tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66296642009-07-03T21:45:21.777-05:00Amardeep Singh, Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University.Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.comBlogger1187125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-4958182420686289492009-07-03T12:09:00.003-05:002009-07-03T12:31:19.142-05:00

A few months ago, in the middle of the Sonal Shah controversy, I wrote a blog post criticizing Vijay Prashad’s The Karma of Brown Folk as a somewhat inadequate historical account of the Indian-American community. The example I focused on was the "Yankee Hindutva" chapter, which I thought was unbalanced and prone to cast aspersions rather than actually illuminate the topic at hand. But other

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-54645414736853797612009-07-01T11:37:00.002-05:002009-07-01T13:05:13.912-05:00

I was doing some research this morning on an unrelated topic, when I randomly came across the name Gauhar Jaan, one of the great recording artists in India from the first years of the 20th century. Gauhar Jaan is thought to have sung on the very first recording of a song ever made in India, in 1902. Here is what she sang: Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA It's a

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-36918500948704584762009-06-25T13:08:00.004-05:002009-06-25T13:32:12.514-05:00

Michael Muhammad Knight, who had a pretty rough childhood in upstate New York, converted to Islam as a teenager. He came from an Irish Catholic background, but partly under the influence of Malcolm X and black nationalist Islam, and partly simply as a result of his own idiosyncratic spiritual leanings, he took the Shahadah at age 16, and changed his name to Mikail Muhammad. He traveled to

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-49987085929417377222009-06-22T10:44:00.001-05:002009-06-22T10:46:28.005-05:00

A friend of mine from graduate school, Matthew Biberman, whom I knew primarily as an ambitious and driven Milton scholar, has written a memoir about not Milton but motorcycles. The book is called Big Sid’s Vincati: The Story of a Father, a Son, and the Motorcycle of a Lifetime. His book, which has not had a lot of publicity yet in the general media, has come out at the same time as a second

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-12404849144913343052009-06-18T15:04:00.005-05:002009-06-23T05:42:27.421-05:00

It’s rather striking how much of a commodity James Joyce is in Dublin; there’s nothing comparable to it in any American city. You hear mentions of Bloomsday activites on Dublin radio stations, and see events described in some of the newspapers. There are two Joyce museums in the city, a proper statue to Joyce on one of the biggest commercial streets in the city, and plaques on the ground and on

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-76424341742406828992009-06-16T17:26:00.004-05:002009-06-16T17:30:46.740-05:00

We've been in Ireland for a little holiday. Some of it is a little bit of long overdue literary tourism around Dublin (about which I might have more to say in a few days), but we also spent several days in some of the beautiful western counties, doing some cycling and hiking, and checking out live music in village pubs. For the most part, it's pretty homogeneous -- sizeable South Asian, eastern

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-56275517001580960382009-06-04T11:21:00.001-05:002009-06-04T11:22:50.926-05:00

Global Bollywood is an academic anthology, but it contains several essays that might be of interest to lay readers who are fans of Hindi films and filmi music. There are, admittedly, a couple of somewhat jargony essays in the collection, but they can be avoided for readers allergic to that sort of thing. Accessible essays that take on specific subjects, and present new and helpful information

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-62447470679698264772009-06-02T20:01:00.002-05:002009-06-02T20:29:31.378-05:00

The mighty Bombay blogger Amit Varma's first novel, My Friend Sancho, is a quick and entertaining summer read, which also manages to make some serious points along the way. It does not aspire to be "serious" literature, but it is certainly several significant notches above One Night @ the Call Center. Indeed, I would not even put the two books in the same blog post, except Manish planted the damn

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-66444294790104481602009-05-08T13:40:00.010-05:002009-05-23T07:00:27.130-05:00

This essay is a sequel of sorts to an earlier blog post essay I wrote a few years ago, introducing Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism for students as well as general readers. I do not know if this post will prove to be as useful, in part because these concepts are considerably more difficult to explain. At any rate, I would appreciate any feedback, further examples, or criticisms. * * *When

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-71838044762080280782009-04-15T12:56:00.012-05:002009-04-15T21:30:03.233-05:00

As many readers may be aware, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick passed away last weekend. Her friend Cathy Davidson has a tribute, and Duke University Press has noted it as well on its internal blog. I'm sure there will be much more to come from Eve's friends, colleagues, and students in the months to come.I knew Eve in person for about two years, but I have remained, in one way or another, in constant

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-38528928912099426692009-04-15T11:08:00.002-05:002009-04-15T11:16:46.016-05:00

Since my son was born two and a half years ago, I have pretty much given up on staying current on Indian cinema. It's difficult to get out to the movies, and our local Indian store really doesn't seem to have a very good collection of stuff. I saw more Indian movies on the plane from Mumbai to Newark in January than I probably did in all of 2008. On a recent day-trip to New York, we picked up two

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-35305390989548423672009-03-20T13:24:00.005-05:002009-03-20T14:53:13.527-05:00

In addition to regular comments to blog posts, I often get emails from readers expressing all manner of opinions. This week, following my recent post at Sepia Mutiny on the protests in Pakistan, I received a note from a graduate student in Boston named Wajiha Ahmed that was intelligent enough to provoke me to spend a little time replying. Wajiha had also, a few days earlier, published an Op-Ed in

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-45914914630783496802009-03-16T10:26:00.001-05:002009-03-16T10:26:56.192-05:00

The saxophone in the opening credits to this Tamil Film ("Duet") is by Kadri Gopalnath; it's unlike any other commercial film opening credits music you've ever heard. Gopalnath has been in the news quite a bit over the past few weeks, following his collaboration with Indian American jazz-maestro Rudresh Mahanthappa, who has a new album out called Apti. I haven't "Itunesed" Mahanthappa's album yet

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-82381533690617367862009-02-25T11:15:00.001-05:002009-02-25T11:17:23.053-05:00

In this week's print issue of the New Yorker, there's a long, satisfying piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll on India and Pakistan's attempts to resolve the status of Kashmir over the past few years. The big surprise is just how close the two countries were to permanently resolving the seemingly insoluble problem. The agreement, which was in its final stages in the spring of

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-89717804043351002962009-01-19T13:40:00.004-05:002009-01-19T14:32:42.208-05:00

Martin Luther King, Jr. visited India in 1959, an event which is described in detail at the King Encyclopedia. King, as is well known, modeled his approach to civil rights in the United States on Gandhi's successful mass non-violence/civil disobedience campaign for Indian independence. On NPR last week, there was a story about how All India Radio has recently discovered in its archives the

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-59827190344920185382009-01-16T14:19:00.005-05:002009-01-16T14:52:59.337-05:00

A long time ago, Prof. Kavita Daiya and I started working on a special issue of the journal South Asian Review, with the topic "Imagining South Asia." After several delays, the issue is finally out. Hopefully the cover should give you some idea of what we were after in the issue:The source of the image is here. Here is the table of contents:Fakrul Alam: "Imagining South Asian Writing in English

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-34067609434682471792009-01-12T21:22:00.002-05:002009-01-12T21:23:53.829-05:00

Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickramatunge was assassinated in broad daylight outside of Colombo last week. SAJA has a helpful round-up of coverage of the event, including some background on Wickramatunge's journalistic record. What stands out is the fact that he has been a consistent dissenting voice in Sri Lankan politics, sharply criticizing the previous government for years. In recent

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-24892388862407572722009-01-08T11:31:00.004-05:002009-01-08T11:50:19.461-05:00

People talk trash about Air India, but it has one distinct advantage -- if you're lucky enough to fly to and from India on one of their newer 747s, which are equipped with personal video screens, you have a wealth of Indian TV, movies, and music to entertain yourself with, while eating Chiwda (instead of peanuts) and not-too-bad shrimp curry. (You still have to sit in a cramped little chair for

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-91127957616129457552009-01-03T00:25:00.002-05:002009-01-03T00:27:30.575-05:00

One of the most famous Konkani pop songs from the 1960s is Lorna's "Bebdo". Here it is, with lyrics and translation:Pretty swinging, huh? The sassy tone and subject matter reminds me a little of Trinidadian Calypso from around the same period. It's true that there is a dark side to these types of songs (alcoholism, and the hint of domestic violence), but there is also a buoyancy and power in her

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-90627119837489290012008-12-31T02:05:00.003-05:002008-12-31T02:41:30.702-05:00

Though it is undoubtedly one of India's most popular tourist destinations, it might be surprising to readers that Goa most definitely is not being overrun with big-time real estate development projects. There are some large resorts around (the "Taj Exotica"), in both north and south Goa, and a really insistently Philistine foreign tourist could potentially stay in Goa and never leave one of those

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-90037364754882370832008-12-23T00:18:00.001-05:002008-12-23T00:25:03.461-05:00

We'll be returning to Goa in a day or two, but meanwhile there was some family visiting to attend to in the north.First up, Delhi. My dominant impression of Delhi this time around is of seeing construction everywhere for new Delhi Metro stations. In a couple of years (when Delhi hosts the Commonwealth Games), I'm sure it will all be wonderful, but right now it adds to the traffic headache. That

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-44276700175214713602008-12-17T00:10:00.001-05:002008-12-17T00:16:18.994-05:00

I'm always nervous about being too personal in this space, and anyway when you're traveling with a two-year old your travel experiences tend to revolve around him, so I'll boil it down to this: Goa sure is nice this time of year. (I'm visiting in-laws, who live here now.)We were also in London for a couple of days, where I was happy to get to meet Sunny Hundal. Again, let's keep details to a

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-39403058942517499552008-11-25T14:02:00.006-05:002008-11-26T10:02:44.591-05:00

[Below is a modified version of a wrap-up lecture I used in an undergraduate class last week, closing out our unit on Ulysses. The class is titled "James Joyce and Modern Ireland," and it is aimed at senior English majors.]When I was an undergraduate at Cornell, I took a class on Ulysses with a senior Joyce scholar who, in a pretty egregious example of a pedagogical faux pas, "required" us to

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-1164059049230466132008-11-18T15:19:00.005-05:002008-11-20T11:18:40.563-05:00

Though I was an early and vocal participant in the Great Sonal Shah Internet Debate of 2008, I am done arguing about it. This post is not about that directly. Instead, I'd like to focus on some of the bigger issues behind the controversy, specifically issues like: 1) how South Asian religious youth camps work and what they do, and 2) whether Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu organizations in the U.S. send

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6629664.post-73479972832381525192008-11-10T10:55:00.002-05:002008-11-10T22:07:38.098-05:00

[After I posted this, Sonal Shah released a statement distancing herself from the VHP. I was able to verify the statement via another source; for me this puts to rest any questions about her views, and reinforces the argument I make in the following post.]Last week at Sepia Mutiny Abhi did a post on Sonal Shah, who is working for the Obama transition team. Over the weekend, however, a controversy

Amardeephttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11408720639556886665noreply@blogger.com11