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Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha's book Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments (Oxford UP, 2021) examines diverse retellings of the Ramayana narrative as interpreted and embodied through a spectrum …
Guest: Paula Richman
Date: 9/16/2021
What insights on the human experience can we find in ancient Indian mythology? Join us as we speak to Dr. Brian Collins (Associate Professor, Chair Department of Classics and Religious Studies, Ohio University) about his work on …
Guest: Brian Collins
Date: 6/16/2021
He's the destroyer of evil, the pervasive one in whom all things lie. He is brilliant, terrifying, wild and beneficent. He is both an ascetic and a householder, both a yogi and a guru. He encompasses the masculine and the feminine, the …
Guest: Nilima Chitgopekar
Date: 6/10/2021
Breaking box office records, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has achieved an unparalleled level of success with fans across the world, raising the films to a higher level of narrative: myth. Michael D. Nichols's Religion and Myth in the …
Guest: Michael Nichols
Date: 5/21/2021
This podcast features Brenda Beck’s lifelong work on the Tamil folk epic Ponnivala. In addition to her forthcoming new English translation of the epic (“Land of the Golden River”), we also discuss her 1982 study of the epic The Three …
Guest: Brenda Beck
Date: 4/30/2021
Michael Slouber's new book A Garland of Forgotten Goddesses: Tales of the Feminine Divine from India and Beyond (University of California Press, 2021) surveys the diversity of India's feminine divine tradition by bringing together a fresh …
Guest: Michael Slouber
Date: 10/13/2020
What does it mean to be a Brahmin, and what could it mean to become one? The ancient Indian mythological figure Viśvāmitra accomplishes just this, transforming himself from a king into a Brahmin by cultivation of ascetic power. The …
Guest: Adheesh Sathaye
Date: 6/26/2020
In Vyāsa Redux: Narrative in Epic Mahābhārata (Anthem Press, 2019), Kevin McGrath examines the complex and enigmatic Vyāsa, both the primary creative poet of the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata and a key character in the very epic he composes. …
Guest: Kevin McGrath
Date: 5/11/2020
Why is the Indian Goddess sometimes figured as a corpse in Tantric Traditions? What is the significance of this? How is it different from when the Hindu god Shiva is figured as a corpse? Centered on the myth of Sati (whereby the Goddess …
Guest: Anway Mukhopadhyay
Date: 5/8/2019