All Episodes
Episodes
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us...
View Episode
Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, "Philology and Criticism: A Guide to Mahābhārata Textual Criticism" (Anthem Press, 2018)
The Hindu great epic, Mahābhārata, exists today in hundreds of variant manuscripts across India. These manuscripts were painstakingly examined, sorted and reconstituted into the official Critical Edition of the...
View Episode
Mark McClish, "The History of the Arthaśāstra: Sovereignty and Sacred Law in Ancient India" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Was ancient India ruled by politics or religion? In The History of the Arthaśāstra: Sovereignty and Sacred Law in Ancient India (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Mark McClish explores the Arthaśāstra (ancient...
View Episode
Alexander Rocklin, "The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad" (UNC Press, 2019)
Beginning in the mid 19th century, thousands of indentured laborers traveled from India to the Caribbean, and many settled in Trinidad. In The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad...
View Episode
Arik Moran, "Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland" (Amsterdam UP, 2019)
What role did women play in securing power in colonial Himalayan kingdoms? Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland (Amsterdam UP, 2019) specifically documents the key roles played by women - especially queen...
View Episode
William Elison, "The Neighborhood of Gods: The Sacred and the Visible at the Margins of Mumbai" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
William Elison's The Neighborhood of Gods: The Sacred and the Visible at the Margins of Mumbai(University of Chicago Press, 2018) explores how slum residents, tribal people, and members of other marginalized groups...
View Episode
Ithamar Theodor, "Exploring the Bhagavad Gītā: Philosophy, Structure and Meaning" (Routledge, 2016)
The Bhagavad Gītā remains to this day a mainstay of Hinduism and Hindu Studies alike, despite the profusion of books written on it over the centuries. While the Gītā’s profundity is evident, its meaning most certainly...
View Episode
Harshita M. Kamath, "The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance" (U California Press, 2019)
Harshita M. Kamath's new book The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance (University of California Press, 2019) features an investigation of men donning a women’s guises to impersonate female characters...
View Episode
Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz, "Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal" (Oxford UP, 2018)
Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz's Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal (Oxford University, 2018) represents the very first study of a fascinating Hindu phenomenon: the...
View Episode
John Stratton Hawley, "Bhakti and Power: Debating India's Religion of the Heart" (U Washington Press, 2019)
What is the relationship between religion and power? With this important overarching theme in mind, Bhakti and Power: Debating India's Religion of the Heart(University of Washington Press, 2019), edited by John...
View Episode
Marko Geslani, "Rites of the God-King: Śānti and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism" (Oxford UP, 2018)
Is “Vedic” fire sacrifice at odds with “Hindu” image worship? Through a careful study of ritual (śanti) texts geared towards appeasement of inauspicious forces (primarily the Atharva Veda and in the Bṛhatsaṃhitā, an...
View Episode
Patton E. Burchett, "A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India" (Columbia UP, 2019)
How distinct is Indian devotionalism from other strands of Indian religiosity? Is devotionalism necessarily at odds with asceticism in the Hindu world? What about the common contrasting of Hindu devotionalism as...
View Episode
