The South Asia Council (SAC)

The South Asia Council (SAC) is one of four regional councils operating within the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). Created in 1970, these councils represent the interests of scholars working in their respective geographical areas.

Collectively, the four area councils and the Council of Conferences serve as the major policy body for the Association of Asian Studies, providing liaison between the Board of Directors and the members at large.

The South Asia Council administers the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize, which honors the author of the best English-language work in South Asian studies and the A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize for Translation, which recognizes and encourages translations from South Asian languages into English.

The South Council also administers a prize for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the AAS Annual Meeting.

SAC Council Members

Chair: Ramya Sreenivasan, SUNY-Buffalo, rs75@buffalo.edu

Bernard Bate, Yale University, bernard.bate@yale.edu
Husain Haqqani, Boston University, haqqani@bu.edu
Cabieri D. Robinson, University of Washington, cdr33@u.washington.edu
Elora Chowdhury, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Elora.Chowdhury@umb.edu
Matthew Nelson, SOAS, University of London, mn6@soas.ac.uk
Vinayak Chaturvedi, University of California, Irvine, vinayak@uci.edu
Anupama Rao, Barnard College, arao@barnard.edu
Wendy Singer, Kenyon College, singerw@kenyon.edu

SAC Committees

Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD)

AAS Affiliated Groups Related to SAC

American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA)

American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS)

American Institute for Bangladesh Studies (AIBS)

American Insititue of Indian Studies (AIIS)

American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS)

Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS)

Independent Scholars of South Asia (ISOSA)

Maharashtra Studies Group

Rajasthan Studies Group

South Asia Language Resource Center (SALRC)

South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI)

SAC Prize for the Best Paper Presented by a Graduate Student at the AAS Annual Meeting

The South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies has instituted a prize for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the AAS annual meeting. The prize will recognize emerging scholarship in the field, and foster intellectual exchange among junior and senior scholars. The award, in the sum of $300, will cover the cost of travel to the following Annual Conference of the AAS, where the winner will be recognized at a reception hosted by the South Asia Council.

The Council encourages graduate students who presented papers at the March 2009 conference in Chicago to submit their papers for consideration. Papers on any aspect and region of South Asia will be considered. Students must be registered in a doctoral program in order to be considered for the Prize.

Please email your paper as an attachment to Wendy Singer (History Department, Kenyon College, singerw@kenyon.edu) and Bernard Bate (Anthropology, Yale University, bernard.bate@gmail.com) by May 31, 2009. Papers submitted to the Council after this deadline will not be considered.