Sai Bhatawadekar, Ph.D.

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Dr. Sai Bhatawadekar is a Professor in the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages & Literatures and Graduate Faculty in the Departments of Theatre & Dance, Asian Studies, and Philosophy. She also served as the Director of the Center for South Asian Studies (2016–2021). 

In Language acquisition her work includes:

• Hindi-Urdu and German language pedagogy
• Digital Storytelling: $127,000 U.S. Department of Education Grant (2023–2026)
• Creative Project-Based, Performance-Based, and Person-Based Language Learning: writing and performing poetry, plays, parodies, and sketch-comedies; creating children’s books; making short films, telling autobiographical stories, etc.
• Co-editorship and publications on pedagogy of care and creativity, poetry writing in the second language classroom, and language and peace studies
• Interdisciplinary program building: creating new Hindi programs, teaching, and developing online text-and workbooks at The Ohio State University (2001–2008), University of Hawaiʻi (2009–present)
• Board of Regents Medal (2013), Master Teacher Award (2017), Innovation and Impact Showcase (2024)

In Film, Theater, and Dance her work includes:

• A Midsummer Night’s Bollywood Dream, Kennedy Mainstage Play/Musical, University of Hawaiʻi (2019): co-director, choreographer, Hindi lyricist, music supervisor/co-composer, singer, dramaturge, translator, language coach. Awards: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts American College Theater Festival VII Meritorious Achievement Award, The Hawaiʻi State Theatre Council’s Poʻokela Awards
• RRegh, Kennedy Mainstage and Earle Ernst Lab Theatre (2021, 2024): choreographer. Awards: national selection for the American College Dance Association’s Gala Concert (2022)
• Annual Indian dance concerts and other performances at the Honolulu Museum of Art: producer, director, choreographer, teacher, dancer (2017–present)
• Short films: filmmaker, director, cinematographer, editor
• Expertise in Weimar and New German Cinema, Wim Wenders, Hindi cinema, Hindi film analysis, music, and dance
• Publications on Vijay Tendulkar, Pu. La. Deshpande, Brecht in Marathi, Indian playwrights in world literature and translation studies, transnational Bollywood
• Public humanities and community building: using dance to bridge academia and the community

In Philosophy her work includes:

• German-Indian comparative and cross-cultural philosophy, intellectual history, and history of ideas
• G. W. F. Hegel’s and Arthur Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Hinduism
• Decolonial methodologies
• Apophatic discourse and negative theology: $97,520 Templeton Foundation Grant (2014)
• Publications on Hegel’s interpretation of Islam, Hegel on Hinduism, Schopenhauer on tat tvam asi, Philo-Selfie approach to German-Indian studies, cross-cultural methodologies, philosophy of the unsayable

Professor Bhatawadekar considers it her strength, joy, and privilege to be able to combine scholarly and creative research in fundamentally interdisciplinary ways and bring it to her teaching practice and public humanities. Her “field” therefore is not one or the other, but rather a convergence of it all that lets her explore Indian languages and cultures in global dynamics.