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Where is the "life" in scholarly life? Is it possible to find in academic writing, so often abstracted from the everyday? How might religion bridge that gap? In Love in the Time of Scholarship: The Bhagavata Purana in Indian Intellectual …
Guest: Anand Venkatkrishnan
Date: 1/30/2025
Gidi Ifergan's The Discerning Clear Gaze of Yoga (Equinox, 2024) explores the road map of yoga as reflected in the Yogasūtra of Patañjali (third century CE) and the Sāṁkhyakārikā of Iśvarakṛṣṇa (350–450 CE) which leads to the rise of this …
Guest: Gidi Ifergan
Date: 1/23/2025
The life and works of the mysterious Indian yogin, Saraha, who has inspired Buddhist practitioners for over a thousand years. Saraha, “the Archer,” was a mysterious but influential tenth-century Indian Buddhist tantric adept who expressed …
Guest: Roger R. Jackson
Date: 1/16/2025
From its earliest recorded history, India was a place of remarkable and varied religious activity, ranging from elaborate sacrificial rituals and rigorous regimes of personal austerity to psycho-spiritual experimentation and utopian …
Guest: Richard H. Davis
Date: 1/9/2025
Applying the "influencer" concept to the study of religion, Gurus, Priestesses, Saints, Mediums and Yoginis: Holy Women as Influencers in Hindu Culture (MDPI, 2024) explores the varieties of strategies that holy women use for gaining and …
Guest: Antoinette Denapoli
Date: 12/26/2024
Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in …
Guest: Nathan McGovern
Date: 12/19/2024
Given the continued challenges that face the higher education job market in the Humanities in North America, Religious Studies Beyond the Discipline: On the Future of a Humanities Ph.D. (Equinox, 2024) offers: (i) a critical assessment of …
Guest: Russell McCutcheon, Emily Crews and Jacob Barrett
Date: 11/28/2024
Devotional Fanscapes: Bollywood Star Deities, Devotee-Fans, and Cultural Politics in India and Beyond (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) examines how fans worship film stars as deities. Focusing on temples dedicated to Bollywood (Hindi …
Guest: Shalini Kakar
Date: 11/21/2024
The vibrant red sandstone temples of India's Deccan Plateau, such as the Pattadakal temple cluster, have attracted visitors since the eighth century or earlier. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and the coronation place of the Chalukya …
Guest: Subhashini Kaligotla
Date: 10/31/2024
Extensively based on fieldwork material, From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus' Understanding of Embodied Practices (Equinox, 2024) primarily analyses embodied practices of ascetics belonging to four religious orders historically associated …
Guest: Daniela Bevilacqua
Date: 10/24/2024