Gurbir was conceived in London, born in Mumbai, then spent the next seven years migrating across continents before his family settled in Toronto, where Gurbir has since lived. Gurbir’s curiosity regarding the kinship between ethnographic, literary, historical, and religious narratives animated his MA study of diasporic South Asian youths’ interlaced constructions of migration, memory and gender (Interdisciplinary Studies, York University), and his Ph.D. study of empowering paradoxes in post-colonial literature. Gurbir’s doctoral dissertation—The Post-Colonial Christ Paradox: Literary Transfigurations of a Trickster God—ventured a post-colonial, literary Christology that critically recast classical Christological paradoxes, relying on paradoxes long-associated with regional, post-colonial trickster figures. Gurbir has co-edited an anthology of coming-of-age reflections, Bolo! Bolo! Second-Generation South Asian Voices (Kitchen Table Collective, 2000), a collection of erotica, Desilicious: Sexy. Subversive. South Asian (Arsenal Pulp, 2003), and served as lead editor for a compilation of interdisciplinary essays on Hindi cinema’s globalization, Upon a Time in Bollywood: The Global Swing in Indian Cinema (TSAR, 2007). Teaching in Children, Childhood, and Youth Studies for eleven years, Gurbir has won a Department of Humanities Award for Teaching, been nominated for the same award on two other occasions, and been nominated for a University Wide Teaching Award.

Current Courses

Upcoming Courses

Gurbir was conceived in London, born in Mumbai, then spent the next seven years migrating across continents before his family settled in Toronto, where Gurbir has since lived. Gurbir’s curiosity regarding the kinship between ethnographic, literary, historical, and religious narratives animated his MA study of diasporic South Asian youths’ interlaced constructions of migration, memory and gender (Interdisciplinary Studies, York University), and his Ph.D. study of empowering paradoxes in post-colonial literature. Gurbir’s doctoral dissertation—The Post-Colonial Christ Paradox: Literary Transfigurations of a Trickster God—ventured a post-colonial, literary Christology that critically recast classical Christological paradoxes, relying on paradoxes long-associated with regional, post-colonial trickster figures. Gurbir has co-edited an anthology of coming-of-age reflections, Bolo! Bolo! Second-Generation South Asian Voices (Kitchen Table Collective, 2000), a collection of erotica, Desilicious: Sexy. Subversive. South Asian (Arsenal Pulp, 2003), and served as lead editor for a compilation of interdisciplinary essays on Hindi cinema’s globalization, Upon a Time in Bollywood: The Global Swing in Indian Cinema (TSAR, 2007). Teaching in Children, Childhood, and Youth Studies for eleven years, Gurbir has won a Department of Humanities Award for Teaching, been nominated for the same award on two other occasions, and been nominated for a University Wide Teaching Award.

Current Courses

Upcoming Courses