Category : News

By Kalpana Mohanty, Doctorate of Philosophy ‘25. In a household with a Tamilian mother and a Bengali father, the common language at home was English. As a result, I had an asymmetric grasp of Hindi where I was able to understand the language almost fluently, but unable to speak it back with the same fluency. My three months of intermediate Hindi lessons at Zabaan, suggested by Professor Maya Jasanoff, was incredibly valuable in helping me rectify this.

Every year, the Mittal Institute supports Graduate Student Associates (GSAs) from across the different schools at Harvard who are enrolled in a PhD program and whose research is focused on South Asia. We are now accepting applications for our next round of GSAs at the Mittal Institute.

By Victoria Andrews, Summer 2020 Student Grant Recipient. I began my Sanskrit language training with the South Asian Summer Language Intensive (SASLI) during the summer of 2020. The unusual circumstances of the 2020 pandemic prompted me and the summer program to modify our plans for remote learning. In any other year, for my studies, I would have traveled to and lived in Madison, Wisconsin for the duration of the summer Sanskrit intensive. However, this year, I was able to video into my classes from Cambridge. Embarking on this linguistic endeavor has already proved fruitful for my studies this fall.