Dr. Gordan Djurdjevic, specializing in South Asia, will be joining our Department this fall.
Bio:
I completed my Ph.D. in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2005 with a Thesis on the Nāth Yogis, approached from the perspective of esoteric studies. I continue to research and write on the subject of comparative esotericism. My book India and the Occult: The Influence of South Asian Spirituality on Modern Western Occultism is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. I co-edited, with Henrik Bogdan, an anthology of essays Occultism in a Global Perspective (Acumen, 2013), for which I also contributed an article on occultism in former Yugoslavia. I am currently engaged in a project, which concerns the translations of the Gorakh Bānī (“Sayings of Gorakhnath”), done in collaboration with Shukdev Singh, with my introduction and notes (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Gordan Djurdjevic will be teaching the following courses this year:
ASIA 398 Narrative Literature in Premodern India
Stories of gods, goddesses and religious heroes from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas, Avadanas and in classical poetry and drama.
ASIA 488 Religion, Society and State in Modern India
History of secular and religious discourse in post-independent India. Partition, state policy of secularism, religious mobilization among Hindus and Muslims, communal violence and religious radicalism.
