings will be assigned from the textbook Natural Disasters by Patrick Abbott (11th edition), to deliver the scientific content – recorded lectures will be available throughout the course, and live lectures and discussion sessions will be held each week to address any difficulties with the material, to facilitate discussion, and to provide an opportunity for interacting with fellow students and the teaching staff. By the end of this course, you will be able to understand the ways in which societies can systematically anticipate and prepare for the kinds of natural disasters which many people have come to assume are inevitable.
Asia in the World – Regional Security, Integration and Ideology
IGA 260 Rana Mitter
Description: What are the factors that hold Asia together, or run the risk of pulling it apart? This course examines contemporary Asia, one of the most politically and economically dynamic regions of the world, exploring how far it can be seen as one region and how complex the forces within it are. The course examines how economic, trade and commercial networks in Asia such as RCEP, CPTPP and IPEF show new patterns of economic interaction and creation of norms on trade and technology. It examines the very different political systems and ideas that shape the region, from established democracies to personality-cult driven authoritarian politics, and how regional organizations such as ASEAN navigate these differences. We will also explore how wider cross-national forces have shaped norms across the region: Northeast Asia has significantly older demographics than Southeast Asia, policies on climate change vary across the region, and trends relating to ethnicity and gender have also shaped new and transformative political movements, some creating new civil society dynamics across borders. Although largely peaceful in recent years on a regional scale, there are numerous civil wars still active and unresolved, as well as significant refugee and population movement across borders. We also look at potential flashpoints, such as the India-China border and the Korean peninsula. The course will also draw on a wider historical perspective to illustrate how ideas of “Asia” have changed over time, and why that matters for interpreting the region. The legacy of World War II still plays a significant part in the international dynamics of Northeast Asia, shaping the difficult relationship between Japan, China and South Korea. The legacy of the period of revolutionary communism shapes societies across the region, including North Korea and Vietnam. In South Asia, the legacy of a turbulent partition has led to continuing tensions. The historical aspect provides vital context to explain the motivations and dynamics of the present day. Overall, the course seeks to illustrate the most important factors that shape one of the world’s most dynamic regions.
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.