South Asian Religions and Cultures RFG

21 Oct

Research Focus Group Talk: Preserving Biodiversity: Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain Religious Cultures in Lumbini, Nepal

Arjun Kurmi will discuss how environmental activists in Lumbini, Nepal appeal to local religious cultures and spiritual values to promote the protection of wildlife, especially the regal Sarus Cranes, and motivate tree-planting and other environmental protection measures. Arjun Kurmi is an environmental activist and founder of...

09:51 /

03 Jun

Research Focus Group Talk: American Jadoo: Fakers, Fakirs, and Asian American Performing Artists

In this talk, Shreeyash Palshikar will analyze images of Indian magic in American popular culture. He will highlight the little-known stories and images of the first Indian magicians to perform in the United States and consider the American performers—black and white—who also donned Indian costumes,...

16:17 /

03 Jun

Research Focus Group Talk: Sonic Spatiality in Sacred Spaces: An Analysis of Resonance in South Indian Temples

Sound has long played a central role in Hindu worship, with Vedic chants, bells, conch-shells, and gongs shaping the spiritual soundscape. Unlike the time-domain focus typical in Western religious acoustics, Hindu rituals emphasize frequency-rich sounds, forming what we term a “frequency domain soundscape of worship.”...

16:09 /

12 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: Reason/Rationality Versus Wisdom/Mysticism in Jainism and Indian Thought

On November 14, as part of the inaugural celebration of the Bhagvan Vimalnath Endowed Chair in Jain Studies and South Asian Religions at UC Santa Barbara, we will welcome our new colleague, Anil Mundra, as the inaugural holder of the Endowed Chair. The celebration will...

14:38 /

12 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: On the Problem of (Re-)Activity: Mobilizing Media with the Sikh Diaspora

A common refrain in political rhetoric is the charge that given instances of agonism are defective because they are in some crucial way reactive. However, “reactivity” is polysemous and opaque, despite any seeming transparency implied by the fluency by which it is so often attributed....

14:08 /

28 May

RFG Talk: Seeking Mirabai: The Making of a Saint and Cultural Heroine

In this talk, Nancy Martin will trace the making of the sixteenth-century royal rajput devotee Mirabai into a saint and cultural heroine through the varied portrayals of her across the centuries found in hagiography, rajput historiography, nationalist rhetoric, and oral epic song traditions. She will...

13:21 /

28 May

RFG Talk: The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan

Pakistan is today a Muslim country, and it has been so for nearly a thousand years. But before that, Buddhism thrived in the area known today as Pakistan, especially in the regions of Gandhara, Gilgit, and Baltistan. In this talk, José Cabezón will explore the...

13:05 /

15 Mar

RFG Talk: Bhakti and Its Place in Subaltern India

In this talk, Maharshi Vyas will explore the intersection of studies of Adivasis, Indigenous tribal communities in India, and theorizations of the category of bhakti (devotion) in South Asian Studies. Drawing on archival materials and ethnographic research, he will seek to provide hermeneutical space to...

14:29 /

05 Mar

RFG Talk: Buddhists Whisper Down the Lane: A Burmese Novel and a Nepalese Nun Lost and Found in Translation

This talk by Christoph Emmrich follows the cascading series of translations into three languages, over a period of half a century, from 1963 to 2016, of the story, told by a leading Burmese poet, historian, and monastic manager, about a feisty Newar Buddhist adolescent girl...

13:20 /

10 Oct

Research Focus Group Talk: Thanatofuturism: Making Space for the Marginal at a Tomb Shrine in Bangalore

In the middle of Bangalore, India, a small dargah (Sufi tomb shrine) is a space of possibility for multiple marginalized groups, facilitating imagined futures that include Muslims, subaltern Hindus, Dalits, and hijras as full citizens of the Indian polity. At a time when powerful actors...

13:08 /

30 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Diving Into the Lake: On the Necessity, Joy, and Anxiety of (Re)Translating Tulsidas’s Rāmcaritmānas

The epic retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa, composed in ca. 1574 CE by the saintly poet Tulsidas, in the dialect of Hindi known as Avadhi, has long been considered one of the most sacred and beloved texts of the North Indian Hindu tradition. It has also,...

10:58 /

22 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Worship Space Acoustics: Exploring Its Application in Hindu Temples

Acoustically important aspects of Hindu worship include chants, bells, conch-shells, and gongs. Every Hindu temple is fitted with bells that worshipers ring. Conch-shells and gongs are used at various times during pūjā rituals, during which texts from the Vedas and other Sanskrit scriptures are chanted....

10:46 /

09 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Tape Letters: Migration on Tape

The Tape Letters project shines light on the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tape as a mode of communication by Pakistanis who migrated and settled in the UK between 1960 and 1980. Drawing directly both from first-hand interviews and from the informal...

08:58 /

27 Apr

Research Focus Group Colloquium: Agents of Ishq and the Radical Possibilities of Love

This colloquium will explore with Paramita Vohra the experience of co-creating a digital space about sex, love, and desire in India. Paromita Vohra is an Indian media artist and writer who works with a range of forms, including film, comic books, digital media, installation art, and...

08:38 /

20 Mar

Research Focus Group Talk: Trust Issues: Debating Medicine and Authority in Medieval India

When it came to medicine in medieval India, it was hard to know who to trust. Physicians and philosophers employed in royal courts disputed the competing claims to medical authority, using debates initiated around religious scriptures to assess the authority of canonical Sanskrit medical texts....

09:41 /

20 Mar

Research Focus Group Talk: Engaging Religious Difference: The Case of Haribhadrasūri

The philosophical corpus attributed to the preeminent eighth-century Śvetāmbara scholar-monk Haribhadrasūri presents one of the most sustained, systematic, and multifaceted engagements with religious difference in all of medieval South Asian literature. This talk will examine his various modes of engaging difference and how they fit...

09:36 /

20 Mar

Research Focus Group Talk: Rethinking Non-Violence: The Spiritual and Emotional Lives of Animals in Jain Literature

Why are Jains committed to non-violence (ahiṃsā)? Is it out of a compassion for animals? Is it because of the consequences of violent action on the soul? This talk argues that the answer to these questions depends in part on whether one is reading Jain...

09:23 /

10 Oct

Conference: Satyajit Ray and the Sense of Wonder

This three-day conference and accompanying film series have been organized to celebrate the birth centenary of the renowned Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray (1921-1992). Most critical evaluations of Ray, which tend to focus on his films while overlooking his considerable literary and design output, have consecrated...

11:12 /

17 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Saving the Dead: Conceptions of Agency in Tibetan Buddhist Funerary Rituals

In this talk, Rory Lindsay will share with us insights from his forthcoming book, Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra (2022). He will discuss the history of one of the first Buddhist funerary traditions to be adopted in...

09:25 /

04 May

Research Focus Group Talk: The Indian Ramayana and Its Regional Performance Traditions

In this talk, Paula Richman will provide a brief survey of the major performance traditions in which the Ramayana narrative is enacted in different regions of India, including Kerala, Tamilnadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam. She will then provide analyses of two examples...

13:54 /

01 Mar

Research Focus Group Talk: Hungry Ghosts and the Karma of Meanness

The realm of hungry ghosts is one of the unfortunate realms of rebirth in the Buddhist cycle of existence, and those reborn there are said to have led lives consumed by greed and spite. But hungry ghosts know the error of their ways, and they...

13:32 /

25 Feb

Research Focus Group Talk: Self-Formation and Selflessness in the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Tradition

The sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition proposes a unique model of grace that decenters the paradigm of atonement and forgiveness and instead centers on forgetting and remembrance. In this Kṛṣṇa bhakti tradition, jīvas, embodied beings, occupy a unique intermediary position that identifies them both in relationship...

14:16 /

08 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: The Work of War: Gender and Care in Kabul, Afghanistan

Zoom attendance link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/84686450683 Following widows and their families in the aftermath of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, this talk centers the lives and aspirations of widows amidst serial war and serial humanitarianism. As white sentimentality structures landscapes of care in Kabul, refusal is what...

08:48 /

08 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: Post and the Shell: The Sacrificability of Animals in the Vedic Village

Zoom attendance link: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/87209704725 In this talk, Jonathan Dickstein will discuss anatomical and residential animal taxonomies as represented in canonical Vedic texts of the second and first millennia BCE. The Brāhmaṇas (900-650 BCE) in particular emphasize a residence-based categorization of animals into two main categories: “village...

08:34 /

28 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Race, Caste, Hierarchy, Difference: Reflections on Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste

ATTEND DISCUSSION In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson brings together the freighted categories of “race” and “caste” and argues that, while the two are not synonymous, they “can and do coexi st in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other.” Wilkerson...

10:02 /

25 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Willing Ethnic-Nationalists, Diffusion, and Resentment: A Micro-Foundational Account

ATTEND DISCUSSION Using evidence concerning the consolidation of Hindu nationalism in India, Aseema Sinha presents new ethnographic data about the variety of popular support for the Hindutva project and proposes an interactive theory of social identity. This framework helps us understand how Hindu nationalism becomes embedded...

08:43 /

13 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Sri Sabhapati Swami and the “Translocalization” of Sivarajayoga

Keith Cantú’s talk will center on the life and yogic literature of the Tamil yogi Sri Sabhapati Swami (Capāpati Cuvāmikaḷ, 1828–1923/4). The first part of the talk will consist of an overview of Sabhapati’s life and historical context, including his interactions and falling out with...

10:16 /

09 Mar

Research Focus Group Talk: The Blood Files: Epidemic, Medium, Milieu

ATTEND DISCUSSION Epidemics make us keenly aware of our multispecies distributions: of changes to our microbial makeup, of the mediums (body fluids to the elements) that enable transmission. While our body makes us aware of fevers and aches, we need technical mediation beyond the everyday thermometer...

11:30 /

26 Jan

Research Focus Group Talk: Cybercrime in Digital India: Jamtara’s Youth and OTT Production Cultures

ATTEND DISCUSSION Continuing a trend set by Bollywood cinema since the mid-2000s, small towns and villages in India are being mined for their performative excess, comic potential, and cultures of violence by platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Mukherjee traced this trend to Jamtara: Sabka...

12:26 /

01 Dec

Research Focus Group Discussion with Radhika Govindrajan about Her Book Animal Intimacies

ATTEND DISCUSSION This seminar session will feature a discussion with Radhika Govindrajan about her book Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (2018), which is an ethnographic study of the interspecies relationships between human and nonhuman animals in the mountain villages of the Central Himalayan...

15:27 /

02 Nov

Research Focus Group Discussion with Amanda Lucia about Her Book Reflections of Amma

ATTEND DISCUSSION The meeting will be hosted by our South Asia RFG colleague William Elison, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at UCSB, as part of his seminar on Religion and Ideology in Modern India: Current Approaches. This seminar session will feature a discussion with Amanda Lucia...

12:55 /

19 Oct

Research Focus Group Symposium: India “Right”: Making and Unmaking Indian Citizenship

The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was passed by the Indian Parliament on December 11, 2019. It amends the Citizenship Act of 1955 and creates an easier path for acquiring Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities—Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Christian, and Parsi—from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan...

12:52 /

02 Mar

Research Focus Group Talk: Amritlal Thakkar: A Gandhian “Intervention” in the “Tribal Question”

Debates on the “tribal question” constituted an important part of intellectual politics during the late colonial period in South Asia, especially during the decades leading to the Partition and Independence in 1947. Present-day "reservation" (affirmative action) policies for the "Scheduled Tribes" owe much to these...

16:52 /

12 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: For He Gladdens the Earth: Consent and Conjugality in the Astral State

Traditional discussions of gender in Hindu traditions often begin with a critique of patriarchy in orthodox Brahmanical Dharmaśāstras, followed by a turn to potential feminist resources—for example, in goddess worship, Śākta traditions, and Tantra. One effect of this line of thinking has been a relative...

16:48 /

12 Nov

Research Focus Group Symposium: Celebration of Guru Nanak: 550th Birth Anniversary

This South Asia symposium celebrates the life of Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh tradition, on the 550th anniversary of his birth. The symposium will feature talks by two UCSB faculty members: Anshu Malhotra, Professor and Kundun Kaur Kapany Chair of Sikh and Punjabi...

16:38 /

03 Oct

Research Focus Group Talk: The Politics of Eros and Ecofeminism in India

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), the German-American philosopher and political theorist who was a prominent member of the Frankfurt School of critical social theory, envisioned a new form of feminist socialism in which Eros, desire, the domain of the body and the passions, would be restored to...

19:10 /

29 May

Research Focus Group Talk: The Color of Belonging: Skin Tone and Attitudes towards Ethnic Voting in India

Ethnic voting is a feature of many multiethnic democracies the world over. The existence of an identity group does not guarantee the electoral solidarity of group members. Besides the desire to corner state resources, relations of fear and prejudice between groups are identified as prominent...

09:42 /

22 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Homes for Gods and Mortals: Film Screening and Discussion with the Director

Homes for Gods and Mortals is a 2018 documentary by the acclaimed Indian film scholar Gayatri Chatterjee. It follows life in two small settlements neighboring the temple complex of Khajuraho, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Madhya Pradesh, India, that is famous for its ornate...

10:17 /

08 May

Research Focus Group Talk: Land, Lineage, Embodied Practices, and the Khora of Migration: Himalayan Lives Between Nepal and New York

This presentation will explore what it means for people from Mustang, Nepal, including those who have migrated to New York, to care for each other, steward a homeland across time and space, remake home elsewhere, and confront distinct forms of happiness and suffering through these...

10:22 /

25 Feb

Research Focus Group Talk: Photography as Embodiment? Questions of Representation and Duplication in the Cult of Sai Baba of Shirdi

Portraits of Sai Baba of Shirdi (late 1830s–1918) are everywhere to be seen in public space in Mumbai. Are these images sacred? According to the saint himself, historical exponents of his teachings, and many ordinary Mumbai residents, the answer is “Yes.” What does it mean...

14:38 /

31 Jan

Research Focus Group Talk: The Raw and the Husky: Vocal Qualia and Gender Politics in Post-Millennium Tamil Cinema

This talk will examine the reorganization of singing voices and vocal aesthetics in the music of Tamil cinema, contrasting the ideals for male and female voices from the 1960s and 1970s with new ideals that have emerged since the 1990s in the wake of India’s...

11:46 /

29 Oct

Research Focus Group Talk: Follow the Family: Kin Targeting in Counterinsurgencies

Why are counterinsurgency campaigns able to overpower some insurgencies and not others? Amit Ahuja’s lecture will compare two counterinsurgency campaigns in India with divergent outcomes: the counterinsurgency in the Punjab was able to subdue the insurgency, whereas the counterinsurgency in Kashmir has had limited success....

12:58 /

15 Oct

Research Focus Group Talk: State Highway 31: A Road Trip through the Heart of Modern India

This talk will follow the route of State Highway 31 through western Madhya Pradesh, central India. The research is part of a larger project looking at the ideas behind the production of infrastructure in South Asia. This journey takes us through landscapes of sex work...

13:29 /

11 Oct

Research Focus Group Talk: Reforming the Centralised State: Decentralization Paradigms in the Drinking Water Sector in India and the Philippines

This talk will examine decentralized reforms in the drinking water sector in India and the Philippines from a policy perspective focused on institutional design and implementation at the local level. It has been argued that institutional architecture for decentralized reforms is contested and requires better...

10:22 /

13 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: Buddhism and Sexuality: A Primer

Although an ascetic religion that touts celibacy as the norm (at least for the clergy), Buddhism has a lot to say about sexuality. José Cabezón’s talk will focus on ancient South Asian sources and will present an overview of what classical Buddhist authors have had...

14:10 /

08 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: The Ritual Music Culture of Bangladesh

Saymon Zakaria will reflect on the rich array of musical forms and cultural performances that have developed around religious rituals in Bangladesh. He will explore the intersecting networks of religious sentiments evoked by Bangladeshi musical performers from diverse religious communities, including Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and...

13:42 /

08 Nov

Research Focus Group Talk: The Highway, Automobility, and New Promises in 1960s Bombay Cinema

A fascination for color in the 1960s led to Bombay cinema’s mobilization of the hinterland as the site for a new future. With the development of Indian highways and an increase in automobility, a new map of India now occupied the cinematic imagination. This talk...

13:38 /

24 May

Turbans, Certain to Charm! South Asian Men, White Women, and the Gendering of Early American Yoga

Anya Pokazanyeva Foxen (Philosophy, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo) May 24, 2017 / 3:00 PM 3041 HSSB In the United States in the 1920s there were two classes of people who could pull off a turban: “Oriental” men and fashionable white women. This fact points to...

11:54 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

24 Apr

When a Text Is a Song: Kabir Oral-Musical Traditions in North India

Linda Hess (Religious Studies, Stanford University) Monday, April 24, 2017 /4:00 PM 6056 HSSB Kabir, the iconoclastic fifteenth-century poet-saint of North India, composed his poetry orally. His poems, transmitted through song, spread quickly and were soon preserved in manuscripts and other media. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and textual...

12:03 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

23 Apr

Kabir in Song: A Night of North Indian Devotional Music

Prahlad Singh Tipanya and Ensemble Sunday, April 23, 2017 / 8:00 PM MultiCultural Center Theater The poetry of Kabir, the acclaimed fifteenth-century poet-saint of North India, has had a transformative influence on both Hindu bhakti traditions and the Sikh scriptural tradition enshrined in the Adi Granth....

11:32 / IHC Research Focus Groups / Upcoming Events

03 Mar

Celebrating an Embodied Feminine: Lālan Fakir and the Bāuls of Bengal

Keith Cantú (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Madeline Cantú (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) March 3, 2017 / 3:00 PM Music Building, Room 1219 This lecture will center on the Bengali Bāul songs of Lālan Fakir, an acclaimed nineteenth-century Bāul fakir, and will be followed...

12:45 / Upcoming Events / IHC Series / IHC Research Focus Groups

22 May

Devotee or God: Hanumān in Hindu Art and Literature

Bruce M. Sullivan (Asian Studies and Comparative Study of Religions, Northern Arizona University) May 22, 2016/2:30 PM Mary Craig Auditorium, Santa Barbara Museum of Art Hanumān is an extraordinary, even unique, figure in Hindu religious, literary, and artistic traditions. Famously, he has the appearance, and sometimes the character,...

12:02 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

11 May

“I am Satyabhāmā” Impersonation, Gender, and Caste in a South Indian Village

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Monday, May 11, 2016 /4:00 PM 4041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and performance analysis in South India, this lecture will center on a hereditary community of brahmin men from the village of Kuchipudi...

13:01 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

08 Jan

Development after Statism: Industrial Firms and the Political Economy of South Asia

Adnan A. Naseemullah (South Asia and International Relations, King's College London) Friday, January 8, 2016 / 12:30 PM Lane Room, 3824 Ellison Hall This lecture will discuss contemporary industrial development in a new era of drastically constricted state capacity, from the point of view of the manufacturing...

14:30 / Upcoming Events

18 Nov

Yoga Traditions in Indonesia: From Old Javanese Śaiva Tattvas to Modern Manuals of Balinese Hindu Traditions

Anrea Acri (Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore) Wednesday, November 18, 2015 / 5:00 PM IHC Research Seminar Room, 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This lecture will survey the Indic traditions of ṣaḍaṅga-yoga (“six-limbed yoga”) and aṣṭāṅga-yoga (“eight-limbed yoga”) in the Indonesian Archipelago, as illuminated...

14:58 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

22 May

Indian Sources of Mahāmudrā: The Seven Texts on Siddhi

Adam Krug (Religious Studies, UCSB) Friday, May 22 / 4:00 PM 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The Seven Texts on Siddhi  (ca. ninth to tenth centuries) were influential in both the development of Vajrayāna Buddhism in India and the later emergence of the mahāmudrā meditation traditions of...

10:03 / Research Focus Groups

08 May

The Infamy of Mumtaz Qadri: The Political Ontology of Blasphemy in Pakistan

Najeeb Jan (Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder) Friday, May 8, 2015 / 12:00 PM 2135 Social Sciences and Media Studies Building On January 4, 2011, Salman Taseer, the Governor of Punjab, was executed by his own bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, for the crime of “Blasphemy against Islam.” This lecture...

09:25 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

11 Mar

Alimentary Landscapes: The Embodiment of Culture/Cultured Bodies of the Goddess Śītalā

Jeremy Hanes (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, March 11 / 4:00 PM* 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building *Please note the change in time. The North Indian goddess Śītalā was once associated with smallpox, a disease that is now only present in lab samples, yet she...

10:40 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

06 Mar

Jains Killing, Killing Jains: Aggressive Magic in the Jain Tantras

Aaron Ullrey (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Friday, March 6 / 3:00 PM 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building During the medieval period Digambara Jains in Karnataka composed and circulated two magic Tantras containing aggressive magic that was in vogue at the time and that challenged...

10:49 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

25 Feb

Heat Melts Stone: Fluid Transfer in a South Indian Folk Epic

Brenda Beck (Anthropology, University of Toronto) Wednesday, February 25 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB Over the past decades Brenda Beck has brought a medieval Tamil folk epic, "the Story of Ponnivala", to life through film animation, producing a thirteen-hour series that has been...

10:36 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

10 Dec

Changing Representations of Hindu Identity: Culture and Ethnicity in the Indian International Society for Krishna Consciousness

Claire Robison (Religious Studies, UCSB) Wednesday, December 10, 2014 / 5:00 pm IHC Research Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB The Indian International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) is assuming an increasingly central role in India’s Hindu public sphere, wielding vast economic assets, political influence, and, more recently, a posh...

10:38 / IHC Research Focus Groups / Upcoming Events

28 May

Garbha, Dvāra, Loka: Toward an Economic Theory of Early Indian Buddhist Monasticism

Adam Krug (Religious Studies, UCSB) Wednesday, May 28 / 4:00 PM 3001E HSSB Adam Krug’s lecture will interrogate the category economy, broadly conceived, as a theoretical tool to interpret the abundant textual and archaeological data on the patronage and proliferation of Buddhist monastic institutions in India from the...

10:53 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

23 Apr

Anthropology Meets Psychiatry: The Cultural Epidemiology of Ritual Healing

William S. Sax (Anthropology, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University) Wednesday, April 23, 2014 / 3:00 PM McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB William S. ('Bo') Sax studied at Banaras Hindu University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Washington (Seattle), and the University of Chicago, where he...

10:53 / The Value of Care / Upcoming Events / IHC Series / IHC Research Focus Groups

13 Apr

Exhibiting the Art of Yoga

Deborah Diamond (Curator, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution) Sunday, April 13 / 2:30 pm Mary Craig Auditorium, Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1130 State Street) Yoga is a global phenomenon practiced by millions of people seeking spiritual insight and better health. Debra...

09:21 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

21 Feb

The Man With Superpowers: The Yogi in the American Imagination and the Case of Paramahansa Yogananda

Anya Pokazanyeva (Religious Studies, UCSB) Friday, February 21 / 4:00 PM 3041 HSSB It might seem logical to assume that a Yogi, by definition, is one who does yoga. However, as these terms first entered the American imagination they did not always do so in accordance...

10:35 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

01 Nov

The Abundant Ephemeral: The Protocols of Popular Film Historiography in India

Sudhir Mahadevan (Comparative Literature, University of Washington, Seattle) Friday, November 1 / 10:00 AM SSMS 2135 Popular histories of Indian cinema's past expose fundamental aspects of India’s cinematic imaginaries. This presentation surveys some of these histories, juxtaposing the official and corporate narratives with non-official ones. While...

13:14 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

07 Jun

Forum on Śāktism, Cosmopolitanisms, and the Construction of Hindu Identities

Friday, June 7 / 4:00-6:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Jason Schwartz (Religious Studies) A Wizard in the Chronicles of Amber: Rethinking the Religious Culture of the Rājput Courts in Light of the Kachwaha's Śākta Preceptor This lecture will retrace the path traveled by the prolific Śākta...

14:55 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

22 May

Mapping the Terrain of Early American Yoga: Hindu Lecturers, Yogi Cults, and Swami Rackets

Philip Deslippe (Religious Studies, UCSB) Wednesday, May 22 / 3:00 PM 3041 HSSB The recent outpouring of scholarly and popular writing on the history of American yoga has largely glossed over the seven decades between Swami Vivekananda in 1893 and the massive influx of swamis and gurus in...

10:17 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

08 May

Jewish Topographies and Indian Genres: Kirtan among the Bene Israel of Maharashtra

Shalv Weil (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Wednesday, May 8 / 3:00 PM 3041 HSSB This talk discusses the Hindu temple genre of kirtan as it has been performed in different Jewish topographies by the largest of the three Indian Jewish communities, the Bene Israel of Maharashtra. Nineteenth-century Bene...

12:07 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

04 Jun

The Khrist Bhaktas of Banaras: Visions, Representations, and Dangerous Prognostications

Kerry San Chirico (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Monday, June 4 / 7:30 pm 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building In the Banaras region of Uttar Pradesh, so-called Hindu “Other Backward Classes” and “Scheduled Castes” can be found worshiping Yesu (Jesus) and venerating the...

11:43 / IHC Research Focus Groups

30 May

Ruling in Ancient Greece and India: A Historical-Comparative Approach to Political Philosophy

Stuart Gray (Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, May 30 / 4:00 pm 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This lecture outlined what Gray terms a historical-comparative approach to political philosophy and applied it to a study of ancient Greek and Indian conceptions of ruling. He...

10:33 / IHC Research Focus Groups

30 Apr

Temple Piety, Temple Power: Vishnu Devotion in Cambodia

Vasudha Narayanan (Religion, University of Florida) Monday, April 30 / 4:00 pm 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building What can we learn about Vaisnava theology when we study the largest "Hindu" temple ever built? Using inscriptions, art, and architecture as sources, this lecture focused on the...

09:42 / IHC Research Focus Groups

26 Apr

Religion to Make a Nation: The Idea of the Bhakti Movement

John Stratton Hawley (Religion, Barnard College and Columbia University) Ninian Smart Memorial Lecture Thursday, April 26 / 5:00 pm 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building In this lecture Hawley provided a critical assessment of the “bhakti movement” trope as a bifocal, multilayered notion that draws on...

10:10 / IHC Research Focus Groups

14 Mar

Bollywood Deities and Star Murtis: The Amitabh Bachchan Temple and Devotional Fandom in Indian Popular Culture

Shalini Kakar (IHC Research Fellow) Wednesday, March 14 / 3:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This lecture explored the devotional fandom centered around images of Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan in the Amitabh Bachchan Fan Association (ABFA) in Kolkata, India. Kakar investigated the ways...

12:30 / IHC Research Focus Groups

18 Jan

Tomb as Temple, Guru as Murti

Mark McLaughlin (Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Wednesday, January 18 / 4:00 pm 6056 Humanities and Social Sciences Building This lecture focused on the Hindu samadhi shrine, which marks the final resting-place of a realized saint’s body, as an expression of sacred space in South Asia....

11:40 / IHC Research Focus Groups

03 Nov

Humoring the Saints: Mirabai and Her Guru

John Stratton Hawley (Religion, Barnard College and Columbia University) Wednesday, November 16 / 3:30 pm 1910 Buchanan Hall It is no secret that religion is a very serious thing—de la vie sérieuse, Durkheim says somewhere. Yet in the lives of the bhakti saints, as told in...

10:48 / IHC Research Focus Groups

03 Oct

Buddhist Diplomacy in Colonial Southern Asia

Anne Blackburn (South Asian Studies and Buddhist Studies, Cornell University) Friday, October 14 / 5:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building As British and French colonial control deepened in Lanka and Southeast Asia during the latter half of the nineteenth century, Buddhist monks and devotees...

10:27 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

16 Jun

South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group

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13:01 / Research Focus Groups

23 May

Bhopali

Van Maximillian Carlson (Director) Monday, May 23 / 7:00 PM Pollock Theater Bhopali (2011) documents the experience of second-generation children in Bhopal, India, who have been affected by the Union Carbide gas disaster of 1984, the worst industrial disaster in history, and subsequent contamination of groundwater by Union...

14:57 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

11 May

Transnational Star Deities and Devotional Fandom: A Case of USA Rajinikanth Fans

Shalini Kakar (IHC Research Fellow) Wednesday, May 11 / 12:00 pm McCune Conference Room, 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building Film stars are worshiped in India, and even temples are dedicated to them by their devotee-fans. The fan clubs of South Indian film star Rajinikanth publicly...

12:12 / IHC Research Focus Groups

21 Apr

Plastic Archives: Documenting the Cinema-City

Bhaskar Sarkar (Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara) Thursday, April 21 / 4:00 pm 2135 Social Sciences and Media Studies Building This lecture focused on a certain trajectory in recent works by documentary filmmaker Madhusree Dutta: her preoccupation with the triad city-cinema-publics to...

09:29 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

03 Mar

American Veda: India’s Transformation of American Culture

Philip Goldberg (Author) Thursday, March 3 / 6:30 pm 4041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building For over two hundred years India’s philosophies and practices have been transforming the ways in which Americans understand and engage in religious and spiritual practices. This multimedia presentation illuminated this remarkable history and...

15:34 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

15 Jan

The Role of Religion in Global Civil Society: A Focus on South and Southeast Asia

Saturday, January 15 / 9:00 am–6:00 pm Loma Pelona Conference Center This day-long workshop brought together scholars from the United States and Asia with leaders of various international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to examine the role of religion in global civil society, with a particular focus on...

12:03 / IHC Research Focus Groups

19 May

Early Tantric Theogonies: The Genesis of Pantheons in the Streams of the Current of the Bhairava Tantras

Mark Dyczkowski (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Delhi) Wednesday, May 19 / 5:00 pm 2001 Social Sciences and Media Studies Building One of the most notable features of the development of tantric scriptural traditions, especially in the early period of their formation, is the...

12:47 / IHC Research Focus Groups

18 May

Indian Catholics: Issues from the Perspective of Development

Rowena Robinson (Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) J. E. and Lillian Byrne Tipton Distinguished Visiting Professor in Catholic Studies Tuesday, May 18 / 4:00 pm Alumni Hall, Mosher Alumni House The lecture briefly traced the past of Indian Catholics in order to enable us to...

12:40 / IHC Research Focus Groups

17 Feb

India and Gaugin’s Tahitian Nudes: Mapping Modernism In A Global Frame

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...

16:00 / IHC Research Focus Groups

03 Feb

Moving Technologies: Global Icons in South Asia

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...

16:20 / Upcoming Events / IHC Research Focus Groups

27 Jan

Sinister Yogis

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...

12:30 / IHC Research Focus Groups

18 Nov

Engaging the Visual in the Anthropology of South Asia

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...

12:26 / IHC Research Focus Groups

22 May

Beyond Orientalist Frameworks: Towards a Religious Studies Model of Buddhism and Islam in Ladakh

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...

13:55 / IHC Research Focus Groups

15 May

Embodying the Divine in the Minaksi-Sundaresvara Temple

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...

13:49 / IHC Research Focus Groups

06 May

Silence and Abstinence: Axes in Religious Belief and Practice

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...

13:28 / IHC Research Focus Groups

27 Feb

Devotional Fanscapes in Popular Culture: Rajinikanth Fan Club—A New Political Force?

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...

13:23 / IHC Research Focus Groups

05 Dec

Chaturanga

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...

12:56 / IHC Research Focus Groups

03 Nov

Punches n Ponytails

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...

13:00 / IHC Research Focus Groups

09 Jun

The Buddha as Embodied in Gnosis: Revisioning the History of Buddha Body Conceptions

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...

11:48 / IHC Research Focus Groups

23 May

Disciplining the Body: Reflections on Embodiment in Jain Traditions

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...

10:59 / IHC Research Focus Groups

02 May

Bodies of Desire, Bodies of Lament: Marking Emotion in a South Indian Vaisnava Messenger Poem

Steven P. Hopkins (Religion, Swarthmore College) Friday, May 2 / 4:00 pm 3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building The lecture focused on the charged emotional landscapes of divine, human, and animal bodies in Hamsasandesa (“The Goose Messenger”), a fourteenth-century Sanskrit messenger poem (sandesa-kavya) by Vedantadesika (ca. 1268-1369...

10:54 / Uncategorized

16 Apr

Bodies on Display: Religious Processions in the South Asian Diaspora

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...

10:50 / IHC Research Focus Groups

07 Mar

What Not to Do with a Tantrika: Some Notes on Ethnography in India

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...

10:47 / IHC Research Focus Groups

20 Feb

Vigrahas and Murtis: Observations on the Bodies of the Gods in the Mahabharata

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...

10:41 / IHC Research Focus Groups

30 Jan

Globalization of Services and the Making of a New Global Service Labor Force in India’s Silicon Valley

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...

10:37 / IHC Research Focus Groups

16 May

You Said It Wouldn’t Hurt: Revisualizing (South Asian) History through the Grotesque

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...

13:55 / IHC Research Focus Groups

09 May

New Voices, New Challenges, and New Opportunities in Hindu Studies

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...

13:50 / IHC Research Focus Groups

27 Apr

Herbert

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...

13:29 / IHC Research Focus Groups

12 Apr

Britain’s Changing Religious Landscape: The Impact of South Asian Migration

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...

13:24 / IHC Research Focus Groups

09 Mar

Now “Ladies” Also Sing: Gender Politics in Post-1990 Biraha, A North Indian Folk Music Tradition

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...

13:08 / IHC Research Focus Groups

05 Mar

What is Sikh Sacred Music? The Structure and Role of Music in Sikh Traditions

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...

13:05 / IHC Research Focus Groups

21 Feb

Between Mecca and Malabar: Pilgrimage in the Formation of Muslim and Hindu Identities in the Indian Ocean Region

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...

13:03 / IHC Research Focus Groups

14 Feb

Fiction as Historical Archive? Reconfiguring Inquiry into India’s Colonial Past

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...

12:24 / IHC Research Focus Groups

14 Feb

Is There Such a Thing as Sikh Architecture?

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...

12:14 / IHC Research Focus Groups

19 May

Between Culture and Consciousness: On the Role of Effigies in Tamil Rituals

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...

13:05 / IHC Research Focus Groups

28 Apr

The City and the Citizen: Forms in Bengali and Bombay Cinema of the 1950s

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...

13:01 / IHC Research Focus Groups

03 Mar

Kabir Says, “Listen!” Bringing the Oral-Performative into Textual Studies in India

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...

13:31 / IHC Research Focus Groups

28 Feb

The Jaina-Mimamsa Debate on Omniscience

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...

13:21 / IHC Research Focus Groups

27 Jan

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 for a planning meeting of the South...

12:42 / IHC Research Focus Groups

02 Dec

South Asian Studies in the United States

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...

12:12 / IHC Research Focus Groups