| Hindi / Urdu |
University of Texas at AustinThe Hindi Urdu Flagship at the University of Texas at Austin is a unique Flagship that teaches two languages with distinctive scripts, literatures, and cultural traditions. Hindi and Urdu share a common grammar and basic vocabulary, but differ widely in their higher registers, in which they inherit the radically different cultures of Sanskrit and Perso- Arabic respectively. The Hindi Urdu Flagship (HUF) is a four-year undergraduate program designed to take students to professional levels of proficiency in Hindi and Urdu, which they study alongside the major of their choice. First-year students join the program with some existing knowledge of spoken Hindi-Urdu, or acquire it through an introductory year and summer course; either way, the essential prerequisites are linguistic ability and a commitment to the serious study of South Asia. After spending the first two years of the program in HUF students benefit from the very strong coverage on South Asia at the University of Texas, whose Department of Asian Studies and South Asia Institute both provide exceptional opportunities for students to engage with scholarship on the region. HUF combines with these two institutions to provide unrivaled facilities for the study of Hindi and Urdu and the cultural, social, and political contexts of the two languages. After completing the program, students may work in various fields, such as business, medicine, government, non-government organizations, and the like. Some will go to graduate school, where they can combine their study in a major field with their Hindi and Urdu language proficiency. HUF is strongly committed to its mandate of enhancing the learning and teaching of Urdu and Hindi nationwide through the development of new kinds of pedagogical materials, freely disseminated on its website. A particular focus is a current collaborative project, ‘Language for Health’, in which HUF is collaborating with Columbia University and New York University to develop materials focusing on Hindi and Urdu in the medical profession. HUF also plays a major part in such essential areas as curriculum development, the refinement of assessment criteria, and teacher training. Contact: Selina Keilani,
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language and culture classes on campus in Austin, with Hindi and Urdu being taught in parallel throughout, students embark on the all-important overseas year in India. This third-year immersion experience is based at the Lucknow center of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), and follows a special curriculum designed by HUF in collaboration with the AIIS. Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh, furnishes excellent opportunities for the internships that students pursue during their overseas year, while students also fulfill requirements of their majors by taking courses with professors engaged from institutions in Lucknow. In the fourth year of the HUF program, students return to Austin for further study that focuses on contemporary media and culminates in the writing of a senior project in either Hindi or Urdu.