Teaching ‘Philosophy of Sikhism’
It seems 2022 was an interesting year for you in terms of publications. Your book Violence and the Sikhs came out in March, and this was followed barely 6 months later with the release of your new monograph Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing Age. And in November there was a panel around this book at the American Academy of Religion Meeting in Denver…
Autoimmune Response: American Insurrection
Watching the nearly uninterrupted attempts for violence by a swarm of Trump rioters at Capitol Hill, I found myself shocked. The images of some Capitol Hill officers opening the gates for frenzied protesters to go in or taking selfies with a few of the rioters, flash news reports of a bombs being discovered at the RNC and DNC headquarters, rioters bringing in zip ties to presumably tie up…
Syllabus Notes: Updating My Race, Caste & Religion Course
So it seems you decided to teach AS334 (Race, Religion, and Caste in India and America) again in WN21? In our earlier conversation from March 2020, you talked a little bit about this course but you weren’t thinking of teaching it until FA21—at least not until the pandemic might (hopefully) be under control and universities could begin returning to in-person teaching. So what prompted you to change your mind and push the return of the course now?
Exploring Consciousness II: The Secular/Religious Dichotomy And Consciousness Studies
So for this next exchange (see our first post here!), I think it would be appropriate to begin bridging two seemingly disparate parts of your studies. When we first met, I knew you exclusively for your work on the precarious and fickle divide between the secular and the religious; in fact, it was this specialty that originally drove me to take more of your classes. It took me by surprise then when I initially saw your posting for a course focused on exploring consciousness…
Exploring Consciousness I
Let’s get into the conversation of consciousness studies a bit more now. For starters, I’d like to ask about your own personal investment in the topic. What began your own journey into the deep dive that is the question of consciousness? Was it a specific text or perhaps a personal question? Or was it more focused on changing something about the world around you? What inspired you to go through the intense labor of creating a course devoted to the topic?
Exorcising Racism II: Liberalisms & Racial Exclusion
Since our last discussion, several significant conversations have taken place in the media and other channels on the need to address and correct overt forms of racism and violence seen in our culture and society…
Exorcising Racism I: Dialogues On The Current Uprisings
Since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25th 2020, people from different walks of life and different cultural backgrounds throughout America have engaged in overwhelmingly peaceful protests that have in turn inspired similar protests throughout the world.
Žižek On The Covid-19 PAN(Dem)IC And Communism (Part 1/2)
It is now some ten weeks into the US and UK Covid-19 lockdown. I’ve been on the lookout for what intellectuals have been writing in reaction to the profound consequences of the global pandemic sweeping across the planet…
Class Consciousness, Sport & The Lockdown
Its now almost exactly six weeks since the Covid-19 induced lockdown began in Michigan and five weeks since I wrote the last blog “Class Consciousness: A Sticky Issue”. I had not intended to follow up the last post on class…
Class Consciousness: A Sticky Issue
So far I have run both classes as relatively small seminars. This was partly to try and see how students would react to the relatively challenging mix of themes and topics. As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous posts in this series, there are lots of very good classes on race…
Teaching Race/Religion/Caste – Geopolitical Schematic
“Your course situates the three problematic elements (Race/Religion/Caste) in a schema that connects India and the USA. Why India and the USA?” First of all, the course is taught within an Asian Studies curriculum and I belong to a South Asian studies…
“Patterns of Prejudice” – Course Overview
The full name of this course is, Race, Religion and Caste in India and the USA: Patterns of Prejudice. It’s a bit of a mouthful but that’s because there is a lot going on in it. Basically the course examines the relationship between Race, Caste and Religion in two very different democracies, India and the United States.
Intellectual Motivations
As I mentioned at the end of the last post the motivating desire to construct a course that addresses race in relation to other forms of prejudice such as religion and caste, derives primarily from living through 1970s and early 80s Britain. I think many people of color – and especially those who found an intellectual home in race…
Visceral Memories of Race: Coventry in the 1970s and 80s
In Fall 2019 I taught a course called Race, Religion and Caste in India and the USA (AS334) for the second time. Several students in the class wanted to carry on the discussion, so they sent me a set of questions which I shall be answering in series of posts which further examine some of the themes we discussed in relation to class and…
Welcome
Hello and welcome to this blog. I’m Arvind-Pal S. Mandair (or Arvind as my friends call me). I am an educator by profession and I teach at the University of Michigan. My fields of research and teaching are cross-cultural philosophy, religion, cultural theory (especially post-/decolonial studies) with a specialization in Sikh and South Asian studies.
