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The
Mission
The mission of the Bengali Studies Initiative at
UC Berkeley is to launch a fundraising drive to create an endowment
for the cultivation and development of Bengali literature, social
science, humanities and performance studies. The first step of this
initiative is the teaching of the Bengali language.
Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the
world. Spoken in India and Bangladesh, it is also the language of
some of the world’s greatest writers and creative artists,
such as Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Satyajit Ray.
Yet in the United States, Bengali is taught at only a few institutions
of higher education.
The absence of rigorous Bengali language instruction
is a major lacuna in the nation’s curriculum. At the University
of California, Berkeley, for example, the Department of South and
Southeast Asian Studies offers Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Tamil and
Punjabi. Punjabi is funded by the community, and Tamil is supplemented
by community funds. We firmly believe that Bengali language courses
must be offered to UC Berkeley students and, through Berkeley, to
students at other universities.
With high-level language instruction, Berkeley will
become an internationally recognized center for Bengal studies.
A growing number of faculty members
are already conducting research and teaching on Bengal. Many of
their students are waiting to study the Bengali language so that
they can pursue research on Bengali culture and society as well.
Through enabling these students to study Bengali, the Bengali Studies
Initiative will unlock their academic potential and pave the way
for invaluable contributions to knowledge both in this country and
in South Asia. Bengali Studies Initiative will also support events
and lectures open to the public that create an exciting and cutting-edge
intellectual atmosphere for the study of Bangladesh and West Bengal
at Berkeley.
Learning the Bengali language and culture should
be supplemented by study in Bengal itself for both graduate and
undergraduate students. To meet this need, we are developing a summer
study abroad program at Santiniketan, West Bengal. We will also
actively help students to pursue research projects and volunteer
work throughout West Bengal and Bangladesh.
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