Harleen Kaur
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Mail code: 3701Campus: Tempe
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Harleen Kaur is a community organizer, educator, and holds a PhD in Sociology from UCLA. She studies the subjectivity formation of the US Sikh Punjabi diaspora through empire, memory, and advocacy for social and political inclusion. Her current project – Crossroads of Belonging, Safety, and Sovereignty – traces the co-optation of Sikh embodied sovereignty and community negotiations for safety and recognition into empire- and state-driven tactics of increased surveillance, militarization, and policing. Her passion project is utilizing Sikhi's radical notions of humanity as a driver for higher community consciousness rooted in an intersectional, anti-oppression framework. Much of Harleen's inspiration, voice, and vision was cultivated during her year as a Bonderman Fellow, when she backpacked solo through fifteen countries to better develop a global framework for liberation and sovereignty.
2022 - Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
2019 - M.A., Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
2015 - B.A., English, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
My research conceptualizes diasporic identity formation through entangled narratives of racism, nationalism, empire, religion, memory, and trauma – all while centering a liberation theology and praxis.
My dissertation analyzes the shifting subjectivity of the Sikh Punjabi diaspora across empire, specifically the diaspora’s role in constructing borders of whiteness across the colonial map whilst navigating racial precarity. Through semi-structured interviews, archival excavation, discourse analysis, and ethnography, I examine Sikh political projects and claims for the human as they emerge through “the fascism of despair” (Du Bois 1938:12). In particular, I study Sikh community attempts to mobilize the Sikh turban and beard for the benefit of formal and informal modes of inclusion.
This project falls within my larger scholarly commitment to develop sociological histories of colonization that recognize the colonial present in both projects of statecraft and activism. To do so, I engage with Achille Mbembe’s framing of the decolonial question – “through what types of conflicts and negotiations and compromises do we define the all…to whom the earth belongs?” (2020). Rather than rectifying the decolonial question through belonging, however, I grapple with Sikh onto-epistemes in an attempt to push past belonging, or even recognition, as the final frontier. I venture into a new dimension of always-already belonging while forever yearning for liberation through infinite Truth.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Kaur, Harleen. 2020. “Making Citizenship, Becoming Citizens: How Sikh Punjabis Shaped the Exclusionary Politics of Belonging.” Amerasia Journal 46(1):107-122. Available here.
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. 2020. “Sikhs as Implicated Subjects in the United States: A Reflective Essay (ਵਿਚਾਰ) on Gurmat-Based Interventions in the Movement for Black Lives.” Sikh Research Journal 5(2):68-86. Available here.
Under review
Kaur, Harleen. Legacies of a Martial Race: Sikh Punjabi Investment and Implication in the Police State. (Conditionally accepted at Memory Studies)
Kaur, Harleen and Katie Byrd, Nadia R. Davis, and Taylor M. Williams. Small Revolutions: Methodologies of Black Feminist Consciousness-Raising and the Politics of Ordinary Resistance. (Conditionally accepted at Feminist Formations)
Kaur, Harleen. The Im/material, the Intimate, and the Ethnographer: Considering Practices of Ethnography for Racialized Religious Communities. (Revise & resubmit at Ethnography)
Kaur, Harleen and Victoria Tran. Extinguishing Asian Insurgency: The Limits of State-Asian Diaspora Relationality in Contemporary Sociology. (Revise & resubmit at Sociology Compass)
Kaur, Harleen and prabhdeep singh kehal. Epistemic Wounded Attachments: Recovering Definitional Subjectivity through Colonial Libraries. (Review at History & Theory)
Book chapters
Kaur, Harleen. Forthcoming. “Radical Narrative Traditions: Communal Storytelling as a Praxis for Liberation.” In Small Axe Fall Big Tree: The Pedagogy of Action, edited by Nesha Z. Haniff. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kaur, Harleen and Simran Jeet Singh. 2016. “Guru Nanak and the Foundation of Sikhi.” In Great Events in Religion: An Encyclopedia of Pivotal Events in Religious History, 3 Vols., edited by Florin Curta and Andrew Holt. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. Available here.
Kaur, Harleen. 2014. “Moving On Forward.” In Her Name Is Kaur: Sikh American Women Write about Love, Courage, and Faith, edited by Meeta Kaur and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh. Tempe: She Writes Press. Available here.
Courses
2024 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 598 | Special Topics |
2024 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 201 | Careers in Sociology |
| SOC 201 | Careers in Sociology |
| SOC 426 | Social Inequalities |
| SOC 426 | Social Inequalities |
| SOC 499 | Individualized Instruction |
2023 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 500 | Research Methods |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| FAS 591 | Seminar |
| SOC 591 | Seminar |
| SOC 598 | Special Topics |
2023 Summer
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 598 | Special Topics |
| SOC 499 | Individualized Instruction |
2023 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 352 | Social Change |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 201 | Careers in Sociology |
| SOC 201 | Careers in Sociology |
| SOC 201 | Careers in Sociology |
| SOC 201 | Careers in Sociology |
| SOC 426 | Social Inequalities |
| SOC 426 | Social Inequalities |
| FAS 591 | Seminar |
| SOC 591 | Seminar |
2022 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| SOC 500 | Research Methods |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| CDE 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| SOC 418 | Aging and the Life Course |
| FAS 591 | Seminar |
| SOC 591 | Seminar |
| SOC 598 | Special Topics |
2022
“Archival Half-Life: Degeneration and Decay in the Postcolonial Archive.” Social Science History Association annual meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2022.
“Statecraft and Borderwork: Emerging Frontiers of Political and Social Representation in Colonial Punjab.” Manuscript presented at:
- Social Science History Association annual meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2022.
- Session on Decolonizing the Sociology of Law: Gender, Race, and the Global South, American Sociological Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA, August 2022.
“‘Revolutionary Love Has Freed Me More Times Than One’: Liberation Praxis Imagined by Sikh Youth.” Society for the Scientific Study of Religion annual meeting, Baltimore, MD, November 2022.
“Imperial Racecraft: a Du Boisian framework of Sikh subjectivity.” Beyond Militarism conference, University of Cambridge, September 2022. [virtual]
“Saving Empire, Protecting the State: How a British ‘Martial Race’ Legacy Informs Sikh Punjabi Projects of Belonging in the US.” Global Meeting on Law & Society, ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon, July 2022.
“The Im/material, the Intimate, and the Ethnographer: Considering Practices of Ethnography for Racialized Religious Communities.” Chicago Ethnography Conference, University of Wisconsin, April 2022. [virtual]
2021
“Intellectual Wounded Attachments: Discursive Repair or Colonial Civilizing?” with prabhdeep singh kehal. Manuscript to be presented at American Association of Religion Annual Conference, November 2021. [virtual]
“Statecraft and Borderwork: Emerging Frontiers of Political and Social Representation in Colonial Punjab.” Manuscript to be workshopped at New Directions in Law and Society: A Graduate Student and Junior Scholar Workshop; Center for Justice, Law, and Societies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, October 2021. [virtual]
“Intellectual Wounded Attachments: Discursive Repair or Colonial Persistence?” with prabhdeep singh kehal. Manuscript to be presented at Thinking at the border: Post- and decolonial theory and epistemic injustice at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, September 2021. [virtual]
“Committing to Abolition: A Decolonial, Anti-Imperial Framework for Asian Diaspora Studies” with Victoria Tran. Manuscript presented at American Sociological Association Annual Conference, August 2021. [virtual]
2020
“Shifting Embodiments of Whiteness: How Sikh Punjabis Solidified the Color Line.” Manuscript presented at Boston University, Junior Scholars Symposium on Race & Ethnicity in Global Perspectives, April 2020. [cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic]
2019
“The Specter of Khalistan: Hauntings of Nation-State Belonging.” Manuscript presented at Mnemonics Summer School: Memory and Activism, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, September 2019.
“Erasures of Identity Formation: How US Sikhs Use Whiteness for Visibility.” Manuscript presented at Critical Perspectives on Race and Human Rights: Transnational Re-Imaginings, Junior Scholars Workshop, UCLA Law School, March 2019.
2018
“‘Sikh Values are American Values’— How Identity-Based Violence Shapes the Sikh Diaspora.” Manuscript presented at:
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Going Global Conference, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, April 2018
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Sikholars Conference, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, February 2018