Rajbir Singh Judge

RAJBIR SINGH JUDGE

Credentials

Ph.D., University of California, DavisDr. Judge in front of a bookshelf filled with books

M.A., University of California, Davis

B.A., California State University, Chico

Rajbir Singh Judge (rajbir.judge@csulb.edu) is Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach. He specializes in intellectual and cultural history of South Asia with a particular emphasis on Punjab and the Sikh tradition. His research interests include South Asian History, Postcolonial Theory, World History, History of Colonialism and Empire, Theory and Intellectual History, and Dream Corp, LLC.

His current book project rethinks the relationship between colonialism and Sikhism at the end of the 19th century. The manuscript explores how, in the 1880s, Duleep Singh, the deposed Maharaja of Punjab, served as common frames of reference for Sikhs as they engaged in cross-border movement, literary production, bodily discipline, theological debate, and the cultivation of ethical practice. Singh and his assorted incarnations, therefore, disclose how Sikhs alternatively disavowed, appropriated, and re-imagined Singh collectively to cultivate dispositions irreducible to colonial power.

Selected Publications

“Formations of the Corridor: A Border Christology” in Theory & Event (Forthcoming)

“Critique of Archived Life: Toward a Hesitation of Sikh Immigrant Accumulation,” co-authored with Jasdeep Singh Brar, positions: asia critique 29, no. 2 (2021): 319-346. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-8852098

“The Invisible Hand of the Indic,” Cultural Critique 110 (2021): 75-109. https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2021.0003

What is Called Ghostly?: A Mother’s Story,” in Milestones: Commentary on the Islamic World. Review Symposium on Alan Klima’s Ethnography #9. January 21, 2021. https://www.milestonesjournal.net/ethnography-9-1/2020/8/29/review-singh.0

“Mind the Gap: Islam, Secularism, and the Law” in Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 29 no.1 (2020): 179–202. https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-8241949

“There is No Colonial Relationship: Antagonism, Sikhism, and South Asian Studies” in History & Theory 57, no. 2 (2018): 193-215. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12057

“Dusky Countenances: Ambivalent Bodies and Desires in the Theosophical Society” in the Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 2 (2018): 264-293. https://doi.org/10.7560/JHS27203

Courses:

Contemporary World History (HIST 396)

Foucault and His Critics (HIST 450/550)

History and Theory (HIST 302)

Senior Seminar (HIST 499) colonial power.