Skip to main content

Program home

Request info Apply now

India Studies

Pune, India

Dynamic change in an ancient culture

From the high-tech industries of Bangalore — India’s answer to Silicon Valley — to thousands of rural villages seemingly untouched by time, India embraces both the dynamic forces of globalization and the deep-rooted traditions of an ancient culture.

The dichotomy is woven into everyday life in India — cows interrupt the streams of cars and trucks on the roads, and farmers work with hand tools in fields under the flight paths of jumbo jets.

On the interdisciplinary ACM India Studies Program in Pune, students have the rare opportunity to experience India’s dynamism and diversity firsthand through courses, independent study, and daily life in an Indian home and community.

Pune, a city of over three million in the state of Maharashtra, offers students excellent resources for experience, exploration, and study.

  • A gathering place for artists and intellectuals as well as an industrial center, Pune’s residents include leaders in the fields of art, music, dance, yoga, theatre, film, religion, politics, environmental science, and social reform.
  • In pursuing their independent research, students can use the city’s museums, educational institutions, government offices, political organizations, business and labor groups, and cultural and social welfare agencies.
  • Local historical sites and archives chronicle Pune’s role as a center of Hindu resistance to British rule and as the summer headquarters for the colonial government of Bombay.
  • Maharashtra is among the more prosperous and stable areas of India, embracing nearly all of the nation’s religious, social, and ethnic variety.
  • Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), India’s chief commercial center, is easily accessible to students by train.

Application deadlines

March 15, 2009

Fall 2009 semester

While preference will be given to students who have met the application deadline, late applications may be accepted on a space-available basis.

If the application deadline has passed and you are still interested in applying for a program, please submit your application immediately and contact the ACM Office.

Program contacts

Heather Everst
Program Associate

205 W. Wacker Drive, Suite 220
Chicago, IL 60606
Phone: 312.263.5000
Fax: 312.263.5879
heverst@acm.edu

More program contacts »

Publications & Resources

India Studies Student Handbook - Fall 2008

India Studies

Tyler Quinn As privileged Americans, few places in the world offer a more foreign backdrop for us to learn from than India. Each day, I was constantly reminded that my growing comfort with rickshaws buzzing by in the streets, or samosa vendors calling out to us hoping we would stop in to spend a few rupees, were but a couple of minute parts to the complexities of that mesmerizing country. What better way to expand your comfort zone, than to remove yourself from it altogether. The ACM India Studies program gives you the ability to reform the foundation of your character, and I struggle to imagine any student regretting their decision to study and live in India.

—Tyler Quinn, India Studies, Fall 2007

Christian Novetzke The ACM India Studies program was the keystone in my career as a scholar of South Asia. At the time, it was perhaps the only opportunity in the American academy to study Marathi, and the program gave me a firm foundation in that language. I learned to live in India and to conduct real field research on the program. I was introduced to key scholars and intellectuals in Pune, and this gave me inspiration for future work. I also had the time of my life and made lifelong friends, several of whom also became professional scholars of South Asia.

—Christian Novetzke, India Studies 1991

Read more testimonials »

Who we are

The Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) is a consortium of 13 independent, liberal arts colleges in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Colorado.