AAR Annual Meeting Panels

We are happy to announce that the South Asia Religions (SARI) Unit will be sponsoring the following panel and roundtables at the 2022 AAR Annual Meeting:

New Directions in the South Asian Religions Saturday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM Convention Center-301 (Street Level)The New Directions panel introduces new research in the study of language and religion in South Asia by recently-graduated Ph.D. students and doctoral candidates. From studies of devotional lyrics and performance genres to grammatical oddities and theories of translation, the papers in this panel show that the language of religion matters as much as its content. Panelists also demonstrate that religious concepts themselves can create new forms in both transregional and regional languages, from Sanskrit and Persian to Tamil and Telugu. Panelists:
 

Kristina Rogahn, University of Toronto: “Building Word-Temples”: Relating the Devotional Lyric in Modern Tamil
Guy St Amant, Columbia University: God and Grammar: Śaiva Approaches to Non-Standard Sanskrit Aalekhya Malladi, Emory University: Satyabhāma, Vairāgya, and Devotion in Telugu Performance Genres Shahid Khan, Independent Scholar: Two Sufic Translations of the Bhagavadgita
Responding: Ali Altaf Mian, University of Florida
 

Religion and/as Labor Sunday, 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM Convention Center-302 (Street Level)
This panel explores several practices in contemporary South Asian religions as forms of labor, including women’s domestic puja (ritual worship), sieva (devotional service) in the name of guru-led movements, and devotional musical performance. The panel’s four papers offer anthropological data from different regions of South Asia which collectively demonstrate the centrality of human labor—paid and unpaid, manual and intellectual, private and public— in the construction of religious life. Collectively, the papers explore the dynamics through which human religious labor creates value, both spiritual and material, and how this value is subject to various processes of extraction, exchange, commodification, compensation, and monetization. The panel illustrates how religious work becomes even more complex in the contexts of flexible caste identity, gendered divisions of labor, the spiritual authority of gurus, and debates on the validity of devotional labor.Panelists: Ashlee Andrews, University of North Carolina, Greensboro: The Value of Hindu Women’s Domestic Worship (and Other Reproductive Labor) Andrew Kunze, Purdue University: Advertising Seva: Devotional Labor and the Gift of Free Press in Swaminarayan Hinduism Priya Kothari, University of California, Berkeley: Between Marga and Sampradaya: Divinely Graced Labor in the Vallabha Devotional Community Joel Lee, Williams College: The Bhajan Singer and the Qawwal: Caste and the Labor of Performance
Responding: Amanda Lucia, University of California, RiversideBusiness Meeting: 10:30-11:00 Jennifer Ortegren, Middlebury College, Presiding Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding
 

Race, Caste and Conversion in Colonial South Asia (co-sponsored with the Religious Conversions Unit) Sunday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM Convention Center-301 (Street Level)
In the accounts of missionaries, social reformers, and converts alike, one finds representations of race and caste as impervious to change, even when so much else changed in the course of conversion and religious reform.  Racial and caste identities were sometimes seen as rooted in bodies and other times in the individual’s social bonds with others in larger social units. But either way, discourse about conversion served to construct caste and race as fixed features of the self, inherent and unchangeable.  These supposedly fixed features defined the many layers of self-hoods for converts and social reformers, circulating in vernacular concepts and language that became standardized over time.  This discourse both strengthened the fixed categories of race and caste as ways in which converts demarcated their belonging to Christianity and Islam as Indian religions, and created a shared conceptual basis for new identities and senses of community to emerge.Panelists:
Afsar Mohammad, University of Pennsylvania: The Idiom of Conversion: Local Sufi Narratives and the Making of a Casteless Being Torsten Tschacher, Free University of Berlin: Diagnosing ‘Ignorance’: Conversion, Race, and Reform among Muslims in Madras and Ceylon Deepra Dandekar, Free University of Berlin: From Humble Hut to Heavenly Palace Eliza Kent, Skidmore College: The Racialization of Sin and Salvation: Pandita Ramabai and the Discourse of Conversion and Social Reform Megan Robb, University of Pennsylvania: Becoming Elizabeth: The Christian Conversion of a Mughal Lady in the 18th century
Responding Brian A. Hatcher, Tufts University
 

Teaching South Asian Islam(s) Sunday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM Embassy Suites-Aspen B (Third Level)
“How do we teach South Asia Islam(s)?” South Asian Islam(s) often receives relatively less attention in introductory Islam courses and relatively more emphasis on historical periods, dynasties, texts, and philological approaches in different types of South Asian Islam courses. Panelists in this roundtable will present and discuss specific pedagogical approaches and exercises shaped by our different teaching contexts that bring together the vernacular and philological, among other approaches, to address South Asian Islam(s) specifically and enable it to speak back to Islamic studies and religious studies. We will also address issues of subjectivity and positionality in our pedagogical methods. The roundtable aims to open teaching-oriented conversations with scholars of Islam who may teach “Islam in South Asia,” scholars of other South Asian religions who teach Islam in “South Asian Religions” survey courses and scholars seeking to diversify their “Introduction to Islam” courses.Panelists: Ali Altaf Mian, University of Florida Hinasahar Muneeruddin, University of North Carolina Jennifer Ortegren, Middlebury College Anand Taneja, Vanderbilt University Teena Purohit, Boston University Karen Ruffle, University of Toronto
 

South Asia Beyond the Indo-Persian: Scholarly Flows Between Iran and India Monday, 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM Hyatt Regency-Mineral G (Third Level)
This panel seeks to examine a set of diverse strands of Persianate discursive tradition in a broader effort to interrogate the Indo-Persian category, attending to the religious in full socio-historical and intellectual light. By attending to both particulars of juridical practice and the sociology of juridical culture, as well as philosophical ideas in doctrinal Sufism and the translation of Indic literature across pre-modern India, we aim to display a wide diversity of scholarly exchange in order to then examine different historical trajectories and trends, with an eye towards common transformations and patterns of disjuncture. While historians have long been interested in the Persianate cosmopolis, we take this further by putting multiple different kinds of scholarly exchange together and pointing to common threads that might clothe stark distinctions. The papers in this panel thus take on law, literature, and philosophical Sufism from Iran to India from a number of angles. Panelists: Nariman Aavani, Harvard University: Intellectual Networks Between Iran and India in Mughal India: Muḥammad Dihdār Shīrāzī (d. 1610) on Unity of Being (waḥdat al-wujūd) Shahrad Shahvand, Harvard University: A Legal Dispute in Mughal Lahore: Qadi Nurullah Shushtari (d. 1610)’s Critique of the Later Hanafi Scholars of Transoxiana Latifeh Aavani, Harvard University: From India to Iran: The Narrative of the Shi’i Ulama on Islamic Reformism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Raihan Ahmed, University of Virginia: Re-Locating 15th Century Indian Sufism in the Global Islamicate: Mahāʾimī’s Irāʾah al-Daqāʾiq”Ethics of Conviction: Negotiating Gender, Caste, and Religion in India Monday, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM Convention Center-301 (Street Level)
This panel analyzes how members of various communities in India negotiate different forms of authority and conflict in ways that resist, reject, reframe and/or reclaim their own voices and power. From Muslim women in South India bypassing traditional male religious authority to the role of the maternal figure in shaping notions of the Dalit citizen to how online mourning practices enable Muslims to lament in ways actively denied to them by the state, these papers reveal the ways in which gender, religion, and/or caste identities intersect both in the production of socio-religious and political authority and conflict— within and between communities—and the efforts to transcend or transform it. Harini Kumar,* University of Chicago: Cultivating Authority: Muslim Women, Islamic Pedagogy, and Ethical Life in South India
*Please note that the this is also a New Directions paper
Drishadwati Bargi, University of Minnesota: Becoming maternal, becoming conscientious? Inner conviction and the image of the Dalit dissenter in times of Hindu Majoritarianism Zehra Mehdi, Columbia University: Remembering to Mourn, Mourning to Remember: Majilis as a site of political resistance. Responding Anand Taneja, Vanderbilt University
 

A Splendid Land: Udaipur at the Smithsonian (co-sponsored with Arts, Literature and Religion Unit and Hinduism Unit) Tuesday, 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM Convention Center-301 (Street Level) On November 19, 2022—just as the AAR annual meetings begin in Denver—the National Museum of Asian Art will unveil a splendid exhibit entitled, appropriately, “A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur.” In this AAR roundtable, religionists respond from a number of angles. In 7-minute presentations experts address: (1) the literary genre of nagaravarnana, description of a city, in Hindu epics; (2) the city descriptions (vijnaptipatra) by means of which lay Jains sought to attract monastic Jains to their cities for their monsoon retreats; (3) Udaipur as a mythic city in the modern day—from local, non-elite perspectives; (4) an illustrated manuscript that draws a poem by Tulsidas into Udaipur’s lakeside landscape; (5) other pages that do the same for poems attributed to Surdas; (6) what it means, religiously speaking, to “perform place”; and (7) anticipated reactions from Hindus, Jains, and South Asian “Nones” here in North America. Panelists Nell Hawley, Harvard University John E. Cort, Denison University Jennifer Ortegren, Middlebury College Philip Lutgendorf, University of Iowa Jack Hawley, Barnard College, Columbia University Manpreet Kaur, Columbia University Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida
 

The Monastery in South Asia Tuesday, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM Convention Center-301 (Street Level)The monastery in South Asia has long been siloed within discussions of world-renouncing asceticism. Even with the welcome turn to critical analyses of the logics of monastic governance, the scholarly gaze has remained cloistered within the monastic walls, adverting to the alien logic of its maintenance. By constituting the South Asian monastery as a category of comparative study, this panel proposes to relocate the study of this institution where it belongs, firmly entrenched in the networks of power–economic, ethical, geographic, and governmental–that constitute and are constituted by such social institutions. The papers in this panel focus on the mechanisms of monastic subject-formation as a site for the analysis of the logic of monastic governance. By examining modes of governance that were developed in Buddhist, Jaina and Hindu monastic orders, this panel attempts to resituate the monastery as an alternative source of political and social order in South Asia.Upali Sraman, Emory University: Rival Monastic Groups and the Messiness of Ethical Practice in Buddhist Vinaya Texts Harsha Gautam, University of Texas: To Discuss, Defend and Dissent: Locating the Agency of the Students in the Saṅgha Christopher Fleming, University of Oxford: The Royal Supervision of Monastic Religious Endowments in Medieval India: Jurisprudence and Epigraphy Nabanjan Maitra, University of Texas: How a Great Tradition Universalizes: The Digvijaya Reconsidered
 

RISA Panels at the 2021 AAR Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX

AV19-106
Religion and Politics Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Religion and Populist Movements in South Asia
Friday: 9:00 AM-11:00 AM CST
Venue: Virtual

Nabanjan Maitra, University of Chicago, Presiding

Rebecca Faulkner, Princeton University
Muslim Internationalism: Poverty, Anti-imperialism, and Communism

Carter Higgins, Duke University
Pluralism, Development, and the ‘Populist’ Investment of a North Indian Pilgrimage Public

Sanjeer Alam, Centre for the Study of Emerging Societies, Delhi
Populism and Policies: Implications for the Welfare of Muslim Minorities in India

Justin Henry, Georgia College & State University
Terraforming the Past: Buddhist Majoritarianism and the Sinhala Ravana Movement

AV20-123
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: New Directions in South Asian Religions
Saturday: 9:00 AM-11:00 AM CST
Venue: Virtual

Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding

Andrew Kunze, University of Chicago
Ascetic Tech Shop: The BAPS Multimedia Cell, Seva-Vocation, and the Guru’s Divine Foresight

Aarti Patel, Syracuse University
Between Visits: Domestic Hindu Religiosity, Home Shrines, and ThirdSpace in the Diaspora

Sohini Pillai, Kalamazoo College
Making the Mahābhārata Vaiṣṇava: Two Regional Retellings of the Epic

Manpreet Kaur, Columbia University
Rehearsal as Utopia: Learning and Singing in the Sikh and Dadupanthi Communities in the 17th Century

Amy L. Allocco, Elon University, Responding

AV20-220
Hinduism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: South Asian Religious Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Saturday: 12:30 PM-2:30 PM CST
Venue: Virtual

Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding

Heleen De Jonckheere, Ghent University
“A True Jain [Sings]: Do Not Fear from It!” Religion, National Sentiment and Social Media in the COVID-19 Pandemic

Carola Lorea, National University of Singapore
A White-Collar Disease: Matua Approaches to COVID-19, Rural Pride, and Sonic-Sacred Epistemologies of Healing

Ali Altaf Mian, University of Florida
Calamity, Compassion, Caution: Shari’a and the Grammar of Pandemic in Muslim South Asia

Nick Tackes, Columbia University
COVID First Responders: The Gayatri Pariwar and the Immune Ritual Body

Bhakti Mamtora, College of Wooster
Religious Rhetoric, Pandemic Precautions, and Civic Duty in the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha

Nicole Karapanagiotis, Rutgers University, Camden, Responding

Business Meeting: 2:10-2:30 CST
Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding
Jennifer Ortegren, Middlebury College, Presiding

AV20-324
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: The Yogavāsiṣṭha and the Construction of a Pan-Indian Vedānta through Translation
Saturday: 3:00 PM-4:30 PM CST
Venue: Virtual

Supriya Gandhi, Yale University, Presiding

Michael Allen, University of Virginia
A Tale of Two Hindi Translations: Kavīndrācārya’s Jñān-Sār and Keśavdās’s Vijñān-Gītā

Tamara Cohen, University of Toronto
Assimilation through Redaction: From the Mokṣopāya to the Yogavāsiṣṭha

Shankar Nair, University of Virginia
Māyā in the Mind of Allah: Competing Muslim Renderings of Vedānta in the Yogavāsiṣṭha

Eric Steinschneider, Ithaca College
The Commentator as Translator: Exegetical Practice and the Fashioning of Tamil Monism

Supriya Gandhi, Yale University, responding

AV21-234
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Waterworks: Tirthas Upended
Sunday: 12:30 PM-2:30 PM CST
Venue: Virtual

Jay Ramesh, Columbia University, Presiding

Andy Rotman, Smith College
Marketing a City: Banaras, the Ganga, and Riverfront as Front

Jack Hawley, Barnard College, Columbia University
The Battle of Keshi Ghat

Tulasi Srinivas, Emerson College
The Missing Goddess: Toxic Sacred Waters and Urban Development

Diana L. Eck, Harvard University, Responding

AV22-117
Hinduism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Renouncing the World While Staying at Home: A Critical Engagement with Gṛhastha: The Householder in Ancient Indian Religious Culture
Monday: 9:00 AM-11:00 AM CST
Venue: Virtual

Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, Presiding

Panelists
John Nemec, University of Virginia
Claire Maes, University of Texas
Sonam Kachru, University of Virginia
Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago
Jack Hawley, Barnard College, Columbia University

Patrick Olivelle, University of Texas, Responding

AV22-212
Buddhist Philosophy Unit and Hindu Philosophy Unit and Religion in
South Asia Unit
Theme: Productive Influences between Hindu and Buddhist Thought
Monday, 12:30 PM-2:30 PM CST
Venue: Virtual

Leah Kalmanson, University of North Texas, Presiding

Nilanjan Das, University College London
A Reappraisal of Uddyotakara and Buddhists on Universals

John Taber, University of New Mexico
Apoha for Beginners: Dignāga and Kumārila

Jed Forman, University of California, Berkeley
Effable or Ineffable? Ratnakīrti’s Differing Rebuttals to Mīmāmṣakas
and Naiyāyikas

Alex Watson, Ashoka University
Is Recognition Capable of Refuting Momentariness? Jayanta’s Critique

Amit Chaturvedi, University of Hong Kong
Tracing the Evolution of Buddhist and Nyāya Views on Non-conceptual Perception

Charles Goodman, State University of New York, Binghamton, Responding

AV22-324
Religion, Media, and Culture Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Hate Mail/Male: Negotiating Online Terror as Scholars and Activists in South Asian Religious Contexts
Monday: 3:00 PM-4:30 PM CST
Venue: Virtual

Dheepa Sundaram, University of Denver, Presiding

Panelists
Audrey Truschke, Rutgers University, Newark
Simran Jeet Singh, New York University
Vinayak Chaturvedi, University of California, Irvine
Ather Zia, University of Northern Colorado
Yashica Dutt, Journalist and Independent Scholar

AV23-126
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: A New Religion in South Asia? Caste, Language, and Identity in the Liṅgāyat Movement for Independent Religion Status
Tuesday: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM CST
Venue: Virtual

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Emory University, Presiding

Elaine Fisher, Stanford University
Beyond the Liṅgāyat/Vīraśaiva Binary: The Pañcācārya Tradition in Early Modern Karnataka

Caleb Simmons, University of Arizona
Positioning Liṅgāyatism: Boundaries of Religion in the Royal Mysore Courts of Cikkadēvarāja and Kṛṣṇarāja Wodeyar III

Gil Ben-Herut, University of South Florida
Vacanas: From Where? Since When?

Santhosh Chandrashekar, University of Denver
What Changing Conceptions of Padodaka Tell Us about the Lingayat Movement

Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, Responding

RISA Panels at the 2020 AAR Annual Meeting (Virtual)

A2-311 
Religion in South Asia Unit 
Theme: The Implications of Being Earnest: Sincerity in South Asian Contexts 
Wednesday, December 2: 4:00 PM-5:30 PM  
Venue: Virtual 

Aaron Ullrey, University of California, Santa Barbara, Presiding 

Shiv Subramaniam, Columbia University 
Learning to Read Earnestly 

Meghan Hartman, University of Virginia 
Sincere Scholarship: Miraji’s Cultivation of Earnestness and Theory of Translation 

Kenneth Valpey, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies 
Earnestness in Hearing and Reading the Bhāgavata Purāṇa 

Seth Ligo, Duke University 
The Importance of Bhairava’s Earnestness 

James Reich, Pace University, Responding 

Business Meeting: 5:15-5:30 
Jennifer Ortegren, Middlebury College, Presiding 
Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding 

A7-312 
Religion in South Asia Unit 
Theme: Religion and the Modern Islamicate: Cosmopolitans, Composites, and Colonial Critique in South Asia 
Monday, December 7: 4:00 PM-6:00 PM 
Venue: Virtual 

Anna Bigelow, Stanford University, Presiding  

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, University of Vermont 
Muslims, Modernity, and Memorializations of the 1857 Indian Rebellion 

Hayden Bellenoit, US Naval Academy 
Kayasthas and Their Islamicate Cultural Associations in North India, 1760-1930 

Timothy Dobe, Grinnell College 
Khilafat’s Islamicate Solidarities: Gandhian Sufis, Delhi’s Badshah Khan and Bio-Moral Beef 

Quinn Clark, Columbia University 
Love and Money: Sufi Shrines, Politics, and Comparative Secularism in North India 

A8-306 
Hinduism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit 
Theme: Modern Medias and Counter-Narratives of Devotion 
Tuesday, December 8, 4:00 PM-5:30 PM  
Venue: Virtual 

Ankur Desai, Kansas City Art Institute, Presiding 

Richard H. Davis, Bard College 
Goddesses of Old Calcutta in Print 

Amy-Ruth Holt, Westerville, OH 
Hand vs. Machine: The Sacrality of Temple Building in the American Tamil Diaspora 

Karen Pechilis, Drew University 
On Not Looking Away: Dance, Broadcast and Digital Circulations of Devotion 

Emilia Bachrach, Oberlin College and Conservatory 
Hashtag Hinduism and Mobile Masculinities  

RISA Panels at the 2019 AAR Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA

A23-222
Hinduism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit and Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit
Theme: A Beautiful Sunset: The Legacy of Gerald James Larson (1938-2019)
Saturday: 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Venue: Convention Center-2 (Upper Level West)

John Nemec, University of Virginia, Presiding

Barbara A. Holdrege, University of California, Santa Barbara, panelist
Tracy Pintchman, Loyola University, Chicago, panelist
Knut Axel Jacobsen, University of Bergen, panelist
Lloyd W. Pflueger, Truman State University, panelist
Paul E. Muller-Ortega, Blue Throat Yoga, panelist
David Haberman, Indiana University, panelist
Joseph Prabhu, California State University, Los Angeles, panelist
Pravrajika Vrajaprana, Vedanta Society of Southern California, panelist

A23-323
Islamic Mysticism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Cultivating Devotion to the Prophet in Pre-Modern South Asia
Saturday: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire L (Fourth Level)

Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding

Usman Hamid, Hamilton College
Enshrining Devotion to the Prophet in Mughal India

Ayesha Irani, University of Massachusetts
Translation as Devotion, Translation as Mission: Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in the Making of Bengali Islam

Fatima Quraishi, University of California, Riverside
Prophetic Images: Religious Devotion in Nineteenth-Century Kashmir

Simon Leese, Utrecht University
Sensory Pilgrimages and Encounters with the Prophet: Performing the Hajj through Arabic and Urdu Poetry in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Responding:
Karen Ruffle, University of Toronto

A23-434
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Translating Traditions: Discursive Practices in Text and Performance
Saturday: 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 303 (Third Level)

Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, Presiding

Sucharita Adluri, Cleveland State University
Translating Devotion: The Maṇipravāla Commentaries on the Tiruvāymoḻi

Katherine C. Zubko, University of North Carolina, Asheville
The Performance Script as Translation Process: Preparing to Dance Kalidasa’s Ritusamhara/Garland of Seasons

Jesse Pruitt
Translating a God for the Nation: Etymology, Equivalence, and Tamil Prose in Tiru. Vi. Ka.’s Murugan, or Beauty

Responding:
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida

A24-226
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Polemics and Formations of Religious Identity in South Asia
Sunday: 1:00 PM-3:00 PM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 305 (Third Level)

Marie-Helene Gorisse, Ghent University, Presiding

Vishal Sharma, University of Oxford
Is Visnu Perfect or Vulnerable? Offence and Defense in South Indian Epic Exegesis

Lynna Dhanani, Yale University
Eulogizing the Same, Distancing the Other: Hemacandra’s Polemical Strategies in Hymn and Narrative

Jason Schwartz, University of California, Santa Barbara
From the Mouths of Visvakarmans: The Case for the Ontological Superiority of the Artisan Castes

Anil Mundra, University of Chicago
Polemic and Doxography in Haribhadrasūri

Jonathan Peterson, University of Toronto
Paean for a Critique of Heretics: Polemic and Community in Vadiraja’s Pasanda-Khandana-Stotra

Responding:
Valerie Stoker, Wright State University

A24-429
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: New Directions in the Study of South Asian Religions
Sunday: 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire L (Fourth Level)

Elaine Fisher, Stanford University, Presiding

Avni Chag, SOAS University of London
Configuring Sectarian Legitimacy through Eclecticism: A Case of the Svāminārāyaṇa Sampradāya’s Śikṣāpatrī

Heleen De Jonckheere, Ghent University
“Where Mirrors Are Mirrored”: Different Versions of a Jain Satirical Narrative

Sophia Nasti, Harvard University
Reading Theology across Genres: Māṇikkavācakar’s Tiruvācakam and Tirukkōvaiyār as Related Śaiva Projects

Responding:
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida

A24-504
Hinduism Unit and Jain Studies Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: In Memoriam: Anne Monius
Sunday – 7:30 PM-9:00 PM
Venue: Convention Center-4 (Upper Level West)

Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Chicago, Presiding
Hamsa Stainton, McGill University, Presiding

Gregory Clines, Trinity University, panelist
Charles Hallisey, Harvard University, panelist
Rebecca Manring, Indiana University, panelist
Sophia Nasti, Harvard University, panelist
John Nemec, University of Virginia, panelist
Elizabeth Rohlman, University of Calgary, panelist

A25-123
Religion in South Asia Unit and Religion in Southeast Asia Unit
Theme: History and Presence in Asia: Applying Robert Orsi’s Theory of “Real Presence” to the Study of Asian Religions
Monday: 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 410A (Fourth Level)

Simona Lazzerini, Stanford University, Presiding

Aleksandra Restifo, Yale University
The Presence of the Jina: Aesthetic Performance and the Significance of Pleasure

Murad Mumtaz, Williams College
“Wheresoever You Turn…”: Muslim Saints as Manifestations of God in Indian Miniature Painting

Alexandra Kaloyanides, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Nats, Jesus, and Other Spirits in 19th-Century Burma

Susanne Kerekes, Williams College
Beseeching a 19th-Century General King: Relating to Presence in Contemporary Thai Buddhism through Ritual and Amulets

Responding:
Robert A. Orsi, Northwestern University

Business Meeting:
Hamsa Stainton, McGill University
Sarah Pierce Taylor, Concordia University

A25-329
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Ten Years of “The Śaiva Age”: Selected Topics on Its Impact on the Field
Monday: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Sapphire 402 (Fourth Level)

Hamsa Stainton, McGill University, Presiding

Adam Krug, University of Colorado
Studying Vajrayāna Buddhism Ten Years after the “Śaiva Age”: Micro-Comparative Methods in the Study of South Asian Religions

Anna A. Golovkova, Bowdoin College
A Goddess for the Second Millennium: Working with Sanskrit Sources in North America

Ellen Gough, Emory University
The Jain Monk Nandighoṣasūri and the Emergence of Tantra from Asceticism

Michael Slouber, Western Washington University
Philology in Goddess Studies

A25-435
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: The Buddha and the Banyan Tree: Hindu Assimilations of Buddhist Traditions
Monday: 5:30 PM-7:00 PM
Venue: Hilton Bayfront-Indigo C (Second Level)

James G. Lochtefeld, Carthage College, Presiding

D. Mitra Barua, Rice University
“The Scientific Study of Pali”: Bengali Buddhists’ Strategy to Dispel the Shadow of Hinduism

Mallory Hennigar, Syracuse University
Rational Buddha: Ambedkarite Non-Brahmin Buddhist History

Joel Bordeaux, Stony Brook University
Crossover Appeal: Exoticism and Localization of the Goddess Tārā in Hindu Sources

Bradley S. Clough, University of Montana
Interpretive Issues in the History of the Buddhāvatāra Concept in Vaiṣṇava Theology

Responding:
Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin

A26-110
Religion in South Asia Unit
Theme: Religious Didacticism in South Asia: Critical Assessments of Jain and Hindu Literature
Tuesday – 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua 303 (Third Level)

Arun Brahmbhatt, Saint Lawrence University, Presiding

Steven Vose, Florida International University
Caste Prestige as Religious Piety: Women’s Virtue in Early Vernacular Jain Didactic Literature

Iva Patel, University of Iowa
Thinking through Tropes: Cognitive Practices and the Rhetoric of Instruction in the Sarasiddhi of Nishkulanand Swami

Eric Steinschneider, University of Arizona
Something We Can All Agree upon: Didactic Literature and Renunciation in Late-Precolonial South India

Sravani Kanamarlapudi, University of Washington
Situating a Didactic Text in Its Narrative Context: The Case of the Viduranīti

Sravani Kanamarlapudi, University of Washington
Situating a Didactic Text in Its Narrative Context: The Case of the Viduranīti

2018 AAR Annual Meeting

A17-228

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Religious Encounters in Early Modern South Asia

Saturday – 1:00 PM-3:00 PM

Venue: Convention Center-401 (Street Level)
Andrea Marion Pinkney, McGill University, Presiding
Rahul Parson, University of Colorado

Encounters and Reconciliations: “Tolerance” and (Im)partiality in Two Jain Intellectual Lineages
Julie Vig, University of Toronto

Expressing Vīr Rasa: Religious and Literary Encounters between Khalsa Sikhs and Dadupanthi Nagas
Mark McLaughlin, College of William and Mary

Dargāhs and Samādhis: Reflections on the Emergence of a Maharashtrian Hindu Tomb-Shrine Tradition
Bhakti Mamtora, University of Florida

Religious Others and Inter-faith Relations in Western India
A17-427

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Caste beyond Hinduism

Saturday – 5:30 PM-7:00 PM

Venue: Convention Center-Mile High 1A (Lower Level)
Julie Vig, University of Toronto, Presiding
Elsa Marty, University of Chicago

Adivasi Christians and Contextual Theology
David Geary, University of British Columbia

“Awakened” Villages: Indian Buddhism and the Metaphysics of Poverty at the Place of Enlightenment
Mark Balmforth, Columbia University

Nāki’s Death: Breaking Caste and Negotiating Accommodation in the American Ceylon Mission
Responding:

Nathaniel Roberts, University of Göttingen
A18-125

Religion in South Asia Unit and Tantric Studies Unit

Theme: Bengali and Assamese Tantra in Colonial and Contemporary Contexts

Sunday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM

Venue: Convention Center-Mile High 1E (Lower Level)
Tony Stewart, Vanderbilt University, Presiding
Keith Cantú, University of California, Santa Barbara

From Basu to Vasu and Back Again: Śrīśacandra Basu’s Tantric Legacy

Rachel Fell McDermott, Barnard College

The Legacy of Tantra in the Troubled Life of a National Poet
Sravana Borkataky-Varma, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Clash of Om Hari and Om Kring! Satra and Tantra Politics in Assam
Carola Lorea, National University of Singapore

Apasampradāẏ: The Invention of Heterodoxy and Its Repercussions among Low-Caste Religious Movements of Bengal
Responding:

Glen Hayes, Bloomfield College
Tantric Studies Unit Business Meeting:

Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin

John Nemec, University of Virginia
A18-226

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: New Directions in the Study of South Asian Religions

Sunday – 1:00 PM-3:00 PM

Venue: Convention Center-105 (Street Level)
Elaine Fisher, Stanford University, Presiding
Nick Tackes, Columbia University

Mangalmaya’s Medicine: Protap Chunder Mozoomdar as Patient-Multiple
Rodney Sebastian, University of Florida

Constructing the Manipuri Rasalilas: Agency, Power, and Consensus
Catherine Hartmann, Harvard University

Faith and Figuration in Tibetan Pilgrimage Guides
Responding:

Tracy Pintchman, Loyola University, Chicago
A18-427

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Religion and Aesthetics in Indo-Persian Literature

Sunday – 5:30 PM-7:00 PM

Venue: Convention Center-402 (Street Level)
Supriya Gandhi, Yale University, Presiding
Peter Dziedzic, Harvard University

Shamas Faqir and His Symbolic Universe(s): Discerning Religious Themes in Kashmiri Poetry
Shankar Nair, University of Virginia

Muslim Dreams in Sanskrit and Greek: Encountering the Pre-Modern Other through Islamic Notions of the Imagination
Ryan Brizendine, Yale University

Rasa and Rapture: The Influence of Indian Literary Aesthetics on Sufi Practice in South Asia
Responding:

Karen Ruffle, University of Toronto
A19-121

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Mantras in South Asian Religions: Sound, Silence, and Script

Monday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM

Venue: Convention Center-Mile High 1F (Lower Level)
Marko Geslani, Emory University, Presiding
Finnian Moore Gerety, Yale University

Praṇava: Histories of the Sacred Syllable
Ellen Gough, Emory University

Picturing Oṃ in Jainism
Ronald M. Davidson, Fairfield University

Glossolalia and the Many Voices in Buddhist Mantras
Supriya Gandhi, Yale University

Om/Allah: Mantras and Translation in Early Modern India
Responding:

Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin
RISA Business Meeting:

Andrea Marion Pinkney, McGill University

Hamsa Stainton, McGill University
A20-105

Hinduism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Translating Texts, Transmitting Tradition: Continuity and Change in Hindu Traditions

Tuesday – 8:30 AM-10:00 AM

Venue: Convention Center-Mile High 2A (Lower Level)
John Nemec, University of Virginia, Presiding
Tamara Cohen, University of Toronto

Arjunopākhyāna: A Functional, Non-Authoritative Translation of the Bhagavadgītā
Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, Cornell University

Translation in a Multilingual Context: The Mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil Languages in Medieval South Indian Śrīvaiṣṇava Religious Tradition
Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, University of Illinois

Hinduizing Nepal’s Hindus: Making Modern Hinduism in Premodern Nepal
Nika Kuchuk, University of Toronto

The Limits of Text and Tradition: Theosophy, Translation, and Transnational Vedanta in the Fin-de-siècle
Responding:
Christoph Emmrich, University of Toronto

2017 AAR Annual Meeting

A19-118

Islamic Mysticism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Sufism and Yoga in Early Modern India

Sunday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM

Shaman Hatley, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Presiding

Heidi R. M. Pauwels, University of Washington: Encounters and Transformations: Yogis in the Sufi Romances (Premākhyān)

Supriya Gandhi, Yale University: Sound, Breath, and Mystical Nondualism: Reading the Omnāma

Shankar Nair, University of Virginia: Yoga for Sufis? “Muslim Yoga” in a Persian Mughal Treatise

Ayesha Irani, University of Massachusetts, Boston: Yoga for the Bengali Darveś: The Esoteric Teachings of the Jñāna Pradīpa, Lamp of Knowledge

Responding: Carl W. Ernst, University of North Carolina

Business Meeting: Andrea Marion Pinkney, McGill University, and Hamsa Stainton, McGill University, Presiding

A19-268

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Gendered Traditions: Intersections of Gender, Genre, and Religion in South Asian Storytelling

Sunday, 3:00 PM–4:30 PM

Rebecca Manring, Indiana University, Presiding

Margaret Mills, Ohio State U Emerita: Trickster: Global Theories, Local Traditions, Gender, and Genre

Coralynn Davis, Bucknell University: Sāmā for the Ages and Sāmā for Our Times: The Past and Future of Maithil Women’s Storytelling in the Shifting Terrain of Gender and Society

Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, University of Illinois: The Folk Pativratā: Narrative Discourses on Hindu Womanhood in Nepal

Responding: Leela Prasad, Duke University

A20-119

Hinduism Unit and Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Modernizing the Language of the Gods: Religious Identity, Instruction, and Innovation in Contemporary Sanskrit

Monday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM

Shubha Pathak, American University, Presiding

Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College: Sanskrit as Personality Development: The Twentieth-Century Epics of Kshama Rao

Charles Preston, Millsaps College: Worshipping the Nation, Teaching the World: Imagining Audiences and Identities in Modern Sanskrit Poetry

Finnian Moore Gerety, Yale University: Amateur Hour: Innovation, Instruction, and Identity in Sanskrit Dramas of Kerala

Borayin Larios, Heidelberg University: Proud to Be Brahmin: Identity Construction and Self-Representation on Facebook

Responding: Anne Monius, Harvard University

A20-227

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: New Directions in the Study of South Asian Religions

Monday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM

Steven Vose, Florida International University, Presiding

Lynna Dhanani, Yale University: Hemacandra’s “Hymn to the Dispassionate One”: An Inter-textual Definition of Jain Devotion

Naseem Surhio, Harvard University: Mystical Exotericism: Situating the Call to Hadith by Muhammad Mu’in al-Sindhi, a Sufi Scholar of the Eighteenth Century

Julie Hanlon, University of Chicago: From Hilltop Ascetics to Courtly Advisers: The Development of Jain Monastic Communities and Literary Production in Ancient Tamil Nadu, South India

Yael Lazar, Duke University: Shree Siddhivinayak Dot Com: Hindu Temples’ Adoption of Digital Media

Responding: Anne Monius, Harvard University

A20-328

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: The Other Religious Politics: Making Religion in the Service of Secularity

Monday, 4:00 PM–6:30 PM

Ananya Dasgupta, Case Western Reserve University: Secular Imaginations of a Muslim Homeland: Bengali Muslim Cultural Activists of the 1940s and Their Antecedents

Dean Accardi, Connecticut College: Kashmiriyat, Hindutva, and Secularist Visions of Religion in Kashmir

Philip Friedrich, University of Pennsylvania: Vicissitudes of the Sāsana: Linking and Delinking Religion and Politics in Sri Lanka

Jaclyn Michael, James Madison University: Visions of Religious Belonging and Secular India in Premchand’s Karbala

Responding: Brian K. Pennington, Elon University

A21-119

Religion in South Asia Unit

Theme: Constructing Powerful Selves: Autobiography in South Asia

Tuesday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM

Kristin Bloomer, Carleton College, Presiding

Alyson Prude, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater: Authority and Vulnerability: Tibetan Buddhist Women’s Oral Life Narratives

Ben Williams, Harvard University: Abhinavagupta as a Cosmopolitan Siddha: Religious Sources for Writing the Self in Medieval Kashmir

J. Barton Scott, University of Toronto: A Bourgeois Ethic for Hindu Bombay: Victorian Self-Help and the Gujarati Travelogue

Chloe Martinez, Claremont McKenna College: “An Eminent Mohammedan Moulvie”: Autobiography and Conversion in Colonial Punjab

Responding: Janet Gyatso, Harvard University

2016 AAR Annual Meeting

A19-112

Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: New Directions in the Study of Religion in South Asia: Translation, Mediation, and

Authenticity

Saturday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM

Steven Vose, Florida International University, Presiding

Chloe Martinez, Claremont McKenna College: Against Authenticity: What Fake Autobiography Can Tell Us about Real Religion in South Asia

Gregory Clines, Harvard University: Plagiarized Purāṇas? Jain Textual Composition in Early Modernity

Bhakti Mamtora, University of Florida: The Making of Scripture in 19th-century Gujarat: An Analysis of the Oral and Textual Lives of the Svāmīnī Vāto

Genoveva Castro, University of Washington: Wajid Ali Shah’s Adaptation of a Vaishnava Story: A Hindu-Muslim Encounter

Responding: Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury

A19-209

Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Garland of Forgotten Goddesses

Saturday – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM

Michael Slouber, Western Washington University, Presiding

Ehud Halperin, Tel Aviv University: (Almost) Forgotten Complexities: The Multiple Origins of the Goddess Hadimba

Noor van Brussel, Ghent University: Bhadrakāḷi in the Backwaters: The Narrative Tradition of the Dārikavadham in Kerala

Caleb Simmons, University of Arizona: “High” and “Low” Traditions in the Tales of Cāmuṇḍā and Uttanahaḷḷi, Goddesses of Southern Karnataka

Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin: Vāruṇī, Goddess of Spirituous Liquor

Responding: Rachel Fell McDermott, Barnard College

A19-312

Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Praise Poetry across South Asian Religious Traditions

Saturday – 4:00 PM-6:30 PM

Patton Burchett, The College of William & Mary, Presiding

Audrey Truschke, Stanford University: Innovation and Conventions: Brahmanical Praises for Kavindracarya’s Negotiations with Shah Jahan

Xi He, UC Berkeley: Singing Praises of the Buddha: A Study of the Lalitavistara

Hamsa Stainton, University of Kansas: Approaching Praise Poetry via Kashmir

Luther Obrock, University of Pennsylvania: Sanskrit Praise Poetry in the Sultanate: Religion, Politics, and Materiality in Medieval North India

Responding: Christian K. Wedemeyer, University of Chicago

A20-116

Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Rivers, Religion, and Power in South and Southeast Asia

Sunday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM

Abhishek Singh Amar, Hamilton College, Presiding

Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida: Channels of Power: Strategies Used to Transform Local Rivers into the Ganga in Angkor

Eric Steinschneider, University of Toronto: Claiming the Golden River: Water, Religion, and Power in Tamil South India

Georgina Drew, University of Adelaide: Aviral Waters: The Purity, Poetics, and Politics of a Free-Flowing Ganga

Kelly Alley, Auburn University: City Drains as Transformational Spaces: When Do Religious Values, Dedication, and Ideology Help or Hinder Wastewater Management?

Responding: David Haberman, Indiana University, Bloomington

Business Meeting: Carla Bellamy, City University of New York and Andrea Marion Pinkney, McGill University presiding

A20-260

Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Modern Sanskrit, Religious Others, and South Asian Nationalism

Sunday – 3:00 PM-4:30 PM

Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Pennsylvania, Presiding

Eric Gurevitch, University of Chicago: Resembling the Upanayana Samskara: Modern Sanskrit Revival Perspectives on Early Zionism

Charles Preston, University of Chicago: Akbar a la Kalidasa: Muslims, Tolerance, and Hindu Nationalism in a Modern Sanskrit Drama

Justin Henry, University of Chicago: Balancing Mount Kailash: Ravana’s Sanskrit in the Dravidian and Sinhala Buddhist Nationalist Movements

Responding: Cassie Adcock, Washington University, Saint Louis

A21-217

Religion in South Asia Section, Sikh Studies Group, Space, Place, and Religion

Group & Society for Hindu-Christian Studies

Theme: Religious “Site Visits” as Pedagogical Method

Monday – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM

Charles Townsend, University of California, Riverside, Presiding

Panelists:

Brian J. Nichols, Mount Royal University

Anne Murphy, University of British Columbia

Andrea Marion Pinkney, McGill University

Michael Hawley, Mount Royal University

Jonathan H. X. Lee, San Francisco State University

Ravi M. Gupta, Utah State University

A22-118

Religion in South Asia Section and Religion and Ecology Group

Theme: Religion, Landscape, and Ecology in South Asia

Tuesday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM

Carla Bellamy, City University of New York, Presiding

Dean Accardi, Connecticut College: Kashmir’s Religious Nature: Siting Shrines in the Sacred Landscape

Elaine Fisher, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Taming the Goddess, Clearing the Forest: Wilderness and Divine Power in Early Modern South India

Alexander McKinley, Duke University: Forest Miracles and the Miracle of Forests: Pilgrimage and Ecological Reasoning at Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka

Drew Thomases, San Diego State University: Devote with Your Feet: Being Barefoot as Eco-Religious Practice on the Margins of Hindu and Hippie

2015 AAR Annual Meeting

1. Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: New Directions in the Study of Religion in South Asia

Saturday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Middlebury College, Presiding

Ilanit Loewy Shacham, University of Chicago Geography, History, and Myth in Krsnadevaraya’s Narration of Srivaisnavism

Michael Allen, Hampden-Sydney College New Directions in the Study of Vedanta: Lessons from The Ocean of Inquiry

Anand Taneja, Vanderbilt University Strangerness and the Role of Islam in the Ethical Life of Hindus: Some Reflections on the Dargah of Firoz Shah Kotla

Purvi Parikh, University of Pennsylvania Constructing Moral Selves in Contemporary Hinduism: The SelfEthics of Swadhyaya

Responding: John Hawley, Barnard College, Columbia University

2. Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Transnational Dimensions of Religions in Contemporary India

Saturday, 4:00 PM–6:30 PM

Chad Bauman, Butler University, Presiding

Afsar Mohammad, University of Texas So Far, So Near: Local Sufism, Trans-Local Sufi Poetics, and Urban Islam

Claire Robison, University of California, Santa Barbara Inscribing a Global Vaisnava Culture on the Indian Nation-State

Drew Thomases, Columbia University Camel Fair Kaleidoscopic: Religion and Color in Pushkar

Jon Keune, Michigan State University Dhamma, Dalitness, and Diversity: Transnational Buddhist Collaborations in Nagpur

Responding: Andrea Marion Pinkney, McGill University

3. Religion in South Asia Section and Space, Place, and Religion Group

Theme: Tomb and Mortuary Relic Worship in South Asia

Sunday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM

Valerie Stoker, Wright State University, Presiding

Tillo Detige, Ghent University Absence, Agency, and Immanence: The Ritual Veneration of Deceased Ascetics as a Technology of the Self in Digambara Jainism

Carl W. Ernst, University of North Carolina Islamic Norms and Local Identity in the South Asian Sufi Shrine

Mark McLaughlin, College of William and Mary Pre-Dargah Roots of Hindu Samadhi Burial Practice

Dean Accardi, Connecticut College Politics Enshrined: Governing the Sacred Landscape through the Tombs of Sufi Saints

Responding: Carla Bellamy, City University of New York

4. Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: Theorizing Spirit Possession in South Asia

Monday, 1:00 PM–3:30 PM

John E. Cort, Denison University, Presiding

Jeremy Saul, College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand When a Celibate Male God Occupies a Female Body: A Native Theory of Spirit Possession

Anne Vallely, University of Ottawa, and Kamini Gogri, University of Mumbai Negotiating with Worldliness: A Jain Spirit Medium and the Healing Power of the Goddess

Nirmal Selvamony, Central University of Tamil Nadu Possession and Community

Kristin Bloomer, Carleton College When a Macho Hindu God Occupies a Female Christian Body: Spirit Possession as Assisted Reproductive Technology in South India

Responding: Michael Slouber, Western Washington University

Business Meeting: Valerie Stoker, Wright State University, and Carla Bellamy, City University of New York, Presiding

5. Religion in South Asia Section

Theme: The Religious in Sanskrit Drama: A City, a Story, a Lesson

Tuesday, 10:30 AM–12:00 PM

Bruce M. Sullivan, Northern Arizona University, Presiding

Seth Ligo, Duke University Stories of Kāśī: Narrative and the Realization of Sacred Space

Nell Hawley, University of Chicago “Behave like Rāma, Not like Rāvaṇa: Theorizing Conflict between Epic Stories and Moral Lessons

Aleksandra Gordeeva, Yale University Religion and Literary Theory in Jain and Hindu Dramas

Responding: Laurie Louise Patton, Middlebury College

6. Religion in South Asia Section and Hinduism Group

Theme: Proclaiming Power: The Ritual Uses of Flags in South Asia

Saturday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM

David Brick, Yale University, Presiding

Marko Geslani, Emory University An Omen Made to Please: Military and Astrological Sources of Indra’s Banner

Ellen Gough, Emory University Even the Gods Worship the Jina: The History of the Jain Festival of Indra

Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin Royal Flags, Standards, and Pillars (Dhvaja) in the Late Malla Period of Nepal

Michael C. Baltutis, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh The Public Life of a Royal Scribe: Displaying Indra’s Flag in Eighteenth Century Kathmandu

Responding: Richard H. Davis, Bard College

7. Religion in South Asia Section, Study of Islam Section, North American Hinduism Group, Sikh Studies Group

Theme: Teaching the “Asian Religions” Survey: Challenges and Opportunities

Monday, 9:00 AM–11:30 AM

Richard H. Davis, Bard College, Presiding

Panelists:

Michael Altman, University of Alabama

Pashaura Singh, University of California, Riverside

Christian Haskett, Centre College

Judson Murray, Wright State University

Carole Barnsley, Transylvania University

Jonathan H. X. Lee, San Francisco State University

Annabella Pitkin, Barnard College, Columbia University

2014 AAR Annual Meeting

A22-113
Religion in South Asia Section and Sikh Studies Group

Peter Gottschalk, Wesleyan University, Presiding

Theme: Roundtable on Teaching Sikhism

Saturday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
Hilton Bayfront-Aqua E

Panelists:
Pashaura Singh, University of California, Riverside
Michael Hawley, Mount Royal University
Nikky Singh, Colby College
Richard H. Davis, Bard College
Arvind Mandair, University of Michigan

A22-210
Religion in South Asia Section

Brian A. Hatcher, Tufts University, Presiding
Theme: Classical Women in the Modern World

Saturday – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM

Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University
Co-creating the Voice of a Saint: Becoming Mīrābāī/Mīrābāī Becoming

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Lancaster University
Gendering Emotion in an Evocative Theology: Ānṭāl, Her Body and Her God

Karen Pechilis, Drew University

The Poet Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār, Her Biographer, and a Genealogy of Feminism

Emilia Bachrach, University of Texas

Reading Family, Gender, and Devotion in Seventeenth Century Hagiography

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, Wellesley College

Alternate Satīs: Women Saints in the Mahapanth Tradition in Gujarat

Responding:

Perundevi Srinivasan, Siena College

A22-311
Religion in South Asia Section and Jain Studies Group

Please note that this session will run according to a new format. ALL the papers will be available electronically via the AAR website after November 1st for people to read prior to the session. The session will consist of brief presentations by the panelists followed by a discussion of the longer, pre circulated papers.

Leslie C. Orr, Concordia University, Montreal, Presiding

Theme: The Matha: Entangled Histories of a Religio-Political Institution in South India

Saturday – 4:00 PM-6:30 PM
Convention Center-25A

Caleb Simmons, University of Arizona
Curious Pen Pals: An Examination of the Role of Mathas in Tipu Sultan’s Letters to the Jagadguru of Sringeri

Christoph Emmrich, University of Toronto
Location, Lineage, Loss, and Learning: Four Tamil Jain Mathas

Sarah Pierce Taylor, University of Pennsylvannia
“Sovereigns Whose Feet Were Worshipped by Kings”: The Jain Matha and the Rhetoric of Empire

Valerie Stoker, Wright State University
Durbar, Matha, Devasthanam: The Politics of Intellectual Commitment and Religious Organization in Sixteenth-Century South India

A23-313
Religion in South Asia Section and Study of Islam Section and Hinduism Group and Jain Studies Group and Sikh Studies Group

Carla Bellamy, City University of New York, Presiding
Theme: Region or Tradition in the Study of South Asian Religions?

Sunday – 5:00 PM-6:30 PM
Convention Center-10

Richard H. Davis, Bard College
“Hindu Religious Traditions”: Pedagogical Reflections

John E. Cort, Denison University
Jain Studies: Advantages and Disadvantages to a Tradition-Based Approach

Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, University of Vermont
Is One an “Islamicist” or a “South Asianist”?

Anne Murphy, University of British Columbia
The Multiple Locations of Sikh Studies

Business Meeting:
Richard H. Davis, Bard College, and Rupa Viswanath, University of Gottingen, Presiding

A24-111
Religion in South Asia Section

Anne E. Monius, Harvard University, Presiding

Theme: Making a Word One’s Own: “Translation” Across South Asian Languages and Communities

Monday – 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
Convention Center-2

Eric Steinschneider, University of Toronto
The Politics of Equivalence: Translating Advaita Vedanta in a Nineteenth-Century Tamil Commentary

Shankar Nair, Harvard University
Translating the “Path of the Ancient Sages”: Hinduism in Islamic Terms in a Mughal Translation of the Yoga-Vasistha

Gil Ben-Herut, University of South Florida
Translating a Metaphor: Vernacularization at the Verse Level in the Kannada Poetic Treatise the Kavirajamargam

Peter Valdina, Emory University
Translation Communities and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra

A24-216
Religion in South Asia Section

Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University, Presiding

Theme: Dalit Religion: Adaptation, Assertion and Alterity in India

Monday – 1:00 PM-3:30 PM
Convention Center-29A

Eliza Kent, Colgate University
A Home Where You Are Not Welcome: Dalit Ambivalence and Temple Entry Campaigns

James Taneti, Union Presbyterian Seminary
Feminine Deities and Female Priests: The Matangi Tradition in South India

Joel Lee, Columbia University
Corpse, Swineherd, Rustic: Valmiki in Dalit Oral Tradition

Kerry San Chirico, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
On Liberations Proximate and Transcendent among the Khrist Bhaktas of Banaras

J. E. Llewellyn, Missouri State University
“Dalit Saint,” Brahman Hagiographer

Responding:
Gajendran Ayyathurai, Columbia University

Business Meeting:
Carla Bellamy, City University of New York, and Valerie Stoker, Wright State University, Presiding

A25-101
Religion in South Asia Section

Joanne Punzo Waghorne, Syracuse University, Presiding

Theme: “Where Class Meets Religion”: Reshaping the Middle-Class and Hindu Worlds in Contemporary India

Tuesday – 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Convention Center-30C

Daniel Cheifer, Syracuse University
Hindu Modernity for the Masses: Gandhian Populism in the Gayatri Pariwar

Deonnie Moodie, Harvard University
Cleaning up Kalighat: Class Contestations of the Temple Space

Nicole Wilson, Syracuse University
“I Watched Brahmins and Learned”: Brahmin Religious Practice and Middle-Class Status in Tamil Nadu, South India

Jennifer Ortegren, Emory University
“What’s in a Murti?”: Ganesh Chaturthi and The Performance of Aspirational Middle-Class Identities

Responding:
Joanne Punzo Waghorne, Syracuse University

2013 AAR Annual Meeting

A22-405 L
Film: My Name is Khan
Friday, 8:00 PM-11:00 PM
HB-Peale C
Kathleen M. Erndl, Florida State University, Presiding
Sponsored by the Religion in South Asia Section and the Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group
My Name Is Khan is a 2010 Indian dramatic film directed by Karan Johar, written by Shibani Bathija, and starring Shahrukh Khan and Kajol in the lead roles.
Rizwan Khan, an Indian Muslim man with Asperger’s Syndrome, immigrates to the U.S., where he marries an Indian Hindu single mother, Mandira. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, and subsequent personal tragedy, impel Rizwan on a journey across the U.S. to tell the President, “My name is Khan, and I’m not a terrorist.” This love story, set against an exploration of religious and national identities, promotes a vision of a common humanity. The film is 161 minutes long, in Hindi-Urdu and English with English subtitles.

A23-110 I Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: Sectarianism and the Boundaries of Religious Identity in South Asia
Saturday, 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
CC-337
Leslie C. Orr, Concordia University, Montreal, Presiding
Jason Schwartz, University of California, Santa Barbara
Why I Am So Clever, Why I Write Such Excellent Books, and What I Did to the Gods: Hemadri Re-imagines Mainstream Brahmanical Religion
Valerie Stoker, Wright State University
Allies or Rivals? Madhvas and Srivaisnavas at Sixteenth Century Tirupati
Elaine Fisher, Columbia University
The Sources of Sectarian Debate: Philology and Sectarianism in Early Modern South India
Anand Venkatkrishnan, Columbia University
God’s Name on Any Lips: The Chequered Career of the Bhagavannamakaumudi
Responding:
Rachel Fell McDermott, Barnard College

A23-207
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: A Proliferation of Friends: Hindus, Muslims, and Jains in History, Narrative, and Ritual in South Asia
Saturday, 1:00 PM-3:30 PM
CC-319
John E. Cort, Denison University, Presiding
Peter Gottschalk, Wesleyan University
The Past as a Shared and Contested Country: Between History and Memory
Aditya Malik, University of Canterbury
Hammira, the Stubborn Hero of Ranthambore: Reimagining Hindu- Muslim Histories through Literary Texts
Lindsey Harlan, Connecticut College
Hindu Heroes with Muslim Fast Friends: Debari Pir Baba and Other Honored Muslim Guests at Udaipur’s Rajput Hero Celebrations
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida
Veda, Purana, and Mantra in Tamil Islamic Literature
Responding:
Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University
Business Meeting:
Donald R. Davis, University of Texas, and Valerie Stoker, Wright State University, Presiding

A23-309
Religion in South Asia Section and Religion, Film, and Visual Culture Group
Theme: Bollywood and Religion
Saturday, 4:00 PM-6:30 PM
HB-Calloway
Ellen Goldberg, Queen’s University, Presiding Bollywood and Religion
Kathleen M. Erndl, Florida State University
“Repair Almost Anything”: Images of Muslim and Indian Identity in
My Name is Khan
Pankaj Jain, University of North Texas
Portrayal of Hindu and Muslim Relations in Bollywood
Aditi Sen, Queen’s University, Canada
The Outsiders: Hinduism and Bollywood Horror Films
Diana Dimitrova, University of Montreal
Indian Cultural Identity in Bollywood during the Late 1990s-2000s
Business Meeting:
Ken Derry, University of Toronto, and Rachel Wagner, Ithaca College, Presiding

A25-109
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: The Art of Prayer: Stotras in Multiple Contexts Monday, 9:00 AM-11:30 AM
HB-Latrobe
Whitney Kelting, Northeastern University, Presiding
Steven Vose, Florida International University
The Poet with a Goddess on His Shoulder: The Nexus of Kavya and Bhakti in the Stotras of Jinaprabhasuri
Lynna Dhanani, Yale University
Seeing Siva as the Jina: Devotion and Polemics in Hemacandra’s
Mahadeva Stotra
Hamsa Stainton, University of Kansas
Poetry as Prayer: The Saiva Hymns of Jagaddhara of Kashmir
David Buchta, University of Pennsylvania
Evoking Rasa through Stotra: Rupa Gosvamin’s Lists of Divine Names
Responding:
Steven P. Hopkins, Swarthmore College

A25-309
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: When God/desses Appear in Field Notes: Ethnographic and Theological Intersections in the Study of Hinduism
Monday, 4:00 PM-6:30 PM
CC-333
Amy L. Allocco, Elon University, Presiding
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Emory University
When the Goddess Speaks Her Mind: Possession, Presence, and Agency in the Gangamma Tradition of Tirupati
Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Middlebury College
Performative Maya: Constructing a New Feminist Theology on the Stages of a South Indian Village
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida
Dressed for Love, Dressed for Liberation: Ritual and Reflexivity in Performing Nammalvar’s Poetry
Laurie Louise Patton, Duke University
Twilights Recited, Twilights Lived: Personal Transformation in Women’s Performance of Vedic Mantra
Responding:
Francis X. Clooney, Harvard University

A26-125
Religion in South Asia Section Theme: Bhakti Across Boundaries Tuesday, 10:30 AM-12:00 PM CC-322
John Hawley, Barnard College, Columbia University, Presiding
Anne E. Monius, Harvard University
Linguistic Anxiety and Geographical Aspiration in the Tamil Saiva Literary World
Gil Ben-Herut, University of South Florida
Remembering the Ancient Ones and the Recent Ones: Situating Early Virasaivism in its Broader South Indian Context
Jon Keune, University of Gottingen
Emphatically Ignoring the Neighbors: The Selective Inter-Regional Orientation of the Varkari Tradition
Responding:
Karen Pechilis, Drew University

2012 AAR Annual Meeting

A17-206
Religion in South Asia Section and Jain Studies Group
Theme: Jains, Muslims, Christians: Interrogating Religious Borders in Sultanate, Mughal, and Colonial India
MPW-184A
Whitney Kelting, Northeastern University, Presiding
Steve Vose, University of Pennsylvania
Jain Encounters with the Delhi Sultanate in the Early Fourteenth Century: Jinaprabhasuri in the Court of Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq
Audrey Truschke, Columbia University
Negotiating Religious Difference in the Mughal World: Jain Defenses Against the Charge of Atheism
Mitch Numark, California State University, Sacramento
The British “Discovery” of Jainism in the Nineteenth Century: Scottish Missionaries, “the Jain Religion,” and the Jains of Bombay
John E. Cort, Denison University
Defending Jainism against Christian Missionaries in Colonial Gujarat
Responding
Peter Gottschalk, Wesleyan University

A17-307
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: Muslim-Hindu Literary Encounters in Early Modern South Asia: Conversations with Aditya Behl
MPW-176B
Wendy Doniger, University of Chicago, Presiding
Muzaffar Alam, University of Chicago
??Deviance as Tradition: A Mughal Sufi Account of Shah Badi al-Din Madar
Daud Ali, University of Pennsylvania
Epigraphic Translations: Bilingual Inscriptions and Reading Communities in Medieval South India
Allison Busch, Columbia University
Poetry in Motion: Cross-cultural Literary Encounters in Mughal India
Ayesha Irani, McGill University
Cosmogony and Conversion: Creative Discourse on the Islamic Frontier
Responding:
Jack Hawley, Columbia University
Business Meeting:
Donald Davis, University of Wisconsin, Whitney Kelting, Northeastern University, Presiding

A18-208
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: Re-figuring Bodies That Matter: Sex, Gender, and Alternative Bodily Identities in South Asian Traditions
MPN-126
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, Presiding
Barbara A. Holdrege, University of California, Santa Barbara
Alternative Bodily Identities in Gaud?iya Vais?n?ava Discourse: From Karmically-constructed Sexed Bodies to Eternally Gendered Nonmaterial Bodies
Anya Pokazanyeva, University of California, Santa Barbara
Sexed Voices, Gendered Bodies: Constructions of the Feminine Subject in Bhakti Poetry
Harshita Kamath, Emory University
Paris is Burning, Gender is Burning: The Drag Performer Versus the Kuchipudi Female Impersonator
Elaine Craddock, Southwestern University
Altered Bodies and Alternative Lives: Tirunangai Communities in Tamilnadu
Responding:
Tracy Pintchman, Loyola University, Chicago

A19-214
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: Indian Religions and the Limits of Royal Patronage MPW-178B
Rachel McDermott, Barnard College, Presiding
Jon Keune, Universitat Gottingen
The Limits of Royal Patronage for Historicizing Marathi Bhakti
Leslie Orr, Concordia University, Montreal
Presenting, Remembering, and Recreating the Chola King as Temple Patron
James Hare, New York University
Bearers of the Flag of Dharma: Kingship and Patronage in the Bhaktamal Tradition
Valerie Stoker, Wright State University
Royal Inscriptions and Religious Biographies: Understanding Krishnadevaraya’s Patronage of Madhvaism
Responding:
Richard Davis, Bard College

A19-314
Religion in South Asia Section and Science, Technology, and Religion Group
Theme: Religion and Science in South Asia
MPW-175B
Nalini Bhushan, Smith College, Presiding
C. Mackenzie Brown, Trinity University
Religion and Science in the Two Tagores: The Cosmic Teleologies of Debendranath and Rabindranath
Jonathan Edelmann, University of Mississippi
Historiography in a South Asian Context
Purushottama Bilimoria, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Melbourne
From All India Radio: The War between Science and Religion in the Subcontinent – a Western Import?
Peter Gottschalk, Wesleyan University
Fitting the Study of Religion into the Frameworks of Science
Responding:
Perundevi Srinivasan, Sienna College

A20-110
Religion in South Asia Section
Theme: In Good Taste: Aesthetics and South Asian Religions
MPW-184BC
Nancy Lin, Dartmouth College, Presiding
James McHugh, University of Southern California
Impure, Intoxicating, and Arousing: The Ambiguities of Alcohol in Indian Religions
James Hare, New York University
The Awakening of Rasa: Aesthetic Theory and the Bhaktamal Tradition
Natlie Gummer, Beloit College
Consecrated by the King of Sutras: A Buddhist Poetics of Power
Amy Langenberg, Auburn University
A Buddhist Poetry of the Foul: The Aesthetic Impact of Disgust in Early First Millennium Buddhist Literature
Responding:
David Gitomer, DePaul University

2011 AAR Annual Meeting

A19-207

Sat, 1-3:30, CC 3018
Theme: The Textual Past, the Indological Present, and “Future Philology”: New Avenues for Classical Textual Studies

A20-209

Sun, 1-2:30, IC-Union Square
Theme: Religious Encounters in Colonial South Asia

A20-261

Sun, 3-4:30, IC-Union Square
Theme: Performing the Divine in Indian Classical Dance

A21-209

Mon, 1-3:30, MM-Yerba Buena 7
Theme: Law, Legislation, and Religious Formations in South Asian Nation-States

A21-310

Mon, 4-6:30, MM-Yerba Buena 7
Theme: Mughal Bhakti: Devotees, Sufis, Yogis, and Literati in Early Modern North India

A22-109

Tues, 9-11:30, CC-2018
Theme: The Impact of Print Technology in the Nineteenth Century

2010 AAR Annual Meeting

A30-211 S
Religion in South Asia section
Marriott Marquis, M304
John E. Cort, Denison University, Presiding
Theme: New Directions in the Study of Religion in South Asia
Brian Collins, University of Chicago
Apaddharma as a State of Exception; or, Parashurama the Werewolf
Simone Barretta, University of Pennsylvania
The Tantric Self: Body, Mind, and Society in the Tantric Saivism of Medieval Kashmir
Carole Barnsley, Transylvania University
Isma’ili Ginans (Hymns) as a Means of “Boundary Maintenance”
Elliott McCarter, University of Texas
Tales from Kuruksetra
George Pati, Valparaiso University
Sneham as Bhakti: Bhakti as Emancipation in the Modern Malayalam Poems of Kumaran Asan
Responding:
John Stratton Hawley, Columbia University
Business Meeting:
John E. Cort, Denison University, and Robin Rinehart, Lafayette College, Presiding

A30-306
Religion in South Asia section
Marriott Marquis, M304
Simon Brodbeck, Cardiff University, Presiding Theme: The Mahabharata: End and Endings
Christopher Austin, Dalhousie University
Draupadi’s Fall: Narrative Continuity and the Problem of Symmetries in the Mahabharata
Luis Gonzalez-Reimann, University of California, Berkeley Ending the Mahabharata: A Look at Some Closing Strategies
Michael Baltutis, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
The Reinvention of Orthopraxy: Refuting Royal Performances in Book Fourteen of the Mahabharata
Tamar C. Reich, Indiana University of Pennsylvania Ends and Closures in the Mahabharata
Responding:
Bruce M. Sullivan, Northern Arizona University

A31-212
Religion in South Asia section and Sikh Studies consultation
Marriott Marquis, M101
Robin Rinehart, Lafayette College, Presiding
Theme: Rethinking Punjabi Religion: Vernacularization, Sakhi Sarwar, and Sikh Mysticism
Harpreet Singh, Harvard University
Religious Identities and the Vernacularization of the Panjab
Caroline Sawyer, State University of New York, Old Westbury
The “Man on the Horse” and the Enchanted Universe of Religious Life in Indian Punjab
Balbinder Bhogal, Hofstra University
The Animal Sublime: Rethinking the Sikh Mystical Body

A1-108
Religion in South Asia section
Marriott Marquis, A708
James Lochtefeld, Carthage College, Presiding Theme: Weaponry and Violence in South Asian Religions
Jarrod L. Whitaker, Wake Forest University
“I Took the Bold Mace for Might”: Ritually Making the Body into a Weapon in Ancient India
Laurie Louise Patton, Emory University
Singing to the Weapons: The Aesthetics of a Vedic Hymn of War
James Bigari, Miami University, Ohio, and Elizabeth L. Wilson, Miami University, Ohio
Waging War Against Negative Emotions: The Weaponry of the Bodhisattva in Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara
Nawaraj Chaulagain, Harvard University
Honoring the Bombs: Tantric Rites, Ritual Violence, and Maintenance of Power
Robin Rinehart, Lafayette College
Of Swords, Rifles, and Riddles: The Sikh ‘Shastra-nam-mala

A1-310
Religion in South Asia section
Marriott Marquis, M301
Brian Pennington, Maryville College, Presiding
Theme: Owning Local Culture: Branding the Garhwal Himalaya as “Land of the Gods”
Luke Whitmore, Emory University
“Kedarnath Earns, Madmaheshvar Spends”: Garhwali Deity Procession in the Age of Bagpipes and YouTube
Karin Polit, University of Heidelberg
The Performance of the Chakravyuha: Aestheticizing Ancient Local Traditions in the Garhwal Himalayas
Andrea Marion Pinkney, National University of Singapore
Ritual Tokens as Trademark: Marketing Himalayan Shrines with Prasada
Responding:
James Lochtefeld, Carthage College

2009 AAR Annual Meeting

A7-110

Theme: Iconic Brands: Commodification, Circulation, and Reproduction in Modern South Asian Religion
Saturday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

Christian Lee Novetzke, University of Washington, Presiding
Parna Sengupta, Stanford University, Astrology and Market Time in South Asia
William Elison, Carleton College, Kaccha Traces, Pakka Brands: Icons, Community, and Public Culture in Subaltern Mumbai
Shana Lisa Sippy, Columbia University, Belonging to the Brand: The Power of Purchasing in Shaping American Hindus
Andy Rotman, Smith College, Brand-scendence in the North Indian Bazaar: The Marketplace of Religion Versus the Religion of the Marketplace
Responding: Jamal J. Elias, University of Pennsylvania

A7-307

Theme: New Directions in the Study of Religion in South Asia
Saturday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

John E. Cort, Denison University, Presiding
Peter Valdina, Emory University, Rajendralal Mitra and Modern Yoga
J. Barton Scott, Duke University, Pope-Lila: Religious Fraud in Dayananda Saraswatis Satyarth Prakash
James P. Hare, Columbia University, Print and Proliferation: Nabhadas’s Bhaktamal in the Colonial Context
Gil Ben-Herut, Emory University, Reconstruction of Religious Identities in the Virashaiva Movement
Janet Gunn, University of Ottawa, Performing Gendered Religious Narratives through Household Puja: Canadian Examples
Responding:
Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, Wellesley College
Brian A. Hatcher, Illinois Wesleyan University

Business Meeting:
Robin Rinehart, Lafayette College, Presiding

A8-310

Theme: Bhagavata-Purana, All in Seven Days: Text and Performance in the Saptah
Sunday – 5:00 pm-6:30 pm

Charles Hallisey, Harvard University, Presiding
John Hawley, Barnard College, Performing the Bhagavata: The Great Prescription
Shrivatsa Goswami, Radha Raman Temple, The Bhagavata in Performance: Celebrating Krishna as Text
Sangeeta Desai, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Audience is King: Audience as Performers in Seven-day Ritual Narrations of the Bha-gavata Pura-na
Responding: Philip Lutgendorf, University of Iowa

A9-208

Theme: Vriksha-Dharma: Trees and Plants in Hindu Thought and Practice
Monday – 1:00 pm-3:30 pm

Laurie Louise Patton, Emory University, Presiding
Frederick M. Smith, University of Iowa, Healing Mantras, Healing Plants, Healing Ritual
Graham M. Schweig, Christopher Newport University, On Talking to Plants: The Unique Instance of Loving Madness in the Vraja Gopikas
Amy L. Allocco, Emory University, “The Neem Tree is Parvati and the Peepal Tree is Shiva”: Tree Marriage as Ritual Remedy
David Haberman, Indiana University, Bloomington, Faces in the Trees

A9-308

Theme: Cultural Transformations of Hinduism
Monday – 4:00 pm-6:30 pm

Pankaj Jain, Presiding
Elaine Fisher, Columbia University, The Implied Krishna: Cultural Bilingualism and the Krishna Narrative in JayasisKanhavat
Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, Transforming Narratives: The Churning Story in India and Cambodia
Michele Verma, Rice University, Ethnomethods of Re-constituting Caribbean Hinduism in the United States
Nancy M. Martin, Chapman University, Mirabai Comes to America: The Transformation of a Sixteenth Century Hindu Woman into a Global Saint
Daniel Cheifer, Syracuse University, Virgin Comics: Marketing Hindu Narrative Traditions as Global Popular Culture
Responding: Chandra Alexandre, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

A10-110

Theme: Singing, Burning, Healing, Meditating: Women in Contemporary South Asian Religions
Tuesday – 9:00 am-11:30 am

Leslie C. Orr, Concordia University, Presiding
Jennifer B. Saunders, Delaware, OH, Singing Bhajans, Performing Power: Womens Religious Practices in South Delhi
Kay K. Jordan, Radford University, Sati or Suicide?: Reports of Widow Burnings in Contemporary India
Brian K. Pennington, Maryville College, The Widow and the Politician: Womens Status and the Pilgrimage Economy of Uttarkashi
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, University of Alabama, The Legacy of a Female Sikkimese Buddhist Teacher: The Lineage of Pelling Ani Wangdzin and Gendered Religious Experience in Modern Sikkim
Responding: Kathleen M. Erndl, Florida State University[/et_pb_accordion_item][/et_pb_accordion][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]