Author & Coach at Bad Law Professor ℠
JD, UC Berkeley Law; MA, NYU Tisch Arts; Ph.D. ASU
Former Professor of Law and Legal Studies
(CUNY, Cal State Monterey Bay, Southwestern Law School)
ABOUT ME
a bad law professor is an outlier & not too keen on rules for rules sake. i want to share cheat codes with you, for how to make it through academia with heart & health intact. i was a university and law school professor for ten years total. i am a published scholar on yoga, law, and intellectual property. i video essay at
youtube.com/@badlawprofessor
About Roopa
yoga scholarship
My recent law review publication was on 100 years of yoga copyright history in the U.S. The idea there is to add the fact of long standing, and ravenous ownership of yoga as private property to discussions about whether anyone can own yoga. The fact is, a lot of people do.
I held nationwide public panels on culture, appropriation, and yoga as the founder of SAAPYA (South Asian American Perspectives in Yoga). As as result, I was the first South Asian American appointed to the Yoga Alliance Teaching Standards Review Board. I've keynoted the UC Berkeley Race & Yoga conference, and stuff like that.
Bio
Dr. Roopa Bala Singh is a fourth-generation attorney focusing on property law. Roopa is a founding legal scholar of Critical Yoga Theory, which bridges studies of yoga, race, and the law. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Law and Civic Engagement at CSU Monterey Bay, where she teaches law, race, and gender. Her recent UC Press article traces yoga as racial property through U.S. popular music history. Roopa is a licensed attorney, with a law degree from UC Berkeley, a Masters in Cinema Studies from NYU, and a Ph.D. in Justice and Social Inquiry from ASU. Roopa’s nationwide panel project (SAAPYA: South Asian American Perspectives on Yoga, 2013-2016) was the first public discourse site on race and cultural appropriation in yoga. As a result of this groundbreaking work, Roopa was appointed as the first South Asian American advisor to Yoga Alliance and gave the keynote at UC Berkeley’s Race and Yoga Conference. Commitments to anti-racist liberation have been a central part of Roopa’s lifelong career in social justice and prison law. Roopa is currently at work on her first book, "One Breath at a Time: Yoga and U.S. Law."
