Gautami Shah has established and expanded Hindi programs at Rice, Yale and Duke Universities and is currently Senior Lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies at U.T Austin. Shah is involved in a number of national projects related to less commonly taught languages (lctls) , including developing national Standards for Hindi pedagogy. Shah is also actively involved in national advocacy for lctls. She is past president of the National Organization of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) and the South Asian Language Teachers Association (SALTA) and current executive director of SALTA.
Shah’s research interest lie in: Language pedagogy (Hindi); Contemporary South Asian literature and popular culture (specifically Bollywood) with a focus on communal conflicts, gender issues, caste, religion and immigrant experiences; Curriculum development; Innovative use of technology in language teaching; Program development; Less commonly taught languages.
Shah’s current projects include:
“e-Hindi for Elementary Hindi”: Materials for web-intensive first-year Hindi including a web-based Hindi grammar reader.
“Teachers’ Stories”: Web-based materials introducing meaningful narratives at the first-year level.
“Hindi through Songs”: Web-based materials using Hindi film songs to supplement the teaching of Hind.