Annual Meeting 2023 Program Book

This paper illuminates a lived model of “grassroots religious feminism” in India based on the study of the leadership of the female guru named Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati (hereafter, Mataji). Arising from a subordinated caste, Mataji’s leadership has arisen from collective efforts and generated a groundswell of support for her quest to empower female ascetics (sādhus) with equal rights. By bringing together ethnographic data and a gender studies-centered analysis of her teachings and practices, this paper shows that Mataji constructs Hinduism as congruent with modernist ideals such as gender equality, and promotes women’s monastic authority as a normative Hindu right within the mainstream tradition that does not recognize it. Here, I shall focus on the innovatory elements of her leadership while also engaging the question of, ‘What can an Indic expression of religious feminism in South Asia teach religion scholars about gender ethics and the expanding frontiers of the ‘f’ word (feminism) as embodied and enacted by individual and collective struggles for human rights.’

This paper will argue that the practice of vocational exploration and discernment provides a key to understanding of the future of work in general -- and by extension, for evaluating the characteristics that will make that work “decent” or “good.” Indeed, vocational reflection can become a form of pedagogy, in which students are challenged to think through the future shape of work and to prepare for its inevitable changes. While vocational reflection is possible outside the context of religious belief, the discipline of theology has important insights to offer in this endeavor. In fact, _vocation_ can serve as a key term in the application of theological concepts to the process of understanding the nature of work -- its present realities, its future possibilities, and above all, its ethical structures (i.e., what might make any work "decent").

This paper argues that the language and practices of pastoral and spiritual care provide an overarching framework that can help make explicit the value-laden presumptions of “decent work.” Case studies are presented in order to ground the theoretical argument in practical and meaningful ways.

Positions ranging from God’s non-existence to God’s possessing a human-like body have been countenanced within Hindu philosophical discussions concerning God’s nature. I engage specifically with arguments deployed for and against God’s possessing a bodily form to highlight an ambiguity inherent in the discussion. Whereas the body of God posited by Vedānta schools, including Dvaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita, comprises a divine substance, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā argue against a God that possesses a material body. The conclusion of the Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā arguments in question is, in other words, wholeheartedly affirmed by Vedānta schools from the very onset. The paper first substantiates that this is, in fact, an ambiguity that is non-trivial and needs redressing, and then motivates the hypothesis that the target of Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā argumentation is not Vedānta but early Sāmkhya as typified in the Yuktidīpikā commentary on the Sāṃkhyakārikā.

Due to the Vedāntic commitment to beginningless (anādi) karman, which seemingly entails an infinite regress, it is unclear whether or Vedāntic theism is compatible with Cosmological Arguments, which attempt to rule out the possibility of such regresses. In this paper, I closely examine the concept of anādi-karman and highlight three possible interpretations of this doctrine. I argue that two of these interpretations are indeed compatible with certain formulations of the Kalām Cosmological Argument. I also argue that the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (LCA) may be compatible with all three interpretations, as the LCA does not rule out an infinite regress per se, but only an infinite regress that is lacks a deeper explanation in terms of a necessary being. These conclusions, if correct, can bring Vedānta in closer dialogue with contemporary philosophy of religion and thus enrich this discipline.

In recent years, the implied valences of terms like “diaspora,” “globalism,” and “transnationalism” have been innovatively collated and explored. While the omnipresence of academic discourse may indicate universal acceptance, new critique has swiftly followed.   In particular, the dyadic resonance of home and hostland has come into question. My presentation intervenes in this ongoing conversation by surveying Ganesha devotion at three temples in New York City: (1) The Sri Mahavallabha Ganapati Devasthanam in Flushing; (2) The Wat Phutthai Thavorn Wanaram in Elmhurst; and (3) The Broome Street Ganesh Temple in Lower Manhattan.  Following sociologist Tahseen Shams's language on placemaking in diasporic contexts, I argue that the styles of Hindu worship that one observes at these spaces are influenced by social networks stemming from ‘here,’ (their immediate context in Gotham), ‘there,’ (India, the supposed homeland of Ganesha) and ‘elsewhere’ (other non-Indian communities of Ganesha devotees sited in the USA, Malaysia, and Thailand).

The Parashakthi Goddess Temple in Pontiac, Michigan, was established in 1999 on Vijaya Daśamī, a day celebrating the Goddess’s victory over demonic forces. In 2018, a fire destroyed most of the temple. It was reconsecrated in an entirely different form in 2022. Some temple leaders and devotees described the fire as divinely ordained, asserting that the Goddess wanted the temple to be destroyed so that a more powerful one could be built to handle stronger demonic forces. Before the 2018 fire, I heard devotees describe the temple as an “energy vortex” or a—or, as one Indian visitor described it to me, a “lively” place “where śakti dances.”  How did the fire change perceptions of temple space? How does a diaspora temple become a “more powerful” vector of śakti?  What role did humans, the Goddess, and other “supersensual” beings allegedly play in the destruction and regeneration of temple space?

Festivals are important events for diasporic communities to live, stage and negotiate identity, heritage and culture – beyond borders. Durgāpūjā is a perfect example for this, as it has extensively traveled with Indian communities, beyond many geographical and cultural borders. Today, the festival is characterized by elaborate public celebrations and pronounced community aspects in many places worldwide that are home to Indian migrant communities. The festival was added to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list in 2021. This paper asks how Durgāpūjā visitors’ networking practices in the exemplary diasporic context of Finland look like, how social media are employed in this, and how this relates to trans-generational religious and cultural education. How do networking practices contribute to share, construct, interpret and (re-)define the visitors individual and community identities, which topics dominate their social media communication, which are main formats of sharing, and how and why is this used for trans-generational educational purposes?

This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork to examine the efforts made by Hindu families in the domestic sphere to foster and maintain generational relationships with Indian culture, language, tradition, and religiosity. Hindu forms of religiosity are not confined to the mandir space, but rather move with the individual and take place within the home more than at the mandir. This is consistent with typical Hindu practice in India, where a greater emphasis is placed on religious praxis in the home. I engage with the theories of space and place, and the diaspora to examine how these practices contribute to an understanding of the self as a Hindu living in the United States with a hyphenated identity. I argue that even with the possible engagement with public mandirs, the domestic sphere is an essential component of Hindu praxis in the diaspora.

Elaborate gelatin constructions of fruits and vegetables congealed in copper molds, the American Jell-O salad decorated tables for decades. This paper argues for a refiguring of the gelatin salad as not merely infamous midcentury food icon but, rather, as an articulation of white femininity, the intimate imperial, and Modernism’s project of bodily and racial control. In so doing, it brings critical food studies and design studies to trouble the nonfoodness of gelatin salads and the sensorial work that advertisers made them do in the production of the modern, scientific, Protestant Secular. What Jell-O salads do, I argue, is as much about a practice of consumption—an act of eating pure foods and becoming pure, mind and body—as it is a visual practice of ordering, a Wardian case of scientific logic and modern housewifery against the foodways and sensory practices of immigrants at the end of the Progressive Era.

This paper examines the entrepreneurial development of "purpose driven food," tracing its origins to the evangelical business models promoted by celebrity pastor Rick Warren and showing how it is connected to the biotech industry and its attempts to capture new markets for healthy eating. The paper argues that American evangelicalism plays a key role in sanctifying biotech as good science that feeds the world, even as many religious Americans resist corporate control over the food system. In doing so, it shows the continued significance of religion to influence health and nutrition policy in the public sphere in the United States.

This essay examines how something as subtle as a food label can work to uphold and legitimate settler colonialism. Through engaging various layers of reading a food label, I illustrate how food labels can convey authority, ambiguity, and even deception; shape our experiences and identities; and create worlds and frameworks through what they include and what they exclude, what they reveal and what they conceal. I argue that food labels can erase a violent, ongoing settler colonial history, particularly through claims of locality and wholesomeness. Moreover, food labels not only reinforce dominant narratives of White land possession and settler indigeneity but do so in an inconspicuous way through our everyday, unconscious, embodied encounters with these subtle texts, re/orienting us to the invisible grammar of settler colonial society.

This paper explores the narratives and practices associated with Periyāṇṭacchi ("She, of the big universe") in the Dharmapuri region of Tamilnadu, India, based on ethnographic fieldwork and Tamil chapbooks. Periyāṇṭacchi is the clan deity of numerous families belonging to the Vanniya Kavundar caste group and is identified with both the goddess Pārvatī and Duryodhana's wife Peruntiruvāḷ (also known as Bhānumatī) from different yugas or cosmic ages. The story of "Arjuna's Tapas," which is part of the “Draupadī cult Mahābhārata” (Hiltebeitel 1988) and has been passed down through various oral and performance traditions, has played a crucial role in the identification of Periyāṇṭavar and Periyāṇṭacchi as Śiva and Pārvatī, respectively. Specifically, the encounter between Arjuna and two hunter couples during his journey has contributed to the deification of the Kaurava queen in the Tamil milieu, which I analyze in detail.

This paper examines the character of Karna in two Tamil films: Thalapathi (1991; Dir. Mani Ratnam) and Karnan (2021; Dir. Mari Selvaraj), and explores how vernacular cinematic conventions and Tamil understandings of morality contribute towards a Dravidian rendering of the epic narrative. In Thalapathi, Surya is a henchman of a local don and a man of the masses. Confronted by Arjun, an agent of the state about their illegal activities, Surya must choose between his comrade and as he finds out later, his half-brother. Karnan draws inspiration from a historical event of caste violence against a Dalit community in Tamilnadu, and maps characters from the Mahabharata onto a regional narrative about oppression, resistance, and liberation. In this paper, I analyze how Tamil understandings of ethics and love vernacularize the epic and situate Karna as heroic, allowing for a radical reinterpretation of what can be called a just society.

Kālidāsa tells a story from the Mahābhārata that arguably had a further reach than the original verses. He rewrites the story of Bharata’s birth from Śakuntalā and Duḥṣanta in his drama, Abhijñānaśākuntalam. This paper will examine how Kālidāsa represents the love between these two characters though an analysis of the drama’s aesthetic features in the first act. Kālidāsa’s protagonists, accompanied by a cast of characters, develop a shy romance that is largely communicated through glances, thoughts to themselves, and hushed jokes amongst friends. He departs in many ways from the Mahābhārata’s story, most notably making the King and Śakuntalā into characters that are more amenable to his audience’s contemporary sensibilities. Kālidāsa thereby dramatically transforms, by virtue of his retelling, the social imagination of history through his literary work.