The Department of South Asian Studies is the principal unit within the School of Arts and Sciences for teaching and research on South Asia at Penn and offers a number of modern and classical South Asian languages, as well as courses in a variety of fields related to South Asia. The Department is comprised of faculty with diverse expertise in the languages, literatures, histories, cultures, religions and arts of the subcontinent. The MA in South Asian Studies is intended to give students a broad background knowledge of South Asia and further their competence in an Asian language so that they may enter a career in business, law, non-profit or government work. It may also be used to prepare for application to a PhD program for those students who have insufficient linguistic or scholarly background in South Asia.