Additional and Fall Term Contract Faculty

Additional Faculty

Kamala Nayar
Office: Room C2850-A (Surrey)
Phone: 604.599.2041, Voice Mail: 9992
Email: kamala.nayar@kwantlen.ca

Education: received a Ph.D. in South Asian Religions at McGill University in 1999.

Interests: Kamala Elizabeth Nayar completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship to research the Sikh community in Vancouver. Her areas of interest include the history of religions, Hinduism, Sikhism as well as historical anthropology, the South Asian diaspora, the Punjabi community in Western Canada, and gender.

Courses:

• Religions of India
• South Asians Around the Globe 
• The Sikhs: Culture, Religion and Society
• Women in Modern India

Selected Publications:

Books and Manuscripts

(forthcoming) T he Socially Involved Renunciate: Guru Nànak’s "Discourse to the Nàth Yogis". Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

(2004) The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver:Three Generations Amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

(2004) Hayagr ã va in South India : Complexity and Selectivity of a Pan-Indian Hindu Deity . Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.

(1999) "Hayagr ã va: The Many Histories of an Indian Deity", Montreal: McGill University (Ph.D. Dissertation).

Chapters in Books

(in press) "Mistaking Fundamentalism as an Aspect of Sikh Identity: The Experience of Orthodox Sikhs in Vancouver", in Religious profiling: Sikhs as the victims of mistaken identity. Edited by Sandhu, D., Lal, H, & Esperson, E. Huntington, NY: Nova Science, in press.

(forthcoming) "Sikh Women in Vancouver: An Analysis of their Psychosocial Issues" in Women in Sikhism. Edited by Doris Jakobsh and Eleanor Nesbitt. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

(forthcoming) "The Making of Sikh Space in British Columbia: The Central Role of the Gurdwara" in Asian Religions in British Columbia. Edited by Dan Overmyer, Don Baker and Larry DeVries. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Articles

Kamala Nayar and Jaswinder S. Sandhu.

• (2006) "Intergenerational Communication in Immigrant Punjabi Families: Implications for Helping Professionals", International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling .
• (2001) "Religious Experience and the Varieties of Religious Expression: A Comparison of the Devotional Literature of Mirabai and Teresa of Avila", Journal of Ananthacharya Indological Research Institute, No. 2.
• (1990) "The Concept of the Perfected One: A Comparison of Hindu and Buddhist Thought", Hikmat, III, No. 4, pp. 23-31.

Jaswinder S. Sandhu and Kamala Nayar.

• "Culture-Specific Curriculum: Enhancing the First Year Experience for Sikh Students", in review.