LMU Graduate Yoga Studies Wednesday Night Lecture Series:

"White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals"

Lecture by Dr. Amanda Lucia

Wednesday, October 7, 2020
7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. PDT

On Zoom

LECTURE DESCRIPTION
In White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals, religion scholar Amanda Lucia supplies a detailed account of the religious practices of communities of the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). For nine years of ethnographic research, Lucia followed yoga practitioners through the transformational festival circuit and analyzed both yoga classes and transformational festivals as important educational spaces for disseminating contemporary spiritual values. In this talk, Lucia focuses particularly on the practice of yoga and discusses the yogic field’s preoccupation with authenticity as a strategy of cultural appropriation. Lucia’s research analyzes various authenticating strategies and demonstrates their interdependence with the predominantly white demographics of yoga in the United States.

ABOUT DR. AMANDA LUCIA
Amanda Lucia is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California-Riverside. Her research engages the global exportation, appropriation, and circulation of Hinduism. She is author of White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals ( 2020), Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (2014), and numerous articles. She is currently crafting a body of research on sexual abuse in guru-led religious communities.