California State University-Northridge

Matt King and Amanda Lucia in conversation, Michael Alexander, moderator

UCR Palm Desert Campus

The multi-billion-dollar industry of ‘wellness’ culture has become a driver of sizable intellectual and social movements in the 21st century. Despite its long history of pseudo-scientific claims and its questionable ethics of appropriation, exotification, and commodification of Asian and Indigenous traditions, wellness cultures continue to be widely popular - particularly in California! In this conversation, Matt King and Amanda Lucia come together in conversation to discuss the potentialities and pitfalls of wellness culture - including how ideas about Buddhist mindfulness and postural yoga have shaped its terrain and trajectory. This conversation draws from the authors’ expertise in transnational Buddhism and Hinduism, to query topics spanning from 19th century historical ideas about bodily purity and perfection drawn from Asian religions to modern examples of Covid denial, pseudo-scientific claims, and the spiritualities on display in sites as diverse as Coachella and TikTok. Employing an approachable interview format, this lively discussion brings to light how wellness culture is shaping not only our bodies, but our minds.

Roundtable, sponsored by the Contextualizing the Catholic Sexual Abuse Crisis Seminar, American Academy of Religions (AAR) Annual Conference, San Antonio, Texas

“Awakening the Third Eye: Hierarchies of Consciousness in the New Age”

From nineteenth century occult esotericism to today’s episodes of “Ancient Aliens,” the notion of the ‘Third Eye’ has captivated Anglo-European spiritual seekers and psychonauts. In this talk, Dr. Amanda Lucia traces Anglo-European interest in the ‘Third Eye,’ revealing how spiritual seekers have aspired to access it as kind of portal to extrasensory perception, and even superhuman consciousness. As Anglo-European psychedelic cultures developed in the twentieth century, the concept of the ‘Third Eye’ was easily adopted as a symbol of psychedelia-generated cosmic awakening – an “ancient futures” revelation of a new spiritual evolution. Lucia contextualizes this symbology historically, showing how the now-commonplace narrative of psychic ‘evolution,’ ‘development,’ and ‘awakening’ emerged from deeply problematic Anglo-European worldviews rooted not only in the banal power inequities of Orientalism and exoticism, but also in the overt violence of nineteenth century race science.

This event will be held online. Register HERE.

Regional Bhakti Scholars Network Symposium on “Transgression,” Annual Conference on South Asia 2023

Abstract:

This paper revisits the 1862 Guru Maharaj Libel case, identifying it as the first modern legal case that established the now commonplace discourse of guru criminality as the form of sexual transgression. Situating this trial in its distinctive nineteenth century colonial context, I show how guru sexuality was not the stage through which critique of the guru figure was mobilized prior to this landmark cultural moment. Until this point, gurus (including colonial pursuits of nomadic bands of ascetics, yogis, sadhus, and thugs) were criticized, and sometimes arrested, tried, and jailed mostly for banditry, dacoity, theft, murder, fraud, and espionage. What surfaces somewhat surprisingly with the Maharaj Libel case is the specter of female sexuality, with female devotees who are positioned as the ground upon which the battle for modern India is fought, as is the case with other nineteenth century moral debates that are similarly centered on women’s bodies, i.e. legislation passed regarding satī and child marriage in 1829, widow remarriage in 1856, among others. Revisiting this landmark legal case, I suggest that the denotation of transgression signifies the male desire to control female sexuality, rather than the women’s claim that they have been sexually violated – transgressed – by their guru.

Guest Lecture, Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna.

Abstract: Today, there is a proliferate discursive field in India, and globally, that challenges the conventional authority granted to religious gurus. This critique is bolstered by the rise in secularism and liberalism, and also by the very real allegations, indictments, and convictions of modern gurus for a variety of criminal activities. Simultaneously, there is a recapturing of the guru as the quintessential hero of Indian nation, a religious figure positioned as a dharmic leader whose behavior is beyond reproach. This paper provides a genealogy of this discursive ambiguity, locating its emergence in the saṇnyāsī and fakīr rebellions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (1770-1790, with extensions 1761-1809). Lucia shows how saṇnyāsīs and fakīrs (nomadic bands of religious ascetics) first became enemies of the modern state because of their battles with the East India Company for taxation rights. This historical moment marks the event when the state became authorized to regulate, control, and persecute – criminalize – guru behavior. In opposition, the guru who became criminalized in the gaze of the colonial state transforms into a hero of the independent nation, because of, but also in spite of, his criminal actions.

Keynote, University of Ghent, Belgium, Organizing committee: Dr. Carine Plancke, Carla Besora Barti, Prof. Chia Longman and Prof. Stephanie Koziej, Centre for Research on Culture and Gender, Ghent University

See Call for Papers HERE

Keynote, “Festival Cultures: Imagined Pasts, Alternative Futures,” conference at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK (may be online due to Covid-19)

Panel on Religion, Literature and Film in South Asia, European Academy of Religion (EuARe) conference, Muenster, Germany,

https://euare.zummit.com/events/european-academy-of-religion-4th-annual-conference/6573/CX8A6/program/talk/018-religion,-literature-and-film-in-south-asia/56925/infos

Born Again Selves: New Religious Movements and the Norms of Belief conference organized by ICAS:MP in collaboration with the Max Weber Centre of Advanced Cultural and Social Studies (MWK)., Erfurt, Germany, time TBA (online in Zoom)

Panel Discussion with Jacob Copeman and Tulasi Srinivas, Religious Studies Seminar, University of Edinburgh, Scotland (4-5:30pm GMT/8-9:30am PST) (online in Zoom, TBA)

Cellar Door Bookstore, https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com (online in Zoom)

Sign up to attend with the Eventbrite Invitation HERE

Open Book Sessions, Sign up HERE, book talk and discussion will be online (in Zoom)

“The Power of Context, Identity, and Capital: Three Books Interrogating Spirituality and Yoga Published in 2020.” American Academy of Religions Annual Conference (held online, date and time TBD)

A Roundtable Discussion of: Anya Foxen’s Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga (Oxford University Press, 2020); Andrea Jain’s Peace, Love, Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 2020); and Amanda Lucia’s White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals (University of California Press, 2020)

Roundtable Participants:

Neil Dalal (University of Alberta); Dheepa Sundaram (University of Denver); Kathryn Lofton (Yale University); Hugh Urban (Ohio University); Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria); Anya Foxen (Cal Poly University); Andrea Jain (IUPUI); Amanda Lucia (University of California-Riverside)

Zoom room for AAR members TBA:

SOAS University of London, London, England (times in PST)

Zoom link TBA:

Center for Ideas and Society, University of California-Riverside (November 17)

Zoom room TBA:

Yoga Alliance Webinar

Zoom link: TBA

American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Raising our Voices.

Zoom room for AAA members TBA:

University of Southern California

Zoom room: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95176563783?pwd=aGhTc2lkWWQ4RXVrL1NDMXpZRjF0Zz09&from=msft