New Voices, New Challenges, and New Opportunities in Hindu Studies

New Voices, New Challenges, and New Opportunities in Hindu Studies

Tracy Pintchman (Religious Studies, Loyola University Chicago)
Wednesday, May 9 / 3:00 pm
3041 Humanities and Social Sciences Building

In recent decades a great deal of attention has been devoted to critiquing nineteenth and early twentieth century Western Indological scholarship and its Orientalist and colonialist discourses and practices. This lecture explored what has risen from the ashes of previous generations of Indological scholarship and where the postcolonial critiques have led us with respect to the current state of research on Hindu traditions. What kinds of changes have taken place during the past two decades, and what kinds of new voices and new challenges do these changes present? In the process of deconstructing older frames of analysis and interpretation, what have we been constructing? What are some of the opportunities for the future?

Tracy Pintchman is Professor of Religious Studies at Loyola University Chicago. Her research focuses on Hindu traditions, with emphasis on gender issues, goddess traditions, and women’s practices. Her publications include The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition and Guests at God’s Wedding: Celebrating Kartik among the Women of Benares and two edited volumes, Seeking Mahadevi: Constructing the Identities of the Hindu Great Goddess and Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition.