South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group

RESEARCH INTERESTS
The IHC South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group is an interdisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students from twelve departments across campus whose research interests center on South Asia. The South Asian Religions and Cultures RFG was established in the fall of 2005 and serves as a forum for faculty and graduate students to meet regularly and discuss ongoing research projects and social, cultural, and religious issues in South Asian studies. The group sponsors an annual program of meetings that includes presentations by faculty and graduate students as well as lectures, performances, and film screenings by visiting scholars, artists, musicians, and filmmakers.

The topics that we intend to engage over the coming years include visual culture and postcolonial media theory; ritual and performance traditions; religious nationalisms and ethnic politics; spatial studies of sacred places, cultural landscapes, and cyberspace; race, gender, and body politics; and diaspora and transnational identities.

PARTICIPANTS
The South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group draws its membership from faculty and graduate students whose research interests involve a significant focus on South Asia. The group includes eighteen faculty and forty graduate students who represent a range of disciplinary approaches to the study of South Asia, including religious studies, history, anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, global studies, literature, history of art and architecture, film and media studies, music, and linguistics.

CONVENERS
Barbara Holdrege, Religious Studies
holdrege@religion.ucsb.edu

Bhaskar Sarkar, Film and Media Studies
sarkar@filmandmedia.ucsb.edu