About the event

Engaged Jain Studies Podcast LIVE! on Zoom

Indian Cow Politics & Beyond: A Conversation with Yamini Narayanan
 

Tues, Jan 21, 2025 • 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. PST  |  Wed, Jan 22, 2025 • 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. AEDT

Join Arihanta Institute’s Jonathan Dickstein for a special live episode of the Engaged Jain Studies Podcast, featuring a conversation with Dr. Yamini Narayanan about her groundbreaking new book, Mother Cow, Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India. The event will conclude with a Q&A session, offering attendees the opportunity to engage directly with the speakers. Don’t miss this live Zoom discussion!

ABOUT

Engaged Jain Studies Podcast

Listen to top figures in the fields of Jain Studies, Religious Studies, Vegan Studies, Compassion Studies, and Social Justice discuss pressing issues of everyday relevance. Together let’s move beyond the realm of personal spiritual growth and connect philosophy, religion, and spirituality to the important task of caring for the wellbeing of society. Learn about your world and how to change it on the Engaged Jain Studies Podcast. Brought to you by Arihanta Institute, an IRC 501(c)(3) nonprofit California Corporation.

Listen to EJS Podcast Here: arihantainstitute.org/podcast

Jonathan Dickstein

Jonathan Dickstein, PhD, an Assistant Professor at Arihanta Institute beginning May 2023, specializes in South Asian Religions, Religion and Ecology, and Comparative Religious Ethics. He received his doctoral degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he wrote his dissertation on ancient Indian animal taxonomies and their relevance for religious ritual and dietary practice. Jonathan’s current work focuses on Jainism and contemporary ecological issues, and accordingly extends into Critical Animal Studies, Food Studies, and Diaspora Studies.

Jonathan has published in a wide array of interdisciplinary journals on topics such as veganism and politics, yoga and diet, Jain veganism, and the ethic of nonviolence (ahiṃsa). Jonathan considers himself a scholar-practitioner, having spent many years not only in libraries but also in public advocating for justice for both humans and nonhumans alike.

Yamini Narayanan

Dr. Yamini Narayanan is an ARC Future Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. Yamini's research intersects animal, political and environmental geography, multispecies ethnography, South Asian studies, and animals and geopolitics.
 
Yamini's book Mother Cow, Mother India (2023, Stanford/Navayana) won the Mid Career Researcher Book Prize 2024 from the Asian Studies Association of Australia, and has been shortlisted in the Non-Fiction category for the Crossword Book Award 2024, one of India's most prestigious national literary honours.

Yamini's substantive work focusses on the entanglement of animals in nationalist and developmental ideologies in India. She is currently researching animals in coercive labour in India’s brick kilns, exploring an anti-anthropocentric politics of poverty and development. Yamini's work is published in leading journals including Annals of the American Association of Geographers; Environment and Planning A, D and E; Urban Geography; Geoforum; Hypatia; and South Asia. Yamini's research is supported by three Australian Research Council grants, including the DECRA Fellowship.

Yamini is the founding Convenor of the Deakin Critical Animal Studies Network, and is a lifelong Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Yamini serves as Special Issues Editor of Urban Geography, and Associate Editor of Environmental Humanities.