The participants in CAORC’s 2019 faculty development seminar to India. Karen Guerrero, Assistant Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University, was a 2019 participant in the CAORC-AIIS Faculty Development Seminar to India. In this essay, she spells out why experiential, immersive learning opportunities are so essential for good teaching. India changed the way I teach in a way only traveling to a new country can. Exploring off-the-beaten paths f

Across all segments of Indian society, women play critical roles in helping conserve and manage increasingly limited water resources. Janet Armitage, Associate Professor of Sociology at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, was a 2019 participant in the CAORC-AIIS Faculty Development Seminar to India. The seminar’s theme was urban sustainability and, in this essay, Armitage discusses her Indian experiences with women and water and the importance of bridging expert cont

The Glass House, a central landmark of the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens, was built in 1889. Photo by Muhammad Mahdi Karim - Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9515661a In this essay, Danny Sexton, a 2019 participant in CAORC’s faculty development seminar to India, discusses his visit to India’s Lalbagh Botanical Gardens in Bangalore (Bengaluru) and offers reflections on the ever-changing relationship between ourselves, nature, and the built envir

All India Museum Summit July 22 – 24, 2019, India International Centre, New Delhi The All India Museum Summit 2019, with financial support from the Embassy of the United States of America, New Delhi, will convene a nationwide gathering of museum professionals, including curators, administrators and conservationists, as well as supporters and educators, to consider ways to enrich the roles that museums play in the lives of India’s people and means for building institutional ca

Janet Armitage (left) and Janny Li (right) on a sunrise elephant ride to Amber Fort in Jaipur. In this essay, Janny Li, a 2019 participant in CAORC’s faculty development seminar to India, discusses the many and sometimes surprising ways in which animals are integrated into the rhythms of everyday life in India’s megacities. I live in Los Angeles. I rarely think about wildlife. Once I saw a mange-ridden coyote eating out of a neighbor’s trashcan and thought I saw a Chupacabra—

CAORC sponsored the panel discussion, Teaching Asia Beyond the Ivory Tower: The American Overseas Research Centers and Broad Educational Engagement, at the 2019 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, held in Denver on March 23, 2019. The panel featured representatives from several overseas research centers—the American Institute of Indian Studies, Center for Khmer Studies, American Center for Mongolian Studies, and American Institute of Pakistan Studies—who discusse

The India Faculty Development Seminar group with Dr. Balasubramaniam “Only when we take a comprehensive and ecosystem approach to our thinking, can we bring about meaningful and sustainable development for all.” —Dr. R. Balasubramaniam, Voices from the Grassroots On a gorgeous, warm day in January, along with fifteen other professors from community colleges throughout the United States, I attended a poignant presentation by Dr. R. Balasubramaniam at the Swami Vivekananda Yout

This essay is Part Five in a series commemorating the 25th anniversary of CAORC's Multi-Country Research Fellowship Program. Read Part One: Explaining Countries’ Differential Success in Combating HIV/AIDS, by Rachel Sullivan Robinson Read Part Two: Long-Term Agricultural Sustainability in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean, by John M. Marston Read Part Three: Incense Production in Ancient Southern Arabia, by Joy McCorriston Read Part Four: Fighting Malaria in the Mediterranean

Exploring Urban Sustainability through India's Cities CAORC-AIIS Community College Faculty Development Seminar India: January 2-18, 2019 CAORC is pleased to be partnering with the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) on an upcoming community college faculty development seminar in India. To support community colleges and minority-serving institutions, CAORC offers innovative, cost-effective programming that helps faculty and administrators gain the requisite first-hand

AIIS Hindi student Emma Leiken attends the wedding of a friend in Kolkata The American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), CAORC’s member center in India, supports the study of India through language training programs, fellowships, and two India-based research centers, on ethnomusicology and art & archaeology. Emma Leiken, now a few months into her job with Google’s People Operations team in San Francisco, reflected on her time as a Fulbright student researcher to India. “My

Held in conjunction with its Annual Conference, the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) invites you to the opening of the photography exhibition, From Kabul to Kolkata: Of Belonging, Memories, and Identity, in Washington D.C. on March 23. CAORC, the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, and the American Institute of Indian Studies, alongside other organizations, are co-sponsoring the event. From the exhibit's Facebook page: In 1892, Rabindranath Tagore wrote a short stor

The cultural organization Jnanapravaha Mumbai hosted the conference “Mountstuart Elphinstone: Between Local and Global Forces” on April 20-21, 2017. Professor Shah Mahmoud Hanifi of James Madison University organized the conference, which was co-sponsored by the American Institutes of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indian, Pakistan, and Sri Lankan Studies, among other organizations. The conference brought together 28 scholars from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Si

The American Institute of Indian Studies' General-Director Purnima Mehta was selected by The Economist as one of the top 50 diversity figures in public life, alongside such honorees as Ambassador Ruth Davis, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, and the President and Mrs. Obama. AIIS Director General Purnima Mehta According to The Economist: "Purnima Mehta has served for over a decade as the Director General of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). Under

American Institute of Indian Studies Junior Fellow and graduate student at the University of Chicago Rehanna Kheshgi has been studying Bihu music – a formerly stigmatized rural music genre, now becoming popular via mass media. This spring Ms. Kheshgi was invited to perform with a musician who is the son of Khagen Mahanta, the "King of Bihu," on his April/May 2015 tour of Assam, India. She learned a great deal about language politics and about the stakes of performing traditio