Arabic Program: Zayn Hasan Ali and Sarah A  Alsaif

Hebrew Program: Sam Matan Saxe-Taller

Hindi/Urdu Program: Darian Arsalan Khattak and Manraj Dhillon

Persian Program: Henna Said Bayat

Punjabi Program: Anhad Singh

We are thrilled to announce that Associate Professor Amy Motlagh from the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis has been awarded the UC Davis Revitalization Research Program Grant!

Congratulations to the 2024 Suad Joseph Graduate Grant Recipients:

Whitné Moussan (Department of Anthropology)

Title of Research: The Ideology of Risk and Resilience: Tracing an Absent State through Ethnopsychiatry and Difference in Lebanon

Faculty Advisor: Assistant Professor Fatima Mojaddedi

Xiwen Yang (Department of History)

Title of Research: Views from the Province: An Eighteenth-Century Ottoman’s Reckoning with Science

Faculty Advisor: Professor Baki Teczan

Hosted by the UC Davis Middle East/South Asia Studies, Professor Pratap Mehta, Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching from Princeton University, delivers this year's India at the Crossroads Lecture: "Nationalism and Democracy in India" on April 4, 2024. 

A recording of the lecture can also be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZvXmBp4Low&ab_channel=UCDavisMiddleEast%2FSouthAsiaStudies

Dr. Nicole Ranganath receives a grant under the UC Davis Humanities and Social Sciences Stimulating Exceptional and Essential Discovery (S.E.E.D.) Funding Program for her project titled: “The Poetics of Partition: A Sonic History of Collective Trauma in South Asia and the Diaspora.”

S.E.E.D. aims to support research activity historically underfunded and beyond the STEM fields.

Suvam Sabat is an undergraduate student majoring in History and minoring in Technology Management.

Title of Research: A Half-Union: The Success and Failures of Federalism in India during its first Decade

Faculty Advisor: Sudipta Sen

Ashwin Ramakrishna is an undergraduate student majoring in Economics and minoring in India/South Asia Studies.

Title of Research: The Racialization of Caste in Tamil Nadu

Organized by Amy Motlagh, Associate Professor Comparative Literature and ME/SA Studies

Bita Daryabari Presidential Chair in Persian Language and Literature

Hamid Kolahdouz, Powder and Smoke: The Safavi Military Revolution during the Reign of Shah Abbas I

History, UC Davis

Congratulations to our undergraduate peer advisor, Katherine Fierro, who received the Outstanding Peer Advisor Award at the 2023 UC Davis Academic Advising Fall Welcome for her excellent work with students, faculty, and the community!

Pooja Hazra, graduate student in History, received the first Daryabari dissertation fellowship in Iranian and Persian Studies for her project “An Empire of Scribes: A Social History of Indo-Persian Literary Elites in South Asia (c.1600-1700).”

On June 6th, 2023, Middle East/South Asia Studies held a ceremony for the dedication of our conference room to ME/SA Studies founder Suad Joseph, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of Anthropology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, in recognition of her excellence in scholarship, teaching, service, and leadership in ME/SA and in both of her fields as well as her generous support of student research in ME/SA Studies.