Telugu program at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

(Updated October 1, 2006)

 

Malathi Nidadavolu

 

 

 

University of Wisconsin is the first academic institution to offer Telugu language in the United States. Possibly, beginning in the early seventies, native speakers have been teaching Telugu language in big cities like Atlanta, Chicago, New Jersey and other places, where large clusters of Telugu population have been residing, and where funding etc. which are normally associated with university courses did not matter.

 

The Indian studies department in Madison, Wisconsin, was initiated in 1958 by Henry Hart, Political Science professor, and Murray Fowler, Comparative Literature professor, after they had been to India on a federal fellowship and returned with the idea of a study abroad program. About the same time, Robert Frykenberg, joined the history department. Joseph Elder joined the Sociology department in the fall of 1961. They all played a significant role in establishing the Telugu program in Madison.

 

The Indian studies department underwent several name changes form Department of South Asian studies, South Asian Language and Area Center, to current Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia (LCA) since 1999. Ellen Rafferty, professor of Indonesian Language and Literature is its Chair. In 1990, Center for South Asia was established with Jo Elder as its director. The Center became an organ of International Institute eventually. In 2003, the summer language teaching evolved into a separate entity called South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI)). Mark Kenoyer, Professsor of Anthropology, is its director. Mark Kenoyer also became the director of Center for South Asia at the same time. Defining the functions of each of these entities is beyond the scope of this article but suffice to say that they all are involved in teaching and running the Telugu and other Indian language programs in University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

 

Jo Elder has been with the College Year In India program (currently operating under the auspices of International academic programs) since its inception and therefore one of the best sources for this article. Here is a summary of my interview with Jo Elder. The gist of my interview with Jo Elder is as follows.

 

At the time he joined UW, Hindi was the only Indian language taught. Students were going to Delhi under a study abroad program for further studies. The department was debating whether to add Tamil or Telugu. The following year, while he was in Lucknow on an AIIS fellowship, he was asked to be the administrator of the program in Delhi, and also to look in to the possibility of opening Telugu program in Hyderabad. Jo contacted  Bh. Krishnamurthy, Linguistics professor at Osmania University, and together they worked out a plan. Students went to Hyderabad in 1963-64 for the first time. Students were happy when Krishnamurthy taught but not so happy when the other teachers taught.

 

In 1969, Osmania university was shut down effectively by Telangana protests. The program was shifted to Andhra University in Waltair. K. Ramakrishna Rao, Chair, Department of Psychology, provided a much sounder setting for the daily use of Telugu. (Students were frustrated while in Hyderabad since they were more exposed to Urdu than Telugu there). It was in Waltair the Narayana Rao was discovered. For the first time since the program was launched in 1963, students said good things about the skills of their Telugu teacher. Bob Frykenberg, then Chair of the department,on learning that an exciting Telugu teacher was found, seized the initiative and brought Narayana Rao to Madison to teach Telugu here.

 

Bob Frykenberg, son of a missionary, grew up in Guntur, and had conducted extensive research in the history of the area. He encouraged his graduate students to study Telugu and continue research there. After his retirement, Telugu program lost graduate students.

 

The program was moved back to Hyderabad in 1992. Central University in Hyderabad set up a one-semester certificate program. Their program did not work well with the Wisconsin schedule though. For one thing, the class in Osmania started in August which was not in step with the summer session in Madison. And secondly, one semester was too short for students to settle down and learn the language effectively. The teaching arrangements there were less than satisfactory. 

 

Jo added that, "Over the years, we had some excellent teachers and then some not so great teachers. At one point students even questioned, "Why are we here if we can't learn Telugu?" That was tough. Thus the program "detracted in stead of attracting the students."  In 1996, the program hired their own teacher. Eventually, the program was shut down in 2001 because "we ran out of students." 

 

The Telugu program at UW has been getting students from three sources. First, Frykenberg's graduate students.

 

Second, the second language requirement for undergraduates. Joann Elder, Academic Advisor in Sociology (now retired), had been an ardent supporter of Telugu program during the years I taught. I asked her what prompted her to advise her advisees to study Telugu. Joann said, "As you know,  students need a second language. At that time, Swaheli was the easiest and that was filling up fast. Then I heard about a wonderful professor teaching Telugu, and so, I told the students if they would be adventurous enough to try Telugu, not only they would learn the language but also something about India. And eventually they may be motivated even to go to India. Your class was small and the individual attention was a big plus."

 

Third source was the College Year in India (CYIN) program. Under the program, students would study first-year Telugu (10-week, 10 credit course in the seventies and eighties) and go to Andhra to study second-year Telugu. A student monitor accompanied them, usually someone who had been to India under the same program and thus been familiar with the local customs and lifestyle. In later years, the monitors were replaced with full-time, full-fledged directors.

 

Jo Elder said that getting students enrolled in Telugu program had always been a big problem. "People have heard of Hindi and Varanasi but not Telugu. The question students would ask is, 'if I were to learn Hindi, Telugu or Tamil, which language gets me around in India?' And as you know, that would be Hindi." Thus, Jo would often scrutinize the applications and identigy possible candidates and convince them to study Telugu. He added that, after Tamil program was added in 1976 at UW, the competition for Telugu got stiffer. The only students that wanted to go to Hyderabad were those interested in Hindu-Muslim relationships or Kuchipudi, and that was very rare."

 

The College Year in India program in Andhra Pradesh was shut down in 2001. During the thirty-seven years, from 1963-64 to 2000-01, 218 students had been to Andhra Pradesh to study Telugu. The number in any given year was small, varying from 5 to 8 during academic year and 6 to 9 in summer sessions. A few South Asian scholars, such as Gene Roghair (his thesis was on Palnati Veera charitra), Jonathan Goldberg-Bell (on Ranganatha Ramayanam, and also on tolubommalaata {puppet show}) and Phil Waggoner emerged as South Asian scholars over the years. Some stayed with Telugu language and literature while a few moved to inter-disciplinary fields.

 

The South Asia Summer Language Institute offers a 8-week program, equivalent of one academic year language study. Students will get 8 credits. Hindi and Tamil students go to Varanasi and Madurai (CYIN) to continue their second-year language studies. As stated earlier, Telugu program in India (study abroad) is not in operation currently. I asked Jo Elder about reviving the program. Jo said he would gladly send students to Andhra Pradesh again. In response to my question what needs to be done, Jo replied, "Unlike other campuses, the Telugu program here is a part of the entire program, and we get funding for the entire program as one entity. Thus, we can run the program even with small numbers. Our main concern is finding a full-time director, partially or fully funded by Wisconsin, in order to run the program effectively in Andhra. We have found good directors for Varanasi and Madurai but not for Hyderabad."  

 

Teaching Materials:

For foreigners to learn Telugu, lack of proper teaching materials is another problem. Some of the materials developed in UW-Madison campus are getting dated. Dan Matson, probably the first professor to teach Telugu at UW, and G.N. Reddy, professor of Telugu from Tirupati, developed teaching materials in the late sixties. They put together two books, Graded Readings in Modern Literary Telugu and Glossary to the Graded Readings in Modern Literary Telugu in 1967. The first book included stories by established writers like Kodavati Kutumba Rao, Chalam, Palagummi Padmaraju, Sripada Subrahanya Sastry, and Potukuchi Sambasiva Rao. The second book contained meanings for words, an index and elaborate notes.

   

While the College Year in India program was in Waltair, Narayana Rao tried to develop teaching materials that could help students "teach themselves" with the help of faculty members with no training in teaching Telugu as a second language. In 1976, he produced An Introductory Grammar of Telugu for the summer classes, and Telugu Daari, 2 volumes, for the use of first and second-year Telugu students during their stay in Waltair. Jo Elder has been keeping copies of all these materials.

 

Telugu Collection in Memorial Library
Mary Rader, South Asian Bibliographer at Memorial Library, stated in her monograph on South Asian Library Collections and Services,[1] that the Telugu collection in our library is second in the country (excluding Library of Congress). Out of the 23,213 titles in Dravidian languages, Telugu language boasts of 14,440 books and back volumes of well-known magazines such as Bharati literary monthly (1964-71, 1989-91), and weekly magazines such as Andhra Patrika (1963-1991), Andhra Prabha (1974-2004) and Andhra Jyothi (1974-2000), (with a few missing volumes in between). There may be a few more volumes in the processing department. Daily newspapers were available first as hard copies and later in microfilm format. Based on the data furnished by Mary Rader, the imprints date back to 1901, and the strongest in the imprints of sixties through the nineties. (1960-1969: 3044; 1970-1979: 2769; 1980-1989: 2731; 1990-1999: 2809). As most Telugu people would know, these decades were also the times when Telugu fiction--both writing and publishing--flourished dramatically. (I rely heavily on this collection for stories for translations on this site). Mary Rader said that the library continues to subcribe to a few periodicals such as Andhraprabha, Jyoti, Katha, Sravanti,Svati, and Telugu parisodhana.

 

Learning Support System

At the high-tech end, the Learning Support System provides audio and video equipment to the faculty and students to create audio and video files. The Biology New Medical Center has excellent facilities for video editing and wonderful staff to help even a novice in video editing. Last summer, our Telugu students produced a video of the story of Sravana kumara (an episode from Ramayanam). This year student made a video of his village and family. Thus Telugu learning on Madison campus goes beyond replicating a few phrases in Telugu,  and moves more and more toward real life environment and high-tech teaching methods.

 

On a personal note, I started teaching in the summer of 1978. I continued to teach both summer, and fall for the next 12 years. I prepared handouts, initially, based on Narayana Rao's grammar book, and soon, started preparing my own materials. Each year is a new learning experience, and each year I produce materials correlated to the everyday language and to the aptitude and interests of the students.

 

Currently, I am working on my book, Telugu Palukubadi, which includes elementary grammar, examples of colloquial Telugu, and stories written specifically correlated to students' interests and levels. In that, my approach is slightly different from my predecessors. I am also developing audio and video files to complement the book. SASLI has a website where the stories and projects are posted, available for viewing by university faculty and students only.

 

After some reflection, I am convinced that the teachers, knowledgeable in the methods of teaching Telugu to non-native speakers (including the heritage students who grew up in the States) and the enrollment in Telugu courses are major concerns for the program to run effectively. Within the context, the issue of enrollment seems to be even a bigger issue.

 

In the late seventies and eighties when I was teaching, I noticed that the heritage students enrolled in Telugu classes for one of the two reasons: Either because their parents wanted them to; or, because they thought it would be a breeze since they knew the language, which turned out to be a misconception. Now, after nearly 15 years, I am seeing heritage students coming in with a totally different attitude. Both last year and this year, the students were eager to learn the language, a welcome and plausible change. 

 

As stated at the outset, the Telugu communities in several cities in America have been striving to cherish their language and culture. In recent years, they are also working toward establishing Telugu programs on other campuses.

 

The Telugu program in Wisconsin is one of the strongest programs in the country, and over the years, has had the support of several South Asian scholars from various departments in America and India. Telugu people may offer support by identifying prospective students and offering financial aid to study the language here and in India.

 

The Telugu communities in America are in a better position to reach out to the non-native speakers and create an environment in which fewer Americans would ask "Who speaks Telugu?" Telugu associations may invite non-Telugu youth to their annual and bi-annual conferencess, or conduct essay-writing competitions on Telugu language and culture in area schools and colleges, which may in turn be a motivating factor for non-heritage students to learn the language.

 

Update: After I started teaching last month, I have learned a few more things about the program. One of them is that the pedagogy of teaching the Less Commonly Taught Languages has become a major force in reshaping the methods of teaching Dravidian languages among others. The emphasis on teaching a language in the target language has gotten increasingly important. Now the buzz word is teaching the language based on real-life situations, task-based activities requiring student-pariticipation and the use of multi-media technology. I am not yet sure what this means to heritage students who already learned the language from their parents, grandparents and during their brief visits to the native place.

 

Let's hope that this new approach gives a new impetus to non-native speakers as well as the second generation Telugu youth to learn the language spoken by over 80 million people in the world. And also hope that the Telugu communities would focus more on promoting Telugu language and culture among people of other cultures. Encouraging current generation students needs to be done at both the levels--educating them about our culture and offering financial aid.

 

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To study Telugu, learn more about the Telugu program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and/or to support the program, follow the links:

 

Center for South Asia: http://www.southasia.wisc.edu/newsletter/sasianstudies.html.

Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia: http://lca.wisc.edu/aboutlca/aboutlca.htm.

South Asia Summer Language Institute: http://www.wisc.edu/SASLI.

Gifts and endowments: http://www.southasia.wisc.edu/fundraising.html.. (Gifts may be earmarked specifically 'for Telugu students')