This event is in collaboration with the Department of Asian Studies.
Abstract
We celebrate Guru Nanak’s 550 th birthday by remembering his joyous aesthetics. Could the dexterous jeweler working away with his anvil and hammer, bellows and fire in the final stanza of the Japji (#38) be the Guru himself? For sure, it is an amazingly creative performance — simultaneously poetic, musical, artistic. As we recap the motions and emotions of the jeweler working in his smithy, we too get rapt in the Guru’s rapture.
Presenter
Dr. Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh is the Crawford Professor and head of the Department of Religious Studies at Colby College. Her interests focus on Asian Religions, feminist issues, and sacred art and poetry. Dr. Singh has published extensively in the field of Sikh studies. Her books include Of Sacred and Secular Desire: An Anthology of Lyrical Writings from the Punjab (IB Tauris 2012), Sikhism: An Introduction (IB Tauris 2011), Cosmic Symphony (Sahitya Akademy, 2008), Birth of the Khalsa (SUNY 2005), Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Sikhism (Facts on File, translated into Japanese, 1993), and The Name of My Beloved (HarperCollins1995; Penguin 2001). She has authored over 100 articles and chapters, and has delivered more than 250 lectures nationally and internationally.
