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Today I talked to Jarrod Whitaker about his book Strong Arms and Drinking Strength: Masculinity, Violence, and the Body in Ancient India (Oxford UP, 2011). The Rgveda contains over a thousand hymns, addressed primarily to three gods: the …
Guest: Jarrod Whitaker
Date: 2/17/2022
Julian Strube's book Global Tantra (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the global exchanges that shaped a subject often associated with sexuality, social liberation, and bodily wellbeing but that also offers insights into political and religious …
Guest: Julian Strube
Date: 2/3/2022
The Cloud of Longing: A New Translation and Eco-Aesthetic Study of Kalidasa's Meghaduta (Oxford UP, 2021) is a translation and full-length study of the great Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa's famed Meghadūta (literally: "The Cloud Messenger") with …
Guest: Rick Jarow
Date: 12/23/2021
Gloria Maité Hernández's Savoring God: Comparative Theopoetics (Oxford UP, 2021) compares two mystical works central to the Christian Discalced Carmelite and the Hindu Bhakti traditions: the sixteenth-century Spanish Cántico espiritual …
Guest: Gloria Maité Hernández
Date: 12/16/2021
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
Medieval Kashmir in its golden age saw the development of some of the most sophisticated theories of language, literature, and emotion articulated in the pre-modern world. James D. Reich's book To Savor the Meaning: The Theology of …
Guest: James D. Reich
Date: 9/9/2021
First Words, Last Words: New Theories for Reading Old Texts in Sixteenth Century India (Oxford UP, 2021) charts an intense "pamphlet war" that took place in sixteenth-century South India. Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea explore this …
Guest: Lawrence J. McCrea and Yigal Bronner
Date: 8/26/2021
In early twentieth century British India, prior to the arrival of digital medias and after the rise of nationalist political movements, a small-town paper from the margins of society became a key player in Urdu journalism. Published in …
Guest: Megan Eaton Robb
Date: 7/8/2021
Jon Keune's book Shared Devotion, Shared Food: Equality and the Bhakti-Caste Question in Western India (Oxford UP, 2021) is about the deceptively simple question: when Hindu devotional or bhakti traditions welcomed marginalized …
Guest: Jon Keune
Date: 6/3/2021
The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam (Oxford University Press, 2021) reveals the powerful role of vernacular translation in the Islamization of Bengal. Its focus is on examines the …
Guest: Ayesha A. Irani
Date: 4/14/2021