Religious Studies

Rohit Singh

Visiting Assistant Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies
r_singh@uncg.edu

Rohit Singh earned his PhD in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara with a specialization in Tibetan religions. He has conducted extensive fieldwork with diverse Buddhist and Muslim communities in the Himalayas. His research focuses on three main areas: inter-religious interaction in the Tibetan cultural sphere, astrology, and the ethnography of Tantra. Dr. Singh teaches a wide range of courses on Buddhist Studies, Islamic Studies, Asian Religions, and the Sociology and Anthropology of Religion.

His most recent work, The Ethnography of Tantra: Textures and Contexts of Living Tantric Traditions, is an edited volume in collaboration with Carola E. Lorea. This is the first collection of essays to approach the topic of Tantric Studies from the vantage point of ethnography and lived religion, moving beyond the centrality of written texts and giving voice to the everyday life and livelihoods of a multitude of Tantric actors. Bringing together a team of international scholars whose contributions range across diverse communities and traditions in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan region, the book connects distant shores of Tantric scholarship and lived Tantric practices. The contributors unpack Tantra’s relationship to the body, ritual performance, sexuality, secrecy, power hierarchies, death, magic, and healing, while doing so with vigilant sensitivity to decolonization and the ethics of fieldwork. Through diverse ethnographies of Tantra and attention to lived experiences and life stories, the book challenges normative definitions of Tantra and maps the variety of Tantric traditions, providing comparative perspectives on Tantric societies across regions and religious backgrounds. The accessible tone of the ethnographic case studies makes this an ideal book for undergraduate or graduate audiences working on the topic of Tantra.