1984: Violation withoutJustice, Memory afterTrauma
Ten Women Scholars respond to: TheKaursof1984:TheUntold,UnheardStoriesofSikhWomen , 2024
THE HELENE FORTUNOFF THEATER • MONROE LECTURE THEATER, HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY • NEW YORK • SATURDAY NOV 9, 2024
OPENING REMARKS / 9:00 a.m.
JULIE BYRNE • ThomasHartmanChairofCatholic Studies&Prof.ofReligionDept
FRANCESCA CASSIO • SardarniHarbansKaur ChairofSikhMusicology,Prof.ofMusic
BALBINDER SINGH BHOGAL • Sardarni KuljitKaurBindraChairofSikhStudies,Prof.ofReligion
ENQUIRIES • RITIKA SINGH • sikhstudies@hofstra.edu
LECTURE ONE / 9:30 a m
SANAM SUTIRATH WAZIR • Author&committedadvocate forhumanrightsfromJammu&Kashmir,engagedindocumenting historicalinjusticesandlarge-scaleviolencethroughoralhistory
PANEL ONE / 10:15 am
ANNEETH KAUR HUNDLE • Assoc.Prof.Anthropology& PresidentialChairofSoc Sci toAdvanceSikhStudies,UCIrvine,USA
ANSHU SALUJA • Asst.Prof.ofHistory,AzimPremjiUniversity Bhopal,MadhyaPradesh,India
HARLEEN KAUR • Asst.TeachingProf.ofSociology,Arizona StateUniversity,USA
JASLEEN SINGH • Grad.ResearcherinSikhDiaspora,Activism, &Subjectivity,UniversityofMichigan,USA
PARVINDER MEHTA • AdjunctProf.English,WayneStateUni, &LiberalArts,Coll.forCreativeStudies,Detroit,MIUSA
PANEL TWO / 12:30 p.m.
BALBIR KAUR SINGH • ResearchChairinArt&RacialJustice, ConcordiaUniversity,Montreal,Canada
INDIRA-NATASHA PRAHST • Prof.ofSociologyand Anthropology,LangaraCollege,Canada
PRABHSHARANJOT KAUR SIDHU • Asst.Prof.Brijindra College,Faridkot,Punjab,India
HARLEEN SINGH • Assoc.Prof.ofLiterature&Women, Gender&SexualityStudies,BrandeisUniversity,USA
LECTURE TWO / 1:45 p m
PRABHSHARANJOT KAUR SIDHU • “Unaccounted Silences:Reflectionsonwhatremainsunsaidabout1984Sikhgenocide”
RESPONSE, ROUNDTABLE and Q&A / 2:45 p.m.
CLOSING REMARKS / 4:45 p.m.
MARGARET ABRAHAM • HarryH.WachtelDistinguished TeachingProfessorfortheStudyofNonviolentSocialChange,Hofstra University,NY,USA
Zoom Link: https://hofstra.zoom.us/j/99207130598?pwd=wQk4x1xkpanXxDf6lGNS3tDRs299ia.1 Meeting ID: 992 0713 0598 / Passcode: 010316
Julie Byrne holds the Monsignor Thomas J. Hartman Chair in Catholic Studies and is the current Chair of the Department of Religion, Hofstra University, NY. Her second book, The Other Catholics: Remaking America’s Largest Religion, was published by Columbia University Press in 2016. It is a cultural history of independent Catholicism in the U.S. Her first book, O God of Players: The Story of the Immaculata Mighty Macs (Columbia 2003), tells the story of Catholic women's basketball in the Philadelphia archdiocese from 1930-75. Her current book project, which won a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars award, focuses on tristate families affected by 9/11 and its aftermath.
Francesca Cassio is a Full Professor of Music at Hofstra University (NY) and the Sardarni Harbans Kaur Chair in Sikh Musicology. Her research examines Sikh music literature and practices, decoloniality, alternative narratives of South Asian music, Sikh diaspora, and music-making at the intersection of religious practices and gender ideologies. Dr. Cassio authored a monograph on dhrupad (“Percorsi della Voce”, 2000). She is currently working on a monograph on Sikh Musicology and is co-editing with Balbinder Singh Bhogal the volume “Guru Nanak’s Pluriversal Vision: Rediscovering an Ecology of Voices in South Asia”. An accomplished singer of dhrupad and Gurbani kirtan, Dr. Cassio has lectured and performed around the world.
Balbinder Singh Bhogal is a Professor of Religion and the holder of the Sardarni Kuljit Kaur Bindra Chair in Sikh Studies at Hofstra University, NY. His research specializes in South Asian religions particularly the Sikh tradition from a decolonial perspective. Selected publications: “The Forbidden Turn: Decentering Modern Subjectivity by Integrating Animal and Mystic Affects”, Forthcoming; “Death and Dying in the Guru Granth Sahib”, The Sikh World Encyclopedia (Routledge) 2023; “Sikhi(sm): Yoga and Meditation”, Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies, 2021; “God/Amphora in Clay and Light”, Interfaith jour nal One World under God, 2018; “The Facts of Colonial Modernity & the Story of Sikhism”, Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, 2015.
Sanam Sutirath Wazir, a committed advocate for human rights from Jammu and Kashmir, is deeply engaged in documenting historical injustices and large-scale violence through oral history. He has successfully mobilized support from over half a million people across the world in advocating for justice for the victims of anti-Sikh massacres. His works, including ‘An Era of Injustice for the 1984 Sikh Massacre', ‘The 1984 Sikh Massacre as Witnessed by a 15-year-old' and ‘The Continuing Injustice of the 1984 Sikh Massacre', are published by Amnesty International, etc.
Anneeth Kaur Hundle is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Presidential Chair in Social Sciences to Advance Sikh Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Her research is featured in her monograph, Insecurities of Expulsion: Afro-Asian Entanglements in Transcontinental Uganda (Duke University Press, 2025), several book chapters in edited volumes including The Sikh World (Routledge World Series) and articles that have appeared in journals such as American Anthropologist, Critical Ethnic Studies, Public Culture, Feminist Review and Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Currently, Hundle is associate editor of the journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory.
Anshu Saluja is an assistant professor of History at Azim Premji University, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. Her research maps competing trajectories of intercommunity engagement in South Asia. Her areas of interest include contemporary history and politics, memory and memorialisation, space and spatiality, transition from the colonial to the postcolonial, urban studies, and women’s involvement in social and political movements.
Harleen Kaur is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Sociology at Arizona State University. She studies the subjectivity formation of the US Sikh Panjabi diaspora through empire, memory, and advocacy for social and political inclusion. Her first monograph “Martialing Race” traces the cooptation of Sikh embodied sovereignty through imperialism. Her next project focuses on a self-developed Sikh youth consciousness-raising program rooted in an intersectional, anti -oppression framework. Much of Harleen's inspiration, voice, and vision must be credited to her year as a Bonderman Fellow, when she backpacked solo through fifteen countries to better develop a global framework for liberation and sovereignty.
Jasleen Singh recently defended her dissertation, titled “Sikh Ethics in a Time of Secular State Violence," within the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Their research focuses on the place of Gurmat or Sikh philosophy within modern forms of Sikh activism in the diaspora. Their research interests include the study of religion, gender and caste violence, borderlands, and environmental justice. As a budding scholar, Jasleen has contributed to academic journals, such as Religions and Sikh Formations, and public forums, like PolicyMic and Round Table India.
Parvinder Mehta is a Sikh-American academic scholar and poet. Her debut poetry collection titled, “On Wings of Words” (2021) was published by the UK-based independent publisher, Khalis House. She earned her B.A. (Hons), M.A. and M.Phil in English literature from University of Delhi and a Ph.D. in English from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Her research interests include Asian American literature, Sikh Studies, and South Asian literature and culture. She is completing her book manuscript on contemporary Asian American writers, titled, Mimic Women in Asian America: Affect and Cultural Camouflage . She teaches writing, literature, and film courses at Wayne State University and College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan.
Balbir K. Singh is Canada Research Chair in Art and Racial Justice, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. She is the Director of Dark Opacities Lab, a hub for BIPOC political and aesthetic study and strategy. Using anti-colonial methods of reading and sensing, Singh builds on theories of opacity in her book manuscript “Militant Bodies: Racial/Religious Opacity and Minoritarian Self-Defense,” which takes a materialist feminist approach to explore questions that center post-9/11 and ongoing racial and religious hyperpolicing of Muslim, Sikh, and other minoritarian bodies via the study of contemporary visual art and culture.
Indira-Natasha Prahst is a Professor and Past Chair, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Langara College, Vancouver, B.C. Prahst specializes in racism and ethnic relations, particularly postcolonial violence and its effects on subjectivity and resistance. Her research examines sovereignty movements, commemoration of 1984 Sikh atrocities, memory work, and the resistance strategies of survivors, including Sikh widows of 1984 and Korean “Comfort Women” and has a book forthcoming. She headed a five-year research project on gangs and alienation at Langara College with the “Acting Together Community University Research Alliance” (SSHRC-CURA). Prahst has won several awards for bridging academia with community including the Renate Shearer Human Rights Award by the United Nations.
Prabhsharanjot Kaur is a Professor of Punjabi at Brijindra College, Punjab, India. Her research interests include Sikh and Punjabi poetry, literature, Punjabi folk culture, and Punjabi folk music. Her most recent book, Laadli na Rakhin Babla (Navrang Publications 2022), is a compilation and discussion of Punjabi folk songs sung by women during celebrations.
Harleen Singh is the Senior Associate Provost for Academic and Strategic Initiatives at Brandeis University, where she is also the Director of the Women’s Studies Research Center and teaches Literature, Women's Studies, and South Asian Studies. She co- founded the South Asian Studies Program and served as its co-Chair from 2007-2016. Her chapters on women warriors and South Asian women writers are included in book collections. Her monograph, The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India (Cambridge, 2014) is in its second reprint. Her interdisciplinary work in English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi is focused on women in literature and film. A recipient of the ACLS Burkhardt fellowship, her next book, Contemporary Debates in Postcolonial Feminism, is being published by Routledge.
Tavleen Kaur (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. She researches contemporary hate violence on the bodies and buildings of communities of color in North America and Europe. Tavl een’s teaching, research, and community work bring together art, architecture, film, hate violence, media, and social justice. At Fullerton, she teaches courses in Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies and is expanding her research on Desi American architecture and urbanism, community theater, ecologies, migration, and pan-ethnic abolitionist solidarity.
Margaret Abraham is Professor of Sociology and the Harry H. Wachtel Distinguished Professor at Hofstra University, USA. Her teaching and research interests include social justice, citizenship, intersectionality, migration, and domestic violence. She is the author of the award-winning book, Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States (Rutgers University Press 2000), the first book on domestic violence within the South Asian diaspora in the United States. She serves on community board organizations, journal editorial boards and has been a consultant and advisory board member on national and international projects addressing gender-based violence.