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Type: Lab
Black Dharma
November 2, 2021
Lab convenors Richard Jaffe and Anna X. Sun and their students welcomed Dr. Krishni Metivier to discuss forging new pathways into the study of “Dharma Traditions” with the students in their courses and the lab at large. Black Americans are often identified with African-American Christianity, while the reality of Black spirituality in this country is much more complex. Common ideas about Buddhism and Hinduism, moreover, overlook the important contributions of Black Americans. Metivier's talk unveils the rich and little-known spiritual intersections in the United States.
Freedom Inside? Yoga and Meditation in the Carceral State
February 24, 2023
Yoga and meditation programs no doubt offer crucial respite for those who are incarcerated, but what sort of political effects do they have? Do they reinforce the neoliberal logic of mass incarceration which emphasizes individual choices, or can they assist marginalized people in navigating systemic injustice? Drawing on collaborations with incarcerated practitioners, interviews with volunteers and formerly incarcerated practitioners, and her own fieldwork with organization offering yoga/meditation classes inside prisons, Farah Godrej (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, Riverside) examines both the promises and pitfalls of yoga and meditation in a public book talk hosted by the lab.
My Family and Other Saints
March 6, 2023
Lab convenor Leela Prasad hosted Kirin Narayan (Professor Emerita of Anthropology and South Asia, Australian National University) for a discussion around her book My Family and Other Saints, a memoir that journey's through vacillating understandings of religiosity in a bicultural context. Members and guests of the lab joined Narayan for an informal conversation about the text and its intersection with the themes of the lab.
"The Fires We've Never Lost:" Finding Art, Poetry and Performance in 50 Years of Prison Letters
April 9, 2024
Executive Director of Human Kindness Foundation (HKF) and lab collaborator Erin Parish visited Duke to introduce the Foundation's extensive archive of mail received from incarcerated people and discuss how creative engagement with these materials is a practice of reciprocal community collaboration. Parish shared how mail from incarcerated authors informed two artistic projects developed for the HKF 50th anniversary. The Hidden Voices Collective used a database of textual excerpts from the archive, produced through the "Asia" in the Making of American Religiosity lab HKF collaboration, to develop the performance piece Together-Apart. North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green collaborated with over 50 incarcerated writers to craft the poem "Dancing in a Sky of Kindness," over 80% of which derived from submissions on the theme of kindness.