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. This talk offers an analytic and ethnographic entrée into the problem of reactivity by considering diasporic investments in mass-mediated address. Sikh media activists scrutinize the reactivity seemingly cultivated by their ...

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 feature a lecture by distinguished Visiting Professor Jayendra Soni at 4:00 pm and will be followed by a reception. Jayandra Soni retired in May 2012 from the Department of Indology ...

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, created Indian personae, and performed as Indian magicians from the golden age of magic in the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The talk will begin with an introduction to ...

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.” In this talk, Shashank Aswathanarayana will present the results of his acoustic analysis of six UNESCO heritage South Indian temples: four rock-cut cave temples in Badami and Aihole and two ...