South Asian Religions and Cultures RFG

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

[vc_row css_animation="" row_type="row" use_row_as_full_screen_section="no" type="full_width" angled_section="no" text_align="left" background_image_as_pattern="without_pattern"][vc_column][vc_column_text]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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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, 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...