South
Asian Religions and Cultures
Research Focus Group
Past Events 2006-2007
Planning Meeting, South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group
Monday, December 4, 6:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Will Glover, Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan
Is There Such a Thing as Sikh Architecture?
Wednesday, February 14, 12:30 pm
1414 Bren Hall
Farina Mir, History, University of Michigan
Fiction as Historical Archive? Reconfiguring Inquiry into India’s Colonial Past
Wednesday, February 14, 3:00 pm
3024 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Juan Campo, Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Between Mecca and Malabar: Pilgrimage in the Formation of Muslim and Hindu Identities in the Indian Ocean Region
Wednesday, February 21, 3:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Inderjit N. Kaur, Sikh Music Heritage Institute, Santa Cruz
What is Sikh Sacred Music? The Nature and Role of Music in Sikh Traditions
Monday, March 5, 12:30 pm
1414 Bren Hall
Scott Marcus, Music, University of California, Santa Barbara
Now “Ladies” Also Sing: Gender Politics in Post-1990 Biraha, A North Indian Folk Music Tradition
Friday, March 9, 3:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Judith M. Brown, History, Balliol College, Oxford University
Britain's Changing Religious Landscape: The Impact of South Asian Migration
Thursday, April 12, 7:00 pm
Founders Room, Westmont College, 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara
Erasmus Society Lecture Series, Westmont College
Judith M. Brown, History, Balliol College, Oxford University
South Asian Historiography: Current Trends and Future Trajectories
Friday, April 13, 4:00 pm
Location to Be Announced
Screening of the Bengali Film Herbert, Followed by a Discussion with the Film’s Director, Suman Mukhopadhyay
Tuesday, April 24, 6:00-9:00 pm
1701 Theater Dance
Tracy Pintchman, Religious Studies, Loyola University Chicago
New Voices, New Challenges, and New Opportunities in Hindu Studies
Wednesday, May 9, 3:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Rajkamal Kahlon, IHC Visiting Artist
You Said It Wouldn't Hurt: Revisualizing (South Asian)
History through the Grotesque
Wednesday, May 16, 4:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Past Events 2005-2006
Conference on South Asian Studies in the United
States
December 2, 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
Multicultural Center Theater
This conference served to inaugurate our newly established IHC Research Focus Group in South Asian Religions and Cultures. The conference featured nine eminent scholars from around the country reflecting on significant developments in South Asian studies in the United States during the past fifty years. Funding for the conference was provided by the UCSB Center for Sikh and Punjabi Studies.
Planning Meeting, South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group
Friday, January 27, 3:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Following our successful inaugural conference on South Asian Studies in the United States in the fall, we invited all interested faculty and graduate students to join us on Friday, January 27, for a planning meeting of the South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group. We discussed the program of RFG meetings for the winter and spring quarters as well as plans for the group’s activities for the coming years.
Olle Qvarnström, History of Religions, Lund University, Sweden
The Jaina-Mimamsa Debate on Omniscience
Tuesday, February 28, 6:00 pm
2252 Humanities and Social Science Building
The lecture examined contending constructions of omniscience in Jain and Purva-Mimamsa philosophical traditions. Olle Qvarnström is Professor of the History of Religions at Lund University, Sweden. One of the foremost scholars of Jainism, his work explores the intersections of Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. His publications include The Yogasastra of Hemacandra: A Twelfth-Century Handbook on Svetambara Jainism, Hindu Philosophy in Buddhist Perspective, and two edited volumes, Jainism and Early Buddhism: Essays in Honor of Padmanabh S. Jaini and Approaches to Jaina Studies: Philosophy, Logic, Rituals and Symbols.
Linda Hess, Religious Studies, Stanford University
Kabir Says, “Listen!” Bringing the Oral-Performative into Textual Studies in India
Friday, March 3, 2:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
After a brief reflection on the bias towards text-based methods in Religious Studies, the lecture addressed the all-pervasive importance of oral transmission, music, and other performance forms in the bhakti (devotional) poetry of North India. The lecture focused more specifically on the case of Kabir, in which the original poetry was orally composed and oral traditions have been continuous—although ever more complicated in their interactions with written and other recorded forms—for nearly 600 years. Linda Hess teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University. A specialist in Hindu traditions, her research focuses on the poetry of North India's great fifteenth- and sixteenth-century bhakti poets, the modes of performance and reception of their works, and their ongoing popularity and influence in contemporary India. Her publications include The Bijak of Kabir and articles on the interpretation and performance of the Ramayana.
Moinak Biswas, Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta
The City and the Citizen: Forms in Bengali and Bombay Cinema of the 1950s
Friday, April 28, 1:00 pm
6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
The lecture explored how the rise to stardom of Uttam Kumar (1926-1980)—who is considered the most successful actor in Bengali cinema—coincided with the fashioning of a new melodrama in Bengal and Bombay in the wake of Indian independence. The lecture examined the key films of the 1950s to read the traces of a project of inventing the citizen-body through cinema in a "regional culture," asking what it means for such a culture to return to a modern inheritance. Moinak Biswas is Reader in the Department of Film Studies at Jadavpur University, Calcutta. He writes on Indian cinema and culture and has contributed to various journals and anthologies. His publications include two edited volumes of Bengali writings by Hemango Biswas and the forthcoming Apu and After: Revisiting Ray's Cinema. He is editor of the Journal of the Moving Image, an annual publication of Jadavpur University. (This lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Film Studies, the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.)
Isabelle Clark-Decès, Anthropology, Princeton University
Between Culture and Consciousness: On the Role of Effigies in Tamil Rituals
Friday, May 19, 3:00 pm
2252 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
In this lecture Isabelle Clark-Decès explored new paradigms for the study of South Asian rituals, drawing on her field research on a Tamil ritual that is performed in times of drought. While the overt purpose of the ritual is to bring about rain, she argued that its covert design is to raise consciousness and enable participants to touch the roots of their existence. A comparative framework was provided through showing how the drought elimination ritual is structurally similar to another Tamil “removal” ritual. Isabelle Clark-Decès is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Tamilnadu in South India where she has investigated practices related to spirit possession, sorcery, and sacrifice. Her research explores the experiential force of symbols, the transformative capacities of ritual processes, and the relations between cosmology, society, and self. Her publications include Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals (as Isabelle Nabokov) and No One Cries for the Dead: Tamil Dirges, Rowdy Songs, and Graveyard Petitions.
Paul Muller-Ortega, Professor of Religion, University of Rochester
Tantric Studies: Current Trends and Future Trajectories
Friday, June 2, 3:00 pm
2252 Humanities and Social Science Building CANCELED
The lecture will interrogate dominant paradigms in the study of Tantric traditions and will explore shifting trends and future trajectories in this important field in South Asian studies. Paul Muller-Ortega is Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester. This eminent scholar of South Asian tantric traditions is the author of The Triadic Heart of Shiva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir and co-author of Meditation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha Yoga Lineage. He is currently completing a book on Saiva pilgrimage traditions, Linga Pilgrimage: Meditations on Shiva as Consciousness, and a collection of essays on theoretical and methodological issues in the study of Hindu Tantra, Yogini Born: Tantraloka Studies and Reflections on the Hindu Tantra.
