The second video presents an overview of the national Language Flagship movement:

New students were able to introduce themselves to the group and get a chance to talk with future peers and instructors. Several fourth-year students, recently returned from HUF’s Year in India, were on hand to provide a personal welcome from our current students.

Zaid Hassan, HUF’s long-serving student research assistant, also graduated and was greeted on-stage by Dr. Hyder.

Check out the video and picture slideshow below:

Winner is Sofiya Merchant (2007 Cohort). Photo was taken along the Ganges River in Varanasi India during the Fall 2009 semester.

Category 2-   Hindi Urdu Flagship in Texas

Winner is Sonali Brahmbhatt (2008 Cohort). Photo was taken in Austin, Texas in April 2010 and feature Anushri Kushwaha (2009 Cohort).

Category 3 – What is Hindi?/ What is Urdu?

Winner is Chelsea Aldridge (2007 Cohort). The photo was taken in Hyderabad, India in January 2010.

Category 4-    Photography and Literature/ Poetry

- For this category in addition to submitting a photograph the student must submit a poem, verse or literary passage in Hindi or Urdu. The photograph should complement the poem/ literature.
Winner is Leena Warsi (2008 Cohort). The photo was taken in Hyderabad, India by the Chaar Minar in December 2009.  Leena’s accompanying couplet is by Urdu poet Ghalib and her translation is below.

“The world is a garden of children before me
Every night and day there happens a spectacle before me
Though there is no motion in my hands, there is life in my eyes still
Let the (wine) glass and pitcher remain before me”

Congratulations to all of our winners!

Here’s the full video of the seminar:

Ishita Paul prepares the HUF booth at the Foreign Language Fair

In a sunny courtyard of the UT six-pack, HUF students and staff joined other UT programs to promote undergraduate registration for foreign language courses. The event, entitled “Around the World: A Foreign Language Fair”,  was sponsored by the student-run Liberal Arts Council. Ishita Paul, a member of the 2008 HUF cohort and the Liberal Arts Council, played a major role in organizing the event. HUF student advisor, Martha Berry, was on hand to answer questions from interested students. Neelam Chaturvedi, wife of Hindi lecturer Vidhu Chaturvedi, painted beautiful henna designs on students’ hands. HUF students and staff distributed HUF frisbees and promotional material.

Many undergraduate students and faculty attended the fair with a number of students expressing interest in registering for Hindi and/or Urdu classes.

View pictures from the fair.

Kavita Datla

Datla’s research interests include the political, social, and cultural history of nineteenth and twentieth century South Asia. She is currently completing a manuscript, titled From National to Minority Subjects, which focuses on negotiations over language, education, and religion in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Hyderabad.  She is especially interested in how these negotiations relate to the history of Indian and Pakistani nationalism.  The book, grounded in close attention to historical evidence in South Asia, has broad ramifications for larger issues currently being debated in the humanities and social sciences today, from the significance and legacies of European colonialism, the inclusions and exclusions enacted by nationalist projects, to the place of minorities in the forging of nationalism, and ultimately also to discussions of the relationship between religion and modern politics and hence also of secularism in colonial and post-colonial societies.

Datla’s work has been published in Modern Asian Studies and has been funded by fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) and Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad.

Here is the full video of Kathryn Hansen’s talk from the Hindi Urdu Flagship’s recently concluded symposium, Hindi in Texas and Beyond. The presentation is entitled Composite Culture and Cosmopolitanism in Manzoor Ehtesham’s Sukha Bargad, Arvind Adiga’s White Tiger, and Slumdog Millionaire:

Here is the full video of Michael Shapiro’s talk from the Hindi Urdu Flagship’s recently concluded symposium, Hindi in Texas and Beyond. The presentation is entitled Why Meter Matters: Reading 20th Century Hindi Poetry from the Perspective of Metrical Structure: