Meet our faculty members in Asian Studies and learn more about their background and passions! In this Faculty Spotlight, we introduce you to Renisa Mawani, our new Professor in Colonial Legal Histories! Prior to joining the Department of Asian Studies, she was at the Department of Sociology.
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Can you tell us what you will be teaching in the UBC Department of Asian Studies?
What do you want students to gain out of your courses?
What are some other interests you enjoy pursuing outside of your work?
Could you tell us a little about your academic background prior to joining UBC Department of Asian Studies? What brought you to Asian Studies?
I’ve been at UBC since 2003, when I joined the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, which at the time was a joint department. This was my first tenure track job. I was thrilled to be hired in a position in legal theory and was to be moving back to the west coast, after spending 6 years at the University of Toronto, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, where I completed my PhD and then a Postdoctoral Fellowship.
I am a scholar of law and colonialism. Since starting my career at UBC, my work has slowly moved from the social sciences to the humanities and from the Chinese and South Asian Diaspora in what is now British Columbia to South and Southeast Asia. The move to Asian Studies seems like an ideal fit and I am so glad to be here. I’m looking forward to learning from students, colleagues, and staff as I work on my various South Asia-focused book projects.
What inspires you to teach?
Teaching is incredibly rewarding and also humbling. Students bring so many different experiences and knowledges to the classroom, to the texts we read, and to our collective discussions. It’s not always easy to draw students out of their comfort zone, but when one is able to do so, the conversations can become so vibrant. We are living in challenging times and the classroom is an important space for students to feel comfortable to express their fears, anxieties, and aspirations.
Can you tell us what you will be teaching in the UBC Department of Asian Studies?
In January, I will be teaching an undergraduate course, AISX 300F: Archives, Histories, and Fictions in Asia and Beyond and a graduate seminar, ASIA 576: Topics in South Asian Studies. The first, which is approved as part of the Place and Power breadth requirement in the Faculty of Arts, introduces students to the fluid borders, rich archives, and multiple fictions of Asia and their transpacific circulations. Students will have the opportunity to write their own histories of place.
The graduate seminar focuses on race, caste, and empire in India from the 1780s, when the East India Company began ruling large parts of the Indian subcontinent to the 1930s when anticolonial movements were well underway. We will explore how racial power was used to categorize people and populations, to organize social, political, and economic life, and to discipline, punish, and eradicate so-called undesirables, including criminals, anticolonials, and seditionists.
What do you want students to gain out of your courses?
In different ways, both the undergraduate and graduate course focus on race, colonial, and settler colonial histories. I hope students will draw from the course materials and discussions to learn the ongoing importance of these histories, and how they continue to shape the places we live, work, visit, and imagine.
What are some other interests you enjoy pursuing outside of your work?
I spend a lot of time thinking about my work and about history. I am also a mother, daughter, friend, and partner. I am definitely a bibliophile. In addition to books, I enjoy yoga, walking, and cooking. I like to think of myself as an alchemist, taking the recipes and techniques that are passed down from my mother, grandmother, father-in-law, and aunties and adapting them into family traditions that I hope will continue to evolve with future generations.
