Social Justice and Modern Yoga
Social Justice and Modern Yoga
Course JYST004
Social Justice and Modern Yoga surveys the history and contemporary practice of modern yoga and its intersection with issues of social justice. Students will encounter both the major names and lineages in the history of transnational modern yoga as well as some of the lesser-known figures who have contributed to the development of transnational yoga into the present. The course is structured both historically and thematically, presenting topics including, but not limited to, yoga’s intersections with warrior asceticism, colonization, non-violent social justice movements, nationalism, Orientalism, the carceral system, racism, White supremacy, appropriation, gender, foodways, speciesism, pollution, necropolitics, biopolitics, neoliberal capitalism, and abuse. Students will be trained in the basic methods of writing yoga ethnography and social history and will complete an ethnographic research project on a topic of their choice related to the academic field of Modern Yoga Studies.
Learning Area
Yoga, Self-care and Spirituality Instructor
Christopher Miller, PhD
Christopher Jain Miller is the co-founder, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Professor of Jain and Yoga Studies at Arihanta Institute. He completed his PhD in the study of Religion at the University of California, Davis and is also a Visiting Researcher at the University of Zürich's Asien-Orient-Institut and Visiting Professor at Claremont School of Theology where he co-developed and co-runs a remotely available Masters Degree Program focusing on Engaged Jain Studies. His current research focuses on Engaged Jainism and Modern Yoga, and he is the author of a number of articles and book chapters concerned with Jainism and the practice of modern yoga. Christopher is the author of Embodying Transnational Yoga: Eating, Singing, and Breathing in Transformation (Routledge 2024), as well as co-editor of the volumes Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Approaches to the Study of Jain Social Engagement (SUNY 2025) and Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age (Lexington 2020).