User:S.N.Sridhar

Professor Sridhar has been a member of the faculty at Stony Brook University since 1980. Born in Shimoga, Karnataka, India, Professor Sridhar received a Master’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics, and securing a first class and the first rank for Bangalore University. He studied for the Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana with renowned scholars such as Braj B. and Yamuna Kachru and Charles E. Osgood. He has conducted extensive research in descriptive, theoretical and applied linguistics, including bilingualism, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, and World Englishes. Sridhar is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on the linguistics of his native language, Kannada, and has been influential in several areas of Indian and applied linguistics. He has authored three books, Kannada Grammar (Routledge and Manohar), Cognition and Sentence Production (Springer), and Indina Kannada (“Contemporary Kannada, ” Kannada University and Abhinava), co-edited two reference volumes, Ananya: A Portrait of India (AIA) and Language in South Asia (Cambridge), and several special issues of journals. His works have been widely cited and reprinted. Professor’s research has been supported by grants the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education and the American Institute of Indian Studies. He has been designated Senior/Superior Scholar in the Humanities by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has organized and been keynote speaker at many international conferences, and served on editorial board of journals and as evaluator for linguistics and Asian studies programs and funding agencies. He is co-founder of the leading organization of South Asian linguists, South Asian Languages Analysis (SALA). He has been contributing to the teaching and research in linguistics at several Indian universities.

Professor Sridhar co-founded the Center for India Studies at the Stony Brook University, serving as its Director from 1997-2002 and again 2008 to the present. In developing the Center as a model of university-community partnership for academic, social and cultural enrichment, Professor Sridhar has successfully mobilized the Indian community in the New York City metropolitan area in support of a multi-dimensional program of India Studies. The Center helps teach some 30 courses on India per year, sponsors distinguished Lecture and Performing Arts series, conferences, and Outreach Programs for school teachers, museums, public libraries, interfaith centers and civic organizations, conducts a Study Abroad program in Bangalore, offers scholarships, and hosts a rich reference library. Ananya: A Portrait of India, edited by Professor Sridhar and  Dr. Nirmal Mattoo, and published by the Association of Indians in America, has been acclaimed as a splendid one-volume resource on Indian civilization with 41 chapters by world authorities. The Center is consulted regularly by major media, and was the chief consultant for the nationally broadcast PBS documentary, Asian Indians in America. Stony Brook’s former President Shirley Strum Kenny described the Center for India Studies as “the Jewel in the Crown of Stony Brook.”

Professor Sridhar also successfully spearheaded the faculty effort for establishment of a new Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at Stony Brook, and served as its Founding Chair from 2002-8. The department teaches some 100 courses per year.

Prior to the establishment of the Center, Professor Sridhar founded the India Society at Stony Brook in 1989 and served as its President until 1995. He has also been active in other civic organizations, including Kannada Koota of New York and the Association of Indians in America.