38 min listen
Unavailable
Currently unavailable
Amanda Lucia, “Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace” (University of California Press, 2014)
Currently unavailable
Amanda Lucia, “Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace” (University of California Press, 2014)
ratings:
Length:
57 minutes
Released:
Sep 26, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Waiting several hours in line for a hug is well worth it for thousands of people, the devotees of the Guru, Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi. In Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (University of California Press, 2014), Amanda Lucia, Associate Professor of Religion at UC Riverside, provides a rich ethnographic account of Amma’s American followers and convincingly argues that there is much to learn here about gender, interpretation, and contemporary American religiosity. Amma’s devotees in the United States are usually “inheritors” or “adopters” of Hindu traditions, which shapes their interpretive vantage point and understandings of Amma as Hindu goddesses or feminist. American multiculturalism and romantic orientalist attitudes frequently reifiy cultural differences further structuring the interrelations between South Asian and non-Indian devotees in the American context. In our conversation we discuss female religious leaders, darshan, gurus in American context, purity and ritual, women’s empowerment, village and urban transformations, Devi Bhava, and gendered interpretations of Hinduism.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Sep 26, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Sucharita Adluri, “Textual Authority in Classical Indian Thought: Ramanuja and the Vishnu Purana” (Routledge, 2014): 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... by New Books in Indian Religions