Sai Bhatawadekar

Professor
Indo-Pacific Languages & Cultures, Theatre & Dance, Asian Studies, and Philosophy

Sai Bhatawadekar is a Professor in the College of Arts, Languages & Letters, and shares her appointment(s) and expertise with Departments of Indo-Pacific Languages & Cultures, Theatre & Dance, Asian Studies, and Philosophy. In the field of second language acquisition, she teaches Hindi-Urdu (and has previously taught German) and is working on pedagogy of care and creativity, Project Based Language Learning, and Digital Storytelling, for which she has received a US Department of Education grant (2023-26, $127,000/-). In theater, dance, and film studies, she is an award winning theater director, choreographer, lyricist and music co-composer (A Midsummer Night’s Bollywood Dream 2019, RRegh 2021) and singer, dancer, poet, translator, and short film maker. She teaches Hindi film history, analysis, and Bollywood dance and produces an annual Indian dance concert at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Her publications include Marathi theater, German-Indian connections, and film adaptations of literature. In philosophy and religion, she works on 19th century German philosophical interpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism, philosophy of the unsayable, and decolonial methodologies. This includes a Templeton Foundation grant on cross-religious understanding (2014, 97,520/-). She has published on Hegel on Islam, Schopenhauer on Advaita, and what she calls “Philo-Selfie” as a methodology. She has won numerous awards for her creative teaching pedagogy and practice, including the Board of Regents Medal of Excellence in Teaching (2012-13) and the Innovation and Impact Showcase (2023-24).