Balbir K. Singh

Balbir K. Singh, Assistant Professor

Balbir Singh — Balbir K. Singh, Assistant Professor

_{Department of Religion and Culture

211 Major Williams

220 Stanger Street

Blacksburg, VA 24061

540-231-6810 | bksingh@vt.edu}

Broadly, my scholarship interrogates the convergence of racial, gendered, and religious embodiment, with migration and policing under violent conditions of imperial and domestic security technologies.

I am currently at work on my first book, “Militant Bodies: Violence and Visual Culture Under Islamophobia,” which is rooted in questions that center post-9/11 racial and religious hyper-policing of Muslims and Sikhs, especially as they relate to bodily comportment and the donning of religious garments.

Additionally, I am beginning research on a second book project — “Whose Terror? Vexed Attachments and the Contradictions of Freedom” — theorizing contemporary terror as a vexed political and affective attachment through an intersectional feminist lens.

Principal Areas of Research Focus

Women of Color Feminisms
Asian and Arab American Studies
Race, Religion, and Empire
Fashion and the Body
Anti-Colonial and Decolonial Thought

Education

PhD, University of Washington
MA, University of Washington
BA, SUNY Buffalo

Professional Roles

American Studies Association
National Women’s Studies Association
Critical Ethnic Studies Association
Association for Asian American Studies
Arab American Studies Association

Awards and Honors

Embrey Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 2017-18
Gender and Sexuality Studies Seminar, Scholl Center, Newberry Library, 2017
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Departments of Asian American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2016-17
Emerging Diversity Scholar, National Center for Institutional Diversity, 2016
Andrew R. Hilen Dissertation Fellowship, Department of English, University of Washington, 2015

Publications

Books

Militant Bodies: Violence and Visual Culture Under Islamophobia. Book manuscript in preparation.

Journal Articles

Singh, Balbir K. “The Commodity Fetish of Modest Fashion.” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 4, no. 3, 2017.
Singh, Balbir K. “Unjust Attachments: Mourning as Antagonism in Gauri Gill’s ‘1984.’” What Justice Wants, special issue of Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, Fall 2016.
Singh, Balbir K. “On the Limits of Charhdi Kala: Oak Creek and Sikh Philosophy in an Age of Terror.” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory. Taylor & Francis, 2013.