RELGST 1511 - YOGA: OF LOINCLOTHS AND LULULEMON

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Is yoga culturally appropriative? This question and others like it have produced heated debate on college campuses and beyond. It is the aim of this course to add nuance to these popular debates by exploring the politically fraught history of yoga. Under the British Empire, Hindu religious reform and physical culture intertwined, leading to the development and spread of modern postural yoga as a form of anti-imperial resistance. In the early twentieth century, Indian proponents of yoga worked as cultural ambassadors and entrepreneurs, spreading their practices to the West. In postcolonial India, yoga often shows up in clinical settings as an inexpensive and culturally familiar alternative to biomedicine, but has also served as a venue for some religious militants to assert their masculinity through physical fitness. Meanwhile, by the late twentieth century, yoga became a booming industry in the West and was marketed, especially to middle-class women, as an "exotic" lifestyle commodity at times.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SU3 Elective Basis

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