Rep. Ellison and the Jewish Community

‘Crossing Borders’ Opens at the Jewish Museum – NYTimes.com. Some defer to others: they are commenting on sacred texts. Some supplant others: sacred texts of one faith argue against those of another. But, as presented here, many also engage in unexpected dialogues, emulations, even dissections. Scripts imitate one another, even if they are in different languages; images and designs recur in manuscripts from different conceptual worlds. Some texts remain unflustered while everything changes around them. And all of this takes place among just 52 works, some of which are astonishingly ancient, many of which are beautifully illuminated, and most of…

The following is in response to Jonathan’s post at Head Heeb. It is a selection from a piece I’m working on about South Asian diaspora communities and hybrid art. Diaspora, as an analytic term, is one that has multiple meanings,[1] and that needs some clarification before proceeding with its use. One convenient way to begin thinking about diaspora is to make a distinction between physical diasporas and the idea of diaspora as metaphor.[2] Physical diasporas[3] can be further divided into types, such as classical, victims, labor, trade, and imperial.[4] The key type of diaspora for South Asians is the labor…