South Asian America in the Classroom

This collection of eleven lesson plans, assembled by SAADA in partnership with educators who are experts in their respective fields, addresses a longstanding concern: the lack of resources to support the teaching of South Asian American histories in college classrooms.

For the past fifteen years, SAADA has been working to ensure that South Asian American stories are preserved, shared, and widely accessible. Our Stories: An Introduction to South Asian America, which SAADA published in 2021, addressed the need for an introductory text about the South Asian American community and its history specifically intended for high school and college-age readers. With stories spanning from the 1780s to the present day and bringing together the voices of sixty-four authors, Our Stories is now in already more than 2,500 schools, libraries, and homes across the country.

South Asian America in the Classroom takes SAADA’s efforts one step further, by providing lesson plans that can be “dropped in” to an existing college-level course or included as part of a full syllabus, and which come with accompanying handouts, reading lists, and varied applications. Through this compendium, we hope to make it as straightforward as possible for educators to expose their students to the often-overlooked histories of South Asians in the United States—the more than 5.4 million individuals who trace their heritage to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, and the many South Asian diaspora communities across the world.