On the Global Guru Circuit: From India to the West and Back Again
As transnational gurus have increasingly mobilized globally in multidirectional patterns and occupy significant virtual spaces of connectivity, the ideal that religious traditions are dependent on geographical fixity has become increasingly destabilized.
Amanda Lucia
Amanda Lucia (MA, PhD, University of Chicago) is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at University of California-Riverside. Her research engages transnational articulations of modern, global Hinduism. Her forthcoming book, White Utopias: Spirituality, Transformational Festivals, and American Yoga, focuses on the intersections of race and American adoptions of Indic spirituality. She is also crafting a body of […]
Religious Studies Opportunites Digest – 10 July 2018
Welcome to the latest edition of The Religious Studies Project Opportunities Digest! This week you will find two event, two journal call for papers, and for conference call for papers and proposal opportunities.
RSP is not on summer break, so as the influx of opportunities slow for the season we will be posting digest about every other week. Be sure to continue to check in for new opportunities!
The Blog Assignment: Confronting “Spirituality” in Teaching Religious Studies
In this second of a two-part series, Richard Ascough adds his voice to Sharday Mosurinjohn’s reflections on a new blog post assignment used in a course on Spirituality, Secularity, and Nonreligion taught through the School of Religion at Queen’s University. In the earlier post, Sharday noted that she learned two key lessons: that students are concerned…
Hindu Traditions in Contemporary British Communities
This podcast explores how Hindu belief and traditions have been incorporated into modern western practices. An overview of the British kirtan community and the Art of Living movement is followed by a discussion of authenticity, reconciliation of tradition and modernity, and the influence of popular culture.
Theo Wildcroft
Theo Wildcroft, PhD, is a teacher, trainer, writer and scholar working for a more sustainable relationship between our many selves, the communities that hold us, and the world that nourishes us. Her research considers the democratization of yoga post-lineage, and meaning-making in grassroots communities of practice. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, […]
Steve Jacobs
Steve Jacobs is a senior lecturer in Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Wolverhampton. With an academic background in Religious Studies and a special interest in contemporary forms of Hinduism, he has extended this interest to look more broadly at the complex interactions and intersections between religion and popular culture. He has just […]
Stretching Good Faith: A Response to Candy Gunther Brown
If Candy Gunther Brown’s work is so divergent with her peers in academia, how does one contextualize her understanding of yoga and her approach to it? In keeping with Bender’s assessment that Brown “exemplifies the ‘caveat emptor’ genre of popular writing about CAM,” I would argue that Brown’s writings on yoga are most similar to the genre of Christian-based criticism of yoga.
Teaching Religion: A Response to Douglas Brooks
In his classroom, there is a clear divide between scholar and practitioner, between religious studies and religious practice. Obviously, [Brooks] is an example of how those two worlds comingle. But he is also committed to further advancing the study of religion as a secular discipline – in the same way that one studies history, psychology, sociology, and the like.
Studying Tantra from the Inside and Out
In this interview on ‘Studying Tantra from the Inside and Out’, Douglas R Brooks allows the listener an insight into his own personal and academic development, and an account of how various factors led him to the study of South Indian Shrividya Shakta Tantrism. There are many interesting elements to consider therein,…
Studying Tantra from Within and Without
Douglas R. Brooks, Professor of Religion at the University of Rochester, discusses how he became involved in the academic study of Hinduism, specifically Tantra and goddess-centered traditions. He begins with his training in Sanskrit and Tamil at Middlebury College, …
Douglas R. Brooks
Douglas R. Brooks is a scholar of Hinduism, South Asian languages, and the comparative study of religions. He lived in India with his teacher, Dr. Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy, for many years, studying and practicing Srividya, Auspicious Wisdom, and the modern traditions of goddess-centered Tantra. Brooks is the author of a number of books and scholarly […]
Anya P. Foxen
Anya P. Foxen received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara and specializes in South Asian and American metaphysical traditions. She teaches in the Religious Studies Program at California Polytechnic State University. Her research interests include modern yoga, gender and sexuality, and religion and science. Her recent work has focused […]
Suzanne Newcombe
Suzanne Newcombe is a senior lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University (UK) and honorary director of Inform, an educational charity that provides information on new and minority groups based in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London (formerly at the London School of Economics). Suzanne researches and publishes on the study of […]
Religious Studies Project Opportunities Digest – 29 September 2015
Dear subscriber, We are pleased to bring you this week’s opportunities digest! We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who has forwarded notifications. On that note, we would also like to encourage you to continue to do so (and invite those who remain hesitant to begin)! It is super easy to have a Religious Studies call for papers, exciting […]