Post-Doctoral Scholar in India Studies
Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Education

• Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Research Interests

Sociocultural Anthropology, humor studies, semiotics, political ontology, science and technology studies, and South Asian studies

Biography

Arif Hayat Nairang completed his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota. Centering the liberatory potential of the play-frame and the comic perspective his dissertation work entitled, “Kharab Halat (Ruined Situation): Play and Humor in a Rigid Time” foregrounds the multiple ways in which play, and humor inflect everyday life in rural Kashmir. He observes that in a situation of crises and uncertainty laughter is the expression of a comic subjectivity that instead of evoking an agential pursuit that could be demarcated as resistance, takes us into the complex affective realm of seeking joy, vitality, elasticity, and pliability in a difficult time. His research is forthcoming as book chapters, as well as two articles that are in process for publication.

His broader research interests include humor studies, semiotics, political ontology, science and technology studies, and south asian studies. He is currently also working towards a second research project that involves an ethnography of the hyper-visual, mobile based war game called PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG).

Arif follows a play-based teaching pedagogy that centers embodied and experiential learning and has taught courses such as Symbolic Anthropology and Anthropology of the Middle East at the University of Minnesota. At University of Houston, he is going to teach a course called Religion and Politics in South Asia. In his fun time you can find him eating mutton curry and watching tv while his cat Akbar snoozes on the couch.