New Books in Indian Religions
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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576
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, "In Dialogue with Clas...
Why does the narrative motif of ‘dialogue’ pervade Hindu texts?
51 min
577
David V. Mason, "The Performative Ground of Rel...
To what extent may we say that religion is a theatrical phenomenon, and that theatre is a religious experience?
51 min
578
Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin, “Stereotyping R...
Our culture is full of popular stereotypes about religion, both positive and negative...
42 min
579
Borayin Larios, "Embodying the Vedas: Tradition...
Larios probes the backbone of what makes Hinduism the world’s oldest living tradition: the unbroken chain of transmission of Vedic texts composed over 3,000 years ago, originating circa 1750-1200 BCE...
64 min
580
Nathan McGovern, "The Snake and The Mongoose: T...
Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans.
51 min
581
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Op...
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic...
29 min
582
Prakash Shah, "Western Foundations of the Caste...
The Indian caste system is an ancient, pervasive institution of social organization within the subcontinent – or is it?
58 min
583
Gil Ben-Herut, "Śiva’s Saints: The Origins of D...
Studies of Hindu saints tend to focus primarily on the saints themselves—their words, teachings, and practices—rather than tending to the often complex and complicated world of texts and traditions about those saints...
68 min
584
Caleb Simmons, "Nine Nights of the Goddess: The...
This work maps manifestations of the festival across historical periods and local celebrations over the regions of West Bengal, Odish...
39 min
585
B.R. Ambedkar, "Annihilation of Caste: The Anno...
This landmark speech by Dr. B.R. Ambedakar is the pinnacle of his scholarly work and cements his legacy alongside Mahatma Gandhi in Indian politics...
67 min
586
Mani Rao, "Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity, and Vi...
What role does mantra play in the lives of Hindu practitioners?
61 min
587
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One ...
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention...
61 min
588
Sumantra Bose, "Secular States, Religious Polit...
Sumantra Bose's new book Secular States, Religious Politics, India, Turkey and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is a fascinating comparison of the rise of religious parties...
55 min
589
Danna Agmon, "A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conv...
People sometimes forget—if they are even aware—that France’s empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included a colonial presence in South Asia, a presence that at one time rivaled that of the British.
54 min
590
Philip Lutgendorf, “The Epic of Ram” (Harvard U...
Dr. Philip Lutgendorf is Retired Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa. He is currently working on a seven-volume translation of the Hindi devotional text, the Rāmcaritmānas written by the sixteenth-century North Indian...
62 min
591
Anand Taneja, “Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Eco...
Anand Taneja’s Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi (Stanford University Press, 2017) is a landmark publication that interrogates modes of religious practice and imaginaries of time that disrupt dominant claims...
54 min
592
Shyam Ranganathan, “Hinduism: A Contemporary Ph...
In Hinduism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation (Routledge, 2018), Shyam Ranganathan argues that a careful philosophical study reveals telling philosophical disagreements across topics such as: ethics, logic, epistemology, moral standing,
50 min
593
Keya Maitra, “Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: ...
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the foundational texts of Hinduism and probably the one most familiar and popular in the West. The moral problem that motivates the text – is it right to kill members of one’s extended family if they are on the other side in...
62 min
594
Sucharita Adluri, “Textual Authority in Classic...
What role, if any, do mythological texts play in philosophical discourse? While modern Hindu Studies scholars are becoming increasingly attuned to the extent to which Indian narratives encode ideology, Sucharita Adluri’s Textual Authority in Classical...
36 min
595
Lavanya Vemsani, “Modern Hinduism in Text and C...
Dr. Lavanya Vemsani is Distinguished Professor of India History and Religions at Shawnee University and the editor of the new volume entitled Modern Hinduism in Text and Context (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
36 min
596
Elaine Fisher, “Hindu Pluralism: Religion and t...
Elaine Fisher’s Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South Asia (University of California Press, 2017) sheds light on the variegated, pluralistic texture of Hinduism in precolonial times. Drawing on Sanskrit, Telugu,
34 min
597
Walter N. Hakala, “Negotiating Languages: Urdu,...
For many people language is a central characteristic of their social identity. In modern South Asia, the production of Urdu and Hindi as national languages was intricately tied to the hardening of religious identities. South Asian lexicographers,
70 min
598
Hugh Urban, “Zorba the Buddha: Sex, Spiritualit...
Many contemporary spiritual movements are characterized by denial of material pleasures, subjugation of the self, and focus on transcendence. A spiritual program that cultivates embodied satisfaction is often seen as inauthentic and fraudulent.
42 min
599
Michael J. Altman, “Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: Ame...
Scholars regularly assert that at Chicago’s World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893 Swami Vivekananda initiated Hinduism in America. Many histories of Hinduism in America reproduce this type of synthesizing narrative.
53 min
600
William Elison, et.al. “Amar Akbar Anthony: Bol...
Amar Akbar Anthony is a film like no other. When you see it you cannot forget it. Filled with music, comedy, drama, and love it captures audiences in multiple ways. But what can we learn from a deeper look at this classic of Hindi cinema?
71 min