Mastodawn

Audrey Truschke Apr 5, 2023

I'm happy to contribute to this deep dive into faculty-student dynamics.

I comment on showing Hindu art w/swastikas (which I do, knowing it can cause offense b/c Nazis) and my personal experience that Gen Z is pretty robust with difficult subjects.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/power-shift

Power Shift

That makes many faculty members nervous.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Audrey Truschke Apr 4, 2023

A #mustread article by an amazing colleague that wrestles with being both privileged and targeted, violence, and fault lines of Black and Brown solidarities.

If you read one thing about the #Dotbusters (an anti-Indian hate group in the 1980s), read this:

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/unmaking-asian-exceptionalism-bahadur/

Unmaking Asian Exceptionalism - Boston Review

On violence and the possibility of solidarities in America.

Boston Review

Audrey Truschke Apr 4, 2023

Somewhere in the Hindutva universe, this is going to end with the Marathas fighting the Rajput Empire, right? #history #Hindutva

Audrey Truschke Apr 2, 2023

University Campuses in India Will Be a Tool in the Hands of Hindu Nationalists https://jacobin.com/2023/03/india-university-academic-freedom-india-hindu-nationalism-israel-repression

University Campuses in India Will Be a Tool in the Hands of Hindu Nationalists

Elite international universities have announced plans to open campuses in India. Yet Narendra Modi’s government has made it clear these won’t be oases of academic freedom — rather, they’ll help Hindu nationalists impose censorship even outside India's borders.

Audrey Truschke Apr 1, 2023

Has Modi Pushed Indian Democracy Past Its Breaking Point? https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/has-modi-pushed-indian-democracy-past-its-breaking-point

Audrey Truschke Mar 31, 2023

Being a historian can be tough when moments in the past presage those in our times.

Here's an except written by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1901, concerning the British opium trade. I find it gutting given the ongoing opioid epidemic in the US and India, especially Punjab. #opioidcrisis

Show thread

Audrey Truschke Jan 12, 2023

The article covers a lot of ground, including yoga, the annual AAR conference (and the problematic SBL partnership), the Hindutva obsession with origins, Orientalism, and more.

Ultimately, I argue for a more inclusive academy and lay out some of the hard changes that requires.

Audrey Truschke Jan 12, 2023

Hot off the press -- Hearing Hindu Stories

About the soft inclusion of Christian theology within the discipline of Religious Studies and the problems it poses for scholars of non-Christian traditions.

https://brill.com/view/journals/mtsr/aop/article-10.1163-15700682-bja10100/article-10.1163-15700682-bja10100.xml

non-paywalled: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5fd8d19b84774a17d4cd0bf7/t/63bedae672a96f6021f3a4a9/1673452262764/Truschke+2023+Hearing+Hindu+Stories.pdf

Hearing Hindu Stories

Abstract This article presses on some of the key insights from Mack’s seminal essay on Christianity vis-à-vis scholarship on a different religion, namely Hinduism. I suggest some extensions of Mack’s argument to the academic study of Hindu traditions, such as identifying the harms posed by the soft inclusion of Christian theology within the discipline of Religious Studies. I argue that this is a structural problem in the modern academy that sidelines scholars of non-Christian, especially non-Abrahamic, religions and creates a model for uncritical influence from ideological and political sources. Following on Mack’s analysis of the pressures of Christian theology, I identify specific non-academic threats to critical studies of Hinduism, namely the political commitments of Hindu nationalists and the embrace of orientalist ideas by scholars and practitioners. I argue it is imperative to counter both harmful trends, while recognizing significant challenges to doing so. I also draw on insights from scholarship on Hinduism to point to strategies potentially beneficial to scholars of Christianity keen to pursue Mack’s ideas, such as a milder interest in questions of origins that embraces multiplicity. I conclude that scholars of Hinduism are ready to tell our stories – based on critical analyses of a diverse and complicated religious tradition – but whether our academic peers in Religious Studies are ready to hear and incorporate our insights is another matter.

Brill

Audrey Truschke Dec 22, 2022

2022 is coming together at the end here for me.

Today, I got positive peer reviews on a book-in-progress and, separately, a bottle of champagne delivered with a limerick where the main rhyme is with "sue."

#AcademicLife #professor

Audrey Truschke Dec 20, 2022

Christmas came early, or Diwali came late!

The Hindu American Foundation's SLAPP lawsuit against me and four other defendants is dismissed by Judge Mehta! I'll comment more in the coming weeks, but this is a win against the far right! 🎉

https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2021cv1268-62

#Hindutva

Website	http://audreytruschke.com
Hindutva Harassment Field Manual	http://hindutvaharassmentfieldmanual.org
South Asia Scholar Activist Collective	https://www.southasiacollective.org/
Rutgers Prof	https://sasn.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/audrey-truschke