Samuel H. Yamashita (History, Pomona College) Friday, April 23 / 4:00 PM HSSB 4020 Samuel H. Yamashita is the Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History at Pomona College and an author of numerous publications on Japanese intellectual history including Leaves from An Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the...
James Fenelon (Sociology, CSU San Bernardino) Thursday, April 22 / 4:00PM Flying A Studios Room, UCEN American Indian and Native Nation struggles over cultural sovereignty are related to conflicts that Indigenous Peoples are involved with globally: over autonomy, land and resource rights, and about the very nature of...
Rogers Brubaker (Sociology, UCLA) Monday, April 19 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Brubaker will return to his influential book, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe, to reflect upon changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of...
The Second Biannual Ancient Borderlands International Graduate Student Conference Friday, April 16 / 1:00 - 6:00 pm Saturday, April 17 / 8:30 am - 4:15 pm Sunday, April 18 / 8:30 am – 2:00 pm McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB BORDERLANDS: frontier zones lying along given boundaries,...
Percy C. Hintzen (African American Studies, UC Berkeley) Friday, April 16 / 4:00 PM HSSB 1174 It is critical for the theorizing and conceptualizing of African diaspora to ask the question: "Why Diaspora?" There is much to be gained from an examination of the work the term does...
Karen Lee Ashcraft (University of Colorado, Boulder) Thursday, April 15 / 4:00 PM Lane Room, Ellison Hall 3824 Management scholars commonly ask how people find meaning in work. Few ask how work is known by its practitioners in a different sense: namely, how work is understood in terms...
Ian Lindsay (Anthropology, UCSB) Monday, 10 April, 5:30 pm McCune Conference Room...
Elizabeth Klarich (Anthropology, UCSB) Monday, April 10 / 5:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB...
Michael Jochim (Anthropology, UCSB) Monday, March 13 / 5:00 PM McCune Conference Room...
Laura Edmondson (Theater, Dartmouth) Thursday, March 11 / 5:00 PM Buchanan Hall 1940 Laura Edmondson is a scholar and playwright whose work focuses on East Africa. Her articles on Tanzanian and Ugandan theater have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Research International, TDR: The Drama Review, and the anthologies...
Steven Topik (History, UC Irvine) Tuesday, March 2 / 12:00 PM 4020 HSSB Professor Steven Topik concentrates on world history, with an emphasis on Latin American and especially Brazilian history. His latest works focus on commodities as a means of studying world history and include The Second Conquest...
Chan Park (East Asian Languages and Literatures, Ohio State) Kathy Foley (Theater Arts, UCSC) Wednesday, February 24 / 5:00 PM Studio Theater Intertwined Lives is a collaborative performance between Kathy Foley, a noted puppeteer and mask artist of Southeast Asian and Korean material, and Chan Park, an internationally known...
Anthony Barbieri-Low (History, UCSB) Wednesday, February 24 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB The transmissions of a vast number of artmotifs, technologies, and cultural traits from West to East in prehistoric period was due to the speed of communications and trading networks across the Eurasian Steppes...
Anne-Marie Legaré (Histoire de l’Art, Université de Lille-III) Olga Karaskova (Histoire de l’Art, Université de Lille-III) Monday, February 22 / 4:00 PM IHC Seminar Room, HSSB 6056 This event will feature two talks by visiting scholars from Université de Lille-III, Professor Anne-Marie Legaré (Histoire de l’Art) will discuss “Refashioning...
Bonnie Crouse (Dining Services, UCSB) David Cleveland (Environmental Studies, UCSB) Monday, February 22 / 1:00 PM IHC Seminar Room, HSSB 6056 Bonnie Crouse with be present a talk entitled, "UCSB Dining Services' Sustainability Initiative." A representative from Dining Services will discuss their sustainability initiative and will address issues such...
Paul Spickard (History, UCSB) Friday, February 19 / 12:00 PM Lane Rm, 3rd fl. Ellison Hall Professor Paul Spickard is a specialist on Race and Ethnicity in the United States and in comparative international perspective. An award-winning teacher, among his many books are Japanese Americans: The Formation and...
Johanna Drucker Friday, February 19 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Our understanding of the way the graphical organization of codex books supports functionality has increased dramatically in the era of digital design activity. The analysis of format features and design elements in print, once approached...
Saloni Mathur (Art History, University of California, Los Angeles) Wednesday, February 17 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Professor Mathur’s lecture revisited the legacy of Amrita Sher-Gil, the part-Indian/part-Hungarian painter who stands at the cosmopolitan helm of modern Indian art, by focusing on...
John W. I. Lee (History, UCSB) Monday, February 13 / 5:00 PM McCune Conference Room...
Alexander Huang (Comparative Literature and Asian Studies, Penn State University) Wednesday, February 10 / 5:00 PM Theater and Dance 2517 Shakespeare is a frequent traveler to Asia, and for nearly two centuries, East Asian theater directors and filmmakers have engaged Shakespeare in a wide range of contexts...
Megan Carney (Anthropology, UCSB) Stefanie Stauffer (Sociology, UCSB) Monday, February 8 / 2:00 PM SSMS 3122 Megan Carney’s “Food Sovereignty Movements: Implications for Gender Inequality, Citizenship and the Human Right to Food” examines repercussions of food insecurity in the United States, in particular, the experience of households in...
David Laitin (Political Science, Stanford) Thursday, February 4 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Rm, 6020 HSSB David D. Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. Among his many influential books and articles are Nations, States and Violence...
Moon-Kie Jung (Asian American Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) Wednesday, February 3 / 4:00 PM MultiCultural Center Theater Against the prevalent assumption that the United States is a nation-state, the US is reconceptualized here as an empire-state. In addition to being descriptively more apt, this shift provides a...
Bishnupriya Ghosh (English, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, February 3 / 4:00 PM 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Icons have a glittering life in South Asia, both as enduring images and as fleeting ephemera. We have lengthy and erudite studies of liturgical icons as well as...
Wade Clark Roof (Religious Studies, UCSB) Tuesday, February 2 / 2:00 PM IHC Seminar Room, HSSB 6056 Professor Roof is a leading sociologist of American religion. He will be speaking about his current project on the “new progressive religious movement,” particularly in southern California. Using a multi-dimensional methodology...
Michele Back (Hispanic Studies, UC-Riverside) Friday, January 29 / 1:30 PM Education 1205 One way in which newcomers may access a target language community is by emphasizing the relevance of their own life experiences to that community, in this way validating these experiences and creating a shared meaning...
Stephan Miescher (History, UCSB) Thursday, January 28 / 12:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Within the field of African history, scholars have just begun to historicize Africa’s postcolonial era, roughly marked by the independence of Ghana in 1957 to the present. This new endeavor presents significant methodological...
David White (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, January 27 / 3:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building David White discussed his 2009 book Sinister Yogis, a historical reconstruction of the history of yoga through the lens of its agents, the yogis of...
Satoko Shimazaki (Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Colorado) Wednesday, January 20 / 5:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Tsuruya Nanboku’s Tōkaidō Yotsuya kaidan (Eastern Seaboard Highway, Ghost Story at Yotsuya, 1825), featuring the disfigured ghost of Oiwa, is one of the most sensational and visually oriented...
Greg Levine (Art History, UC Berkeley) Monday, January 11 / 4:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB “Everyone’s looking for something.” Some of us have found it, or part of it, in Zen Art, though the types of things we look at, the way we talk about them,...
Stuart Smith, (Anthropology, UCSB) Monday, January 9 / 5:00 PM McCune Conference Room...
William Fierman (Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University) Wednesday, January 6 / 4:00 PM Lane Room, third floor, Ellison Hall William Fierman is Professor of Central Eurasian Studies and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. Professor Fierman is the author of Language Planning and National Development:...
Mary Hancock (Anthropology and History, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, November 18 / 4:00 pm 3024 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This presentation focused on the history of visual anthropology and its current theoretical and methodological agendas. Particular attention was paid to visual anthropology in/of...
Sunday, November 8, 2009 On November 8, 2009, New Sexualities hosted a transdisciplinary, international workshop and panel on Sexuality and Islam in Europe and the Middle East. Panelists Paul Amar (Global Studies, UCSB) Janet Afary (Religious Studies, UCSB), and Fatima El-Tayeb (African American Literature and Culture,...
Brice Erickson (Classics, UCSB) Wednesday, October 29 / 5:00 pm 2001a HSSB, Anthropology Seminar Room...
Thursday-Saturday, May 24-26 McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Keynote address: Ama Ata Aidoo Thursday, May 24 / 4:00 PM Hatlen Theater...
Rohit Singh (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Friday, May 22 / 4:00 pm 3024 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Drawing on historical and popular sources, the lecture examined representations of Buddhist and Islamic traditions in Ladakh. Most sources depict the region as a Buddhist...
Mark McLaughlin (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Friday, May 15 / 4:00 pm 3024 Humanities and Social Sciences Building In Hindu liturgical texts and architectural treatises a temple space is understood as the embodied presence of the deity who is housed within, and the deity is...
Luis Oscar Gómez (Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mexico) Michaelsen Endowed Visiting Scholar Wednesday, May 6 / 4:00 pm 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Silence and abstinence appear in the ideals and practices of a wide variety of religious traditions. Following...
Shalini Kakar (History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara) Friday, February 27 / 4:00 pm 3024 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture investigated the phenomenon of “devotional fandom” in the Rajinikanth Fan Club (RFC), exploring the ways in which the over 60,000 fan club...
Suman Mukhopadhyay (Director) Friday, December 5 / 7:00 pm 1701 Theater Dance Chaturanga, based on the novel by Rabindranath Tagore, is Suman Mukhopadhyay's second feature film. It is being screened at this year’s Montreal World Film Festival and Sao Paolo International Film Festival. Suman Mukhopadhyay has worked...
Pankaj Rishi Kumar (Director) Monday, November 3 / 7:00 pm 1004 Girvetz Pankaj Rishi Kumar’s film is a journey into the sweet science of boxing as practiced by two Indian women. The film unfolds as they wrestle with their day-to-day existence as boxers and the conflicts...
Michael Radich (Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) Monday, June 9 / 4:00 pm 2252 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture presented a significant revisioning of the history of Buddhist notions of the Buddha’s bodies. Through an examination of evidence from three disparate sources that...
Olle Qvarnström (History of Religions, Lund University, Sweden) Friday, May 23 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture examined constructions of embodiment in Jain traditions. Particular attention was given to the dietary regimens, sexual practices, purity regulations, and psychophysical disciplines through which...
Knut A. Jacobsen (History of Religions, University of Bergen, Norway) Wednesday, April 16 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This lecture explored the public display of religious bodies in various types of processions in the contemporary South Asian diaspora, with a particular focus...
June McDaniel (Religious Studies, College of Charleston) Friday, March 7 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This lecture explored important issues concerning ethnographic fieldwork methods in the study of South Asian religions. Drawing on her fieldwork in West Bengal, McDaniel discussed a range...
Kendall Busse (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, February 20 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture examined the nature of divine embodiment in the Mahabharata through an analysis of the terminology used to portray divine bodies and a comparison...
Amandeep Sandhu (Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, January 30 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Amandeep Sandhu’s lecture presented his research findings on cultural changes among Indian call center workers performing global service work in Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley. His lecture...
Rajkamal Kahlon (IHC Visiting Artist) Wednesday, May 16 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Rajkamal Kahlon is a New York-based artist whose work interrogates forms of colonial and racial authority in her dialectical engagement with historical texts. Kahlon’s lecture focused on her current...
Tracy Pintchman (Religious Studies, Loyola University Chicago) Wednesday, May 9 / 3:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building In recent decades a great deal of attention has been devoted to critiquing nineteenth and early twentieth century Western Indological scholarship and its Orientalist and colonialist discourses...
Suman Mukhopadhyay (Director) Tuesday, April 24 / 6:00 pm 1701 Theater Dance Suman Mukhopadhyay’s debut feature film Herbert is based on Nabarun Bhattacharya’s novel of the same name, which won the highest literary prize in India. The film has received numerous awards, including the Dhaka International...
Judith M. Brown (History, Balliol College, Oxford University) Erasmus Society Lecture Series, Westmont College Thursday, April 12 / 7:00 pm Founders Room, Westmont College, 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara The lecture explored the impact of South Asian immigrants, including Muslims, Sikhs, and Muslims, in transforming...
Scott Marcus (Music, University of California, Santa Barbara) Friday, March 9 / 3:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Biraha is a folk music genre of the Bhojpuri region of North India situated across eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar. The genre, created in the early...
Inderjit N. Kaur (Sikh Music Heritage Institute, Santa Cruz) Monday, March 5 / 12:30 pm 1414 Bren Hall The lecture addressed two questions: what is Sikh sacred music, and what is Sikh about this music? The answer to both questions derives from the special nature of...
Juan Campo (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, February 21 / 3:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture focused on Muslim and Hindu interactions in pilgrimages in the South Indian region of Malabar (present-day Kerala) and their connections with the Hajj...
Farina Mir (History, University of Michigan) Wednesday, February 14 / 3:00 pm 3024 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture explored two themes: the relationship between literature and history, and the nature of gender relations in late colonial India. The lecture examined whether our understanding of...
Will Glover (Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan) Wednesday, February 14 / 12:30 pm 1414 Bren Hall The lecture sought to illumine the distinctive nature of Sikh architecture. After surveying the repertoire of forms, colors, and bulding elements that are shared by Sikh buildings, Hindu...
Isabelle Clark-Decès (Anthropology, Princeton University) 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...
Moinak Biswas (Film Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta) 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...
Linda Hess (Religious Studies, Stanford University) 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...
Olle Qvarnström (History of Religions, Lund University, Sweden) 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...
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 for a planning meeting of the South...
Friday, 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...