About Summer in India

During your Summer in India, customize your study abroad experience by taking a single class during the four-week Session 1 or take a single class during the four-week Session 2. You can also extend your studies by enrolling in both Session 1 and Session 2. Combine study with an internship by enrolling in Summer in India Session 1 followed by the eight-week Summer Internship in India program. 

SESSION 1 CLASSES
Contemporary India
This class introduces the society, culture, and politics of post-independence India as a complex yet unified multicultural democracy and rising global superpower. Topics include colonialism and nationalism; Gandhi and social activism in the 1960s; gender and caste; 20th century literary, religious, and philosophical movements; scientific and technological advances; and poverty and economic challenges. Students will develop an understanding of India’s diversity and contextualize current issues in India that they experience during their stay, through interactions with locals and personal observations.  (3 U.S. semester credit hours)

Public Health 
India faces unique and daunting challenges in the areas of public health, battling malnutrition, infectious disease, and high infant mortality. This class takes a multidisciplinary approach to public health in India, incorporating policy development, gender issues, social justice, health economics, epidemiology, behavioral sciences, and health services management. Students will interrogate how social, political, and economic factors facilitate or mitigate the production and transmission of disease and will evaluate ethical and practical consequences of policy and scientific initiatives.  (3 U.S. semester credit hours)

SESSION 2 CLASSES
Gender and Indian Media 
From Hindu mythology to the pages of Bollywood gossip magazines, Indian womanhood has been a constantly evolving site for the mapping of cultural norms, desires, and anxieties. The simultaneous exaltation and oppression of femininity is both reinforced and contested in the mass media – a key tool of communication in a diverse and complex democracy. Through critical exploration of gender in Indian film, theatre, television, and advertising, this class addresses timely and relevant questions relating to women’s issues in contemporary India. (3 U.S. semester credit hours)

Development Economics 
The Indian economy serves as a complex, fascinating example of high technology, expanding trade, vibrant entrepreneurship, and a highly skilled workforce, co-existing in sometimes tenuous balance with widespread poverty, social inequality, and critical gaps in health care, education, and infrastructure. This class explores how India is seeking to address and reconcile these disparities, focusing on technological change, political economy, trade, social entrepreneurship and microfinance, and international aid as they are managed and applied within contemporary India. (3 U.S. semester credit hours)