Teaching
COURSES
2022-PRESENT
Indigenous Environmentalism in Asia and Beyond
This course examines human-environment relationships through the works of Indigenous scholars from different parts of Asia to understand the position, the context, and the material with which they illuminate Indigenous environmentalism. The assigned readings are supplemented with multimedia materials from different sources to enhance student learning. By centering Indigenous communities and their experiences throughout the course, students learn about a rich variety of ways Indigenous environmentalism is embodied, expressed, and experienced.
Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change
This course explores Indigenous experiences in the context of climate change across local, regional and global scales. It is informed by Indigenous climate advocacy, leadership, and scholarship in paving pathway towards liveable future for all. Particular attention is paid to Indigenous environmental justice as a distinct formulation of climate justice. It recognizes differentiated climate vulnerabilities, risks, agency and capacities of Indigenous Peoples. In doing so, it moves away from the homogenizing, overly generalized, perception and treatment of Indigenous peoples as passive victims in the context of climate change.
Students learn from audio-visual and textual materials from multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, anthropology, geography, environmental science, history, linguistics and forestry. Institutional policy documents concerning Indigenous Peoples are reviewed. The course highlights Indigenous agency, solidarities, and coordination in challenging the ‘epistemology of crisis’ and imagining Indigenous futures.
Indigenous Peoples and the Politics of Self-determination
This course introduced students to the interrelated background cultural, historical, political, and economic context that informs the diverse experiences of First Nations/Indigenous people and communities in Canada and beyond, on the one hand, and the interdisciplinary field of critical First Nations and Indigenous Studies, on the other. From a foundational understanding that borrows from Western and Indigenous intellectual and cultural traditions, this course explored the web of power relations (racial, gendered, economic, and political) that structure the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada, as well as our relationships to other social justice struggles and the land. Particular attention was paid to examining the ways in which Indigenous Peoples have sought to overcome the legacy of settler-colonization through a variety of means, including strategies and tactics aimed at achieving recognition through negotiated land claims, self-government agreements, and economic development, and by organizing grassroots change in the lives of Indigenous People and communities themselves.
Biocultural Diversity: language, community, and environment
This course explored the connections between language, community and environment through Indigenous literature from multiple disciplines covering different geographic regions. Students learn about different ways Indigenous scholars globally have approached relevant topics of linguistic vitality, food sovereignty, environmental sustainability, spirituality, and relational ethics of care. The first part of the course revolves around community building in the class as students learn about foundational concepts and frameworks. The second part involves deep dive examining Indigenous literature that illustrate connections between language, community and environment.
2009-2021
Contemporary Global Issues
Cultural processes that many would label progress has brought humanity to major turning points many times. From the first use of tools, food production, social stratification to urbanization, state organization, and now the dominance of global commercial economies, they have all been decisive ones with critical implications for the future. At this point, however, with the orders-of-magnitude increases in the scale of societies, global population, resource consumption rates, and the concentration of wealth and power associated with growth in the commercial economy have dramatically intensified the problems created by earlier developments and significantly reduced the resilience of both human and natural systems. Pacific Lutheran University (Spring 2020)
Sacred Himalaya
Himalayan sacredness can be understood in multiple ways. Through various reading materials, this course explores: what is sacred about the Himalaya; who is it sacred to; and how is sacredness maintained? When there is no one to continue the project of maintaining and advancing sacredness, does it expire? Can Himalayan sacredness be forgotten? University of Pittsburgh (Fall 2018)
Climate Change in the Himalayas
This course examines how climate change is unfolding in the Himalayas. Students explore perception, vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience as thematic instruments to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of climate change. University of Pittsburgh (Fall 2018)
Destination Nepal: ethnography of encounter and cultural resilience
Students explore historical and contemporary frictions of encounter between tourists and Nepali communities, researchers and shamans, nomadic hunter-gatherers and development. Considering the precipitated changes through such encounters, students will explore notions of cultural resilience and holding on to origins. University of Washington (Winter 2018)
Sacred Himalayas: people, livelihoods, and climate change
This course explores diverse culture, geography and contemporary issues in the Himalayas. It discusses human-mountain relationships to understand how the melting Himalayas are reimagined as sacred entities. Through a survey of contemporary socio-cultural and environmental challenges Himalayan people face, it examines temporal, spatial, and situational evolution of the notion of sacredness. University of Washington (Spring 2017)
Sacred Boundaries: faith, ecology, and the politics of the Himalayas
This course will explore sacred sites that cross international boundaries. It looks specifically at the Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL) that spans the borders of China, India and Nepal, and how it becomes a unique global space in which ecology, economy, and politics converge in unexpected ways. Hindus and Buddhists consider Mount Kailash the holiest of mountains. For thousands of pilgrims who make the arduous journey to this mountain every year, it is the closest place on Earth to heaven, where ordinary humans are spiritually transformed. The New School (Fall 2016)
Area Studies
Peoples of South Asia, Pennsylvania State University (2014, 2015)
Natives of North America, Washington State University (2010)
General Anthropology
Anthropology of Gender
Anthropology of Religion
Introduction to Anthropology
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (face-to-face and online)
INSTITUTE
Penn State Asian Studies Summer Institute: "Trans-Asian Indigeneity," June 18-24, 2017, Co-directors: Neal Keating, Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, and Charlotte Eubanks. Institute participants spend a week reading and thinking about the annual theme, as well as significant time workshopping their work in progress. Particularly strong work may be considered for publication in the “Indigeneity” special issue of Verge: Studies in Global Asias.