Holly Walters | Wellesley College (original) (raw)
Papers by Holly Walters
Material Religion: The Journal of Art, Objects, and Belief, 2024
Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations o... more Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations of Hindu gods, Shaligrams are obtained by pilgrimage to Himalayan Nepal and are then brought home to families and communities all over South Asia and the Diaspora as household deities. But Shaligrams also contain a variety of natural characteristics that are read and interpreted through long-standing oral traditions that use these features to both determine which specific deity is manifest within the stone and to link each Shaligram with a body of religious stories and local folklore. Therefore, the semiotic interpretation of Shaligrams instantiates ritual practices by which each stone becomes both an object and a text; able to be read by those fluent in its symbolic language. This practice then blurs the line between categories of object and archive; where fossils become literal texts and stones become storytellers.
Journal of Material Religion, 2024
Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations o... more Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations of Hindu gods, Shaligrams are obtained by pilgrimage to Himalayan Nepal and are then brought home to families and communities all over South Asia and the Diaspora as household deities. But Shaligrams also contain a variety of natural characteristics that are read and interpreted through long-standing oral traditions that use these features to both determine which specific deity is manifest within the stone and to link each Shaligram with a body of religious stories and local folklore. Therefore, the semiotic interpretation of Shaligrams instantiates ritual practices by which each stone becomes both an object and a text; able to be read by those fluent in its symbolic language. This practice then blurs the line between categories of object and archive; where fossils become literal texts and stones become storytellers.
Journal of Religion, 2022
Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations o... more Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations of Hindu gods, these aniconic deities are obtained by pilgrimage to Himalayan Nepal and are then brought home, to families and communities all over South Asia and the diaspora, to become both deity and kin. Shaligrams also act as conversants, if inanimate ones, during the course of ritual and everyday talk. Therefore, the semiotic separation of bodies and persons in Shaligram religious practice, discussed here in relation to Tulsi Vivah (the marriage of Tulsi and Shaligram) festivals and in daily puja and darshan rituals, reimagines individuals as represented by but distinct from their physical forms. This practice then links language and ritual objects with broader understandings of human and divine personhood in South Asia as it is conceptualized both within and between physical bodies.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
The history of Mustang, Nepal is complicated and can vary significantly depending on the textual ... more The history of Mustang, Nepal is complicated and can vary significantly depending on the textual sources one uses. For local Mustangis and pilgrims, however, issues of place, space, and time are a vital part of what it means to be Hindu or Buddhist as well as Nepali, Indian, or Tibetan, even though these categories remain continuously blurred and fluid. Beginning with the paleontological history of Mustang’s extensive fossil formations and ending with an overview of the political history of the region, this chapter focuses on the ways in which historical narratives have affected access to the Kali Gandaki River Valley, and to Shaligrams specifically, since the earliest days.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
Shaligram origin stories are as variable as the stones themselves. Whether formed by the vajra-k... more Shaligram origin stories are as variable as the stones themselves. Whether
formed by the vajra-kita (thunderbolt worm) whose stone-carving capabilities
continue to link religious creation stories with ammonite paleontology
or by any number of curses levied at Vishnu for betraying the chastity of
the goddess Tulsi, the mountain and river birth of a Shaligram is always
preceded by a complex narrative of time, place, and personhood. The core
conceptualization of bodies as landscapes, however, remains constant. The
birth-death-rebirth processes of the landscape then becomes metonymic
for the karmic birth-death-rebirth cycle shared by humans, their deities,
and their Shaligrams.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
Shaligrams blur the boundaries between being and object and may be either or both. For this reaso... more Shaligrams blur the boundaries between being and object and may be either or both. For this reason, Shaligrams are treated as manifest deities with their own will and agency and as ritual objects who organize community participation around ritual events and social norms. Furthermore, Shaligram practitioners do not typically view juxtapositions of “deity” and “fossil” or “stone” and “body” as incommensurate with one another. Rather, religion and science are leveraged as two narrative frameworks that present possibilities for different ways of knowing. This results in an understanding of Shaligrams as ammonites, Shaligrams as persons, and Shaligrams as deities that views each as one part of a larger reality.
For more than two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites (an extinct type of c... more For more than two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites (an extinct type of cephalopod), called Shaligram Shila, has been an integral part of Hindu ritual practice throughout South Asia. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, in the Kali Gandaki River Valley of Mustang, ritual use of these stones today has become a significant focus of pilgrimage, religious co-participation, and exchange between Nepal and India and among the global Hindu Diaspora. Viewed primarily as natural manifestations of the Hindu god Vishnu, Shaligrams are inherently sacred. For this reason, they require no rites of consecration or invocation as presiding deities over the household, the family, and the community. But at their core, Shaligrams are both manifest deities and divine movement incarnate, either through a geologically and mythologically formative journey down the sacred river or transnationally in the hands of devout pilgrims. Pouring out into the river each y...
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
The temple complex of Muktinath is both the primary site of Shaligram veneration within Mustang a... more The temple complex of Muktinath is both the primary site of Shaligram veneration within Mustang as well as the endpoint of Shaligram pilgrimage. Though identified in Puranic texts as existing in Himalayan Nepal and mentioned by a series of names, such as Muktikshetra and Śālagrāma, it is often unclear as to whether these passages refer to a place, a region, or an ideal. As a Buddhist complex, Muktinath is more commonly referred to as Chumig-Gyatsa (Hundred Waters). As such, Muktinath itself, much like Mustang generally, is not specifically identifiable through any one religious tradition and incorporates a variety of ritual practices, local and foreign customs, and belief systems – all of which are recapitulated in the Shaligram practices that follow.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
When a Shaligram dies, it begins a new journey: either cremated in the hands of the dead or hande... more When a Shaligram dies, it begins a new journey: either cremated in the hands of the dead or handed down to the next generation. As such, the ever-present issue of mobility foregrounds both the life of a Shaligram and the lives of practitioners. In an age of ever-increasing diaspora and digital life, however, keeping up with changes in communities and families living abroad has been a significant challenge for those maintaining Shaligram practices. As a result, many Shaligram devotees are growing concerned that millennia of Shaligram traditions are now in danger of extinction. But there is hope yet, especially in the burgeoning platforms of digital religion and the entrance of Shaligrams into the Dark Net.
Walters, Holly. "But What Is It Really? The Problem of Science, Pseudoscience, and Religion in Fo... more Walters, Holly. "But What Is It Really? The Problem of Science, Pseudoscience, and Religion in Fossil Folklores." (In Press, 2021). In Addressing Pseudo-Archaeology: A Guide for Teachers and Professionals. Digital Press at the University of North Dakota.
Monstrous Males, Fatal Females: Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death, 2020
The vampire is a powerful symbol as well as a deeply intriguing metaphor for the collective fears... more The vampire is a powerful symbol as well as a deeply intriguing metaphor for the collective fears and perspectives of the societies within which it dwells. Over the years, what began as a folktale of wandering spirits has accumulated a plethora of characteristics and interests which are now lumped together under the bricolage we now call ‘the vampire.’ Yet the figure of the vampire and the ways in which we draw upon it have undergone many transformations over time. However, it is precisely these transformations that reveal something about our own relationships to impurity, danger, and death today. Therefore, rather than addressing the symbol of the vampire as a relatively constant set of cross-cultural characteristics and meanings, this essay reflects on the differences in symbolic expression over time as they relate to culturally-rooted dread, distrust, and uncertainty. Following the foundations of the Western concept of the vampire, from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Europe, is a complex process. But not only does the vampire symbolize the anxieties a society has about itself, it also embodies myriad regional beliefs concerning evil, death, and damnation. To wit, a kind of perpetual moral panic in iconic form. It personifies the darkest aspects of life, the pain of disease, gendered oppression. questions of evil in nature, and the struggles against spiritual failure. Following the institutionalization of Christianity across much of Europe in the Middle Ages, the vampire mytheme then metamorphosed to become the modern vampire we recognize today; though it yet remains the repository of our deepest collective fears.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
Preview (TOC and Chapter 1) of my book, Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas
Feminist Anthropology Journal, 2020
This essay engages with the promise of feminist anthropology in terms of a disconnect between the... more This essay engages with the promise of feminist anthropology in terms of a disconnect between the practice of modern anthropology, its commitment to critically unveiling the narratives of power, and the structures of the academy, beholden as it is to creative fictions about ignorance and training as panacea to institutional sexual misconduct and gender inequality. As an intervention in a discipline that tends to leverage feminist praxis in ethnographic work but not in the constitution of its academic structures, the question is not whether anthropology has sufficiently incorporated feminism into its research methodologies but ultimately whether anthropology is ready to take on itself.
Journal of Global Buddhism, 2020
When Buddhism fails to live up to the projected promise of its doctrine or past forms, it is ofte... more When Buddhism fails to live up to the projected promise of its doctrine or past forms, it is often the human nature of its adherents (‘Bad Buddhists’), rather than the content of its teachings (‘Bad Buddhism’), that is blamed. But what if such human failings - greed, corruption, violence, even mortality - could be transcended? In the quest for a ‘good Buddhism,’ high-tech designs that utilise robotics, artificial intelligence, algorithmic agency, and other advancements are increasingly pursued as solutions by innovators inside and outside Buddhist communities. In this paper, we interrogate two recent cases of what we call ‘Buddhist techno-salvationism’. Firstly, Pepper, the semi-humanoid robot who performs funeral sutras to a rapidly secularising and aging population of parishioners in Japan. Secondly, the Lotos Network, a US start-up proposing to use blockchain technology to combat financial corruption within global sanghas. We argue that such robotic and digital experiments are the logical outcome of techno-salvationist discourses that identify human failings as the principal barrier to perfect Buddhist praxis. If not always practical solutions, these interventions are powerful nonetheless as contested projections of Buddhist futures.
Sagar: A South Asian Studies Research Journal, 2018
The semiotic separation of persons from their bodily needs and desires in Vaishnava ritual practi... more The semiotic separation of persons from their bodily needs and desires in Vaishnava ritual practice re-imagines individuals and communities as represented by but distinct from their physical forms. In language, persons and bodies that are present have equal standing to persons and bodies as if they are present. In ritual practice, bodies as if they are present are then materially represented by sacred images and incorporated into daily life through rituals. Vaishnava practice then links ritual language and ritual objects with the ways in which personhood in India is conceptualized both within and between physical bodies. This paper focuses on the parallel ways in which both linguistic participant frameworks and the material construction of ritual spaces extend personhood across objects, space, and time, in order to demonstrate how the relationship between sacred spaces and language construct families and communities as simultaneously living, dead, and about to be reborn.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Dec 2016
As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna are ... more As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna are ubiquitous throughout South Asia. However, characterizations of Krishna also commonly appear in popular media, including television shows, movies, and comic books. But the division between traditional religious representations of Krishna and his more modern media images is not as stark as it might first appear. Using an analysis of linguistic frameworks in popular dramatic stage performances centered on the re-enactment of Krishna stories, this article demonstrates the continuum of religious practice that links the actor playing Krishna with ritual practices that presume the manifestation of the deity himself. In this way, the lines between tradition and modernity become blurred as particular methods of entertainment become themselves a vehicle for the realization of the divine.
"The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Chri... more "The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Christian faith. This paper uses an interpretive anthropological approach supported through the works of Max Weber and Jean Comaroff to analyze gendered personhood and power in conservative American Christian theology. While Harnack would find his brand of reductionist religion dismissed today as sexist and exclusive, the fact remains that current Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) belief maintains the familial metaphors of “father”, “son”, and “mother”, and organizes the roles of men and women in the church according to traditional interpretations of these relationships. While many argue that the term “father” for God was meant to imply an all-powerful authority over the church as a whole, this metaphor is also a means of justification for the absence of authority of women. A woman’s place in the church is analogous to her place in family life, submissive to the authority of her father and husband.
The metaphor of the family also has connections to the Protestant notion of “calling”, an application of religious meaning to worldly action. While “calling” typically applies economically, it has greater implications among WELS Lutherans where only men can be “called” or act as ‘heads’ of the family and faith. Therefore, with men as the sole conduits of divine will in the world, I argue that the familial metaphor and the concept of “calling” shape, not just Protestant notions of authority, but the very conception of personhood itself among women in WELS communities.
This paper addresses the linguistic construction of race in the public rhetoric of white supremac... more This paper addresses the linguistic construction of race in the public rhetoric of white supremacists. Through the use of analytic strategies such as stance and distance, this paper argues that the construction of race through the language of white power co-opts the language of civil rights in order to redefine "white" as a distinct and separate category from the assumption of homogeneous "Caucasian-ness" shared by Western culture. Ultimately, these linguistic tactics seek to locate white power movements within economic and political spaces of historical oppression and inequality so as to subvert minority discourses of civil rights and reassert hegemonic entitlement. This emphasis on white power rhetorics as a source of "othering" broadens earlier analyses that tend to focus only on the subjects themselves marked as "other" because it includes additional dimensions of unmarked racial standards. This is because the language of white power attempts to reconstruct and define "whiteness," not as a naturalized default to which other races are typically compared, but as its own racial category and identity conceptualized on a single level of structural social existence with other racial categories. This marked "white race" is then characterized as an embattled minority so that white power dialogues can draw upon and mirror the equal rights discourses of other American social and racial minority groups that use race as a category of political empowerment.
Conference Presentations by Holly Walters
"The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Chri... more "The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Christian faith. This paper uses an interpretive anthropological approach supported through the works of Max Weber and Jean Comaroff to analyze gendered personhood and power in conservative American Christian theology. While Harnack would find his brand of reductionist religion dismissed today as sexist and exclusive, the fact remains that current Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) belief maintains the familial metaphors of “father”, “son”, and “mother”, and organizes the roles of men and women in the church according to traditional interpretations of these relationships. While many argue that the term “father” for God was meant to imply an all-powerful authority over the church as a whole, this metaphor is also a means of justification for the absence of authority of women. A woman’s place in the church is analogous to her place in family life, submissive to the authority of her father and husband.
The metaphor of the family also has connections to the Protestant notion of “calling”, an application of religious meaning to worldly action. While “calling” typically applies economically, it has greater implications among WELS Lutherans where only men can be “called” or act as ‘heads’ of the family and faith. Therefore, with men as the sole conduits of divine will in the world, I argue that the familial metaphor and the concept of “calling” shape, not just Protestant notions of authority, but the very conception of personhood itself among women in WELS communities.
Drafts by Holly Walters
As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna as t... more As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna as the divine lover are ubiquitous throughout South Asia. In recent years however, Krishna’s sexualized and eroticized iconography has also become a source of political capital for queer Hindu devotees and activists throughout India, especially those who continue to fight against the narrative that homosexuality is a colonial Western imposition. Using an analysis of GALVA activism and online community-building, this paper demonstrates the continuum of religious practices that leverage the mythography of Krishna to re-imagine queer identities that are viewed as distinctly Indian and Hindu. In this way, concepts of gender and sexuality become intimately linked with particular methods of political activism that focus on the role of religion in the acceptance of non-normative gender identity and expression.
Material Religion: The Journal of Art, Objects, and Belief, 2024
Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations o... more Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations of Hindu gods, Shaligrams are obtained by pilgrimage to Himalayan Nepal and are then brought home to families and communities all over South Asia and the Diaspora as household deities. But Shaligrams also contain a variety of natural characteristics that are read and interpreted through long-standing oral traditions that use these features to both determine which specific deity is manifest within the stone and to link each Shaligram with a body of religious stories and local folklore. Therefore, the semiotic interpretation of Shaligrams instantiates ritual practices by which each stone becomes both an object and a text; able to be read by those fluent in its symbolic language. This practice then blurs the line between categories of object and archive; where fossils become literal texts and stones become storytellers.
Journal of Material Religion, 2024
Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations o... more Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations of Hindu gods, Shaligrams are obtained by pilgrimage to Himalayan Nepal and are then brought home to families and communities all over South Asia and the Diaspora as household deities. But Shaligrams also contain a variety of natural characteristics that are read and interpreted through long-standing oral traditions that use these features to both determine which specific deity is manifest within the stone and to link each Shaligram with a body of religious stories and local folklore. Therefore, the semiotic interpretation of Shaligrams instantiates ritual practices by which each stone becomes both an object and a text; able to be read by those fluent in its symbolic language. This practice then blurs the line between categories of object and archive; where fossils become literal texts and stones become storytellers.
Journal of Religion, 2022
Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations o... more Shaligrams are the sacred fossil ammonites of the Himalayas. Viewed primarily as manifestations of Hindu gods, these aniconic deities are obtained by pilgrimage to Himalayan Nepal and are then brought home, to families and communities all over South Asia and the diaspora, to become both deity and kin. Shaligrams also act as conversants, if inanimate ones, during the course of ritual and everyday talk. Therefore, the semiotic separation of bodies and persons in Shaligram religious practice, discussed here in relation to Tulsi Vivah (the marriage of Tulsi and Shaligram) festivals and in daily puja and darshan rituals, reimagines individuals as represented by but distinct from their physical forms. This practice then links language and ritual objects with broader understandings of human and divine personhood in South Asia as it is conceptualized both within and between physical bodies.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
The history of Mustang, Nepal is complicated and can vary significantly depending on the textual ... more The history of Mustang, Nepal is complicated and can vary significantly depending on the textual sources one uses. For local Mustangis and pilgrims, however, issues of place, space, and time are a vital part of what it means to be Hindu or Buddhist as well as Nepali, Indian, or Tibetan, even though these categories remain continuously blurred and fluid. Beginning with the paleontological history of Mustang’s extensive fossil formations and ending with an overview of the political history of the region, this chapter focuses on the ways in which historical narratives have affected access to the Kali Gandaki River Valley, and to Shaligrams specifically, since the earliest days.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
Shaligram origin stories are as variable as the stones themselves. Whether formed by the vajra-k... more Shaligram origin stories are as variable as the stones themselves. Whether
formed by the vajra-kita (thunderbolt worm) whose stone-carving capabilities
continue to link religious creation stories with ammonite paleontology
or by any number of curses levied at Vishnu for betraying the chastity of
the goddess Tulsi, the mountain and river birth of a Shaligram is always
preceded by a complex narrative of time, place, and personhood. The core
conceptualization of bodies as landscapes, however, remains constant. The
birth-death-rebirth processes of the landscape then becomes metonymic
for the karmic birth-death-rebirth cycle shared by humans, their deities,
and their Shaligrams.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
Shaligrams blur the boundaries between being and object and may be either or both. For this reaso... more Shaligrams blur the boundaries between being and object and may be either or both. For this reason, Shaligrams are treated as manifest deities with their own will and agency and as ritual objects who organize community participation around ritual events and social norms. Furthermore, Shaligram practitioners do not typically view juxtapositions of “deity” and “fossil” or “stone” and “body” as incommensurate with one another. Rather, religion and science are leveraged as two narrative frameworks that present possibilities for different ways of knowing. This results in an understanding of Shaligrams as ammonites, Shaligrams as persons, and Shaligrams as deities that views each as one part of a larger reality.
For more than two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites (an extinct type of c... more For more than two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites (an extinct type of cephalopod), called Shaligram Shila, has been an integral part of Hindu ritual practice throughout South Asia. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, in the Kali Gandaki River Valley of Mustang, ritual use of these stones today has become a significant focus of pilgrimage, religious co-participation, and exchange between Nepal and India and among the global Hindu Diaspora. Viewed primarily as natural manifestations of the Hindu god Vishnu, Shaligrams are inherently sacred. For this reason, they require no rites of consecration or invocation as presiding deities over the household, the family, and the community. But at their core, Shaligrams are both manifest deities and divine movement incarnate, either through a geologically and mythologically formative journey down the sacred river or transnationally in the hands of devout pilgrims. Pouring out into the river each y...
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
The temple complex of Muktinath is both the primary site of Shaligram veneration within Mustang a... more The temple complex of Muktinath is both the primary site of Shaligram veneration within Mustang as well as the endpoint of Shaligram pilgrimage. Though identified in Puranic texts as existing in Himalayan Nepal and mentioned by a series of names, such as Muktikshetra and Śālagrāma, it is often unclear as to whether these passages refer to a place, a region, or an ideal. As a Buddhist complex, Muktinath is more commonly referred to as Chumig-Gyatsa (Hundred Waters). As such, Muktinath itself, much like Mustang generally, is not specifically identifiable through any one religious tradition and incorporates a variety of ritual practices, local and foreign customs, and belief systems – all of which are recapitulated in the Shaligram practices that follow.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
When a Shaligram dies, it begins a new journey: either cremated in the hands of the dead or hande... more When a Shaligram dies, it begins a new journey: either cremated in the hands of the dead or handed down to the next generation. As such, the ever-present issue of mobility foregrounds both the life of a Shaligram and the lives of practitioners. In an age of ever-increasing diaspora and digital life, however, keeping up with changes in communities and families living abroad has been a significant challenge for those maintaining Shaligram practices. As a result, many Shaligram devotees are growing concerned that millennia of Shaligram traditions are now in danger of extinction. But there is hope yet, especially in the burgeoning platforms of digital religion and the entrance of Shaligrams into the Dark Net.
Walters, Holly. "But What Is It Really? The Problem of Science, Pseudoscience, and Religion in Fo... more Walters, Holly. "But What Is It Really? The Problem of Science, Pseudoscience, and Religion in Fossil Folklores." (In Press, 2021). In Addressing Pseudo-Archaeology: A Guide for Teachers and Professionals. Digital Press at the University of North Dakota.
Monstrous Males, Fatal Females: Gender, Supernatural Beings, and the Liminality of Death, 2020
The vampire is a powerful symbol as well as a deeply intriguing metaphor for the collective fears... more The vampire is a powerful symbol as well as a deeply intriguing metaphor for the collective fears and perspectives of the societies within which it dwells. Over the years, what began as a folktale of wandering spirits has accumulated a plethora of characteristics and interests which are now lumped together under the bricolage we now call ‘the vampire.’ Yet the figure of the vampire and the ways in which we draw upon it have undergone many transformations over time. However, it is precisely these transformations that reveal something about our own relationships to impurity, danger, and death today. Therefore, rather than addressing the symbol of the vampire as a relatively constant set of cross-cultural characteristics and meanings, this essay reflects on the differences in symbolic expression over time as they relate to culturally-rooted dread, distrust, and uncertainty. Following the foundations of the Western concept of the vampire, from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Europe, is a complex process. But not only does the vampire symbolize the anxieties a society has about itself, it also embodies myriad regional beliefs concerning evil, death, and damnation. To wit, a kind of perpetual moral panic in iconic form. It personifies the darkest aspects of life, the pain of disease, gendered oppression. questions of evil in nature, and the struggles against spiritual failure. Following the institutionalization of Christianity across much of Europe in the Middle Ages, the vampire mytheme then metamorphosed to become the modern vampire we recognize today; though it yet remains the repository of our deepest collective fears.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas, 2020
Preview (TOC and Chapter 1) of my book, Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas
Feminist Anthropology Journal, 2020
This essay engages with the promise of feminist anthropology in terms of a disconnect between the... more This essay engages with the promise of feminist anthropology in terms of a disconnect between the practice of modern anthropology, its commitment to critically unveiling the narratives of power, and the structures of the academy, beholden as it is to creative fictions about ignorance and training as panacea to institutional sexual misconduct and gender inequality. As an intervention in a discipline that tends to leverage feminist praxis in ethnographic work but not in the constitution of its academic structures, the question is not whether anthropology has sufficiently incorporated feminism into its research methodologies but ultimately whether anthropology is ready to take on itself.
Journal of Global Buddhism, 2020
When Buddhism fails to live up to the projected promise of its doctrine or past forms, it is ofte... more When Buddhism fails to live up to the projected promise of its doctrine or past forms, it is often the human nature of its adherents (‘Bad Buddhists’), rather than the content of its teachings (‘Bad Buddhism’), that is blamed. But what if such human failings - greed, corruption, violence, even mortality - could be transcended? In the quest for a ‘good Buddhism,’ high-tech designs that utilise robotics, artificial intelligence, algorithmic agency, and other advancements are increasingly pursued as solutions by innovators inside and outside Buddhist communities. In this paper, we interrogate two recent cases of what we call ‘Buddhist techno-salvationism’. Firstly, Pepper, the semi-humanoid robot who performs funeral sutras to a rapidly secularising and aging population of parishioners in Japan. Secondly, the Lotos Network, a US start-up proposing to use blockchain technology to combat financial corruption within global sanghas. We argue that such robotic and digital experiments are the logical outcome of techno-salvationist discourses that identify human failings as the principal barrier to perfect Buddhist praxis. If not always practical solutions, these interventions are powerful nonetheless as contested projections of Buddhist futures.
Sagar: A South Asian Studies Research Journal, 2018
The semiotic separation of persons from their bodily needs and desires in Vaishnava ritual practi... more The semiotic separation of persons from their bodily needs and desires in Vaishnava ritual practice re-imagines individuals and communities as represented by but distinct from their physical forms. In language, persons and bodies that are present have equal standing to persons and bodies as if they are present. In ritual practice, bodies as if they are present are then materially represented by sacred images and incorporated into daily life through rituals. Vaishnava practice then links ritual language and ritual objects with the ways in which personhood in India is conceptualized both within and between physical bodies. This paper focuses on the parallel ways in which both linguistic participant frameworks and the material construction of ritual spaces extend personhood across objects, space, and time, in order to demonstrate how the relationship between sacred spaces and language construct families and communities as simultaneously living, dead, and about to be reborn.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Dec 2016
As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna are ... more As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna are ubiquitous throughout South Asia. However, characterizations of Krishna also commonly appear in popular media, including television shows, movies, and comic books. But the division between traditional religious representations of Krishna and his more modern media images is not as stark as it might first appear. Using an analysis of linguistic frameworks in popular dramatic stage performances centered on the re-enactment of Krishna stories, this article demonstrates the continuum of religious practice that links the actor playing Krishna with ritual practices that presume the manifestation of the deity himself. In this way, the lines between tradition and modernity become blurred as particular methods of entertainment become themselves a vehicle for the realization of the divine.
"The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Chri... more "The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Christian faith. This paper uses an interpretive anthropological approach supported through the works of Max Weber and Jean Comaroff to analyze gendered personhood and power in conservative American Christian theology. While Harnack would find his brand of reductionist religion dismissed today as sexist and exclusive, the fact remains that current Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) belief maintains the familial metaphors of “father”, “son”, and “mother”, and organizes the roles of men and women in the church according to traditional interpretations of these relationships. While many argue that the term “father” for God was meant to imply an all-powerful authority over the church as a whole, this metaphor is also a means of justification for the absence of authority of women. A woman’s place in the church is analogous to her place in family life, submissive to the authority of her father and husband.
The metaphor of the family also has connections to the Protestant notion of “calling”, an application of religious meaning to worldly action. While “calling” typically applies economically, it has greater implications among WELS Lutherans where only men can be “called” or act as ‘heads’ of the family and faith. Therefore, with men as the sole conduits of divine will in the world, I argue that the familial metaphor and the concept of “calling” shape, not just Protestant notions of authority, but the very conception of personhood itself among women in WELS communities.
This paper addresses the linguistic construction of race in the public rhetoric of white supremac... more This paper addresses the linguistic construction of race in the public rhetoric of white supremacists. Through the use of analytic strategies such as stance and distance, this paper argues that the construction of race through the language of white power co-opts the language of civil rights in order to redefine "white" as a distinct and separate category from the assumption of homogeneous "Caucasian-ness" shared by Western culture. Ultimately, these linguistic tactics seek to locate white power movements within economic and political spaces of historical oppression and inequality so as to subvert minority discourses of civil rights and reassert hegemonic entitlement. This emphasis on white power rhetorics as a source of "othering" broadens earlier analyses that tend to focus only on the subjects themselves marked as "other" because it includes additional dimensions of unmarked racial standards. This is because the language of white power attempts to reconstruct and define "whiteness," not as a naturalized default to which other races are typically compared, but as its own racial category and identity conceptualized on a single level of structural social existence with other racial categories. This marked "white race" is then characterized as an embattled minority so that white power dialogues can draw upon and mirror the equal rights discourses of other American social and racial minority groups that use race as a category of political empowerment.
"The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Chri... more "The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" is how Adolph Harnack once summarized the Christian faith. This paper uses an interpretive anthropological approach supported through the works of Max Weber and Jean Comaroff to analyze gendered personhood and power in conservative American Christian theology. While Harnack would find his brand of reductionist religion dismissed today as sexist and exclusive, the fact remains that current Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) belief maintains the familial metaphors of “father”, “son”, and “mother”, and organizes the roles of men and women in the church according to traditional interpretations of these relationships. While many argue that the term “father” for God was meant to imply an all-powerful authority over the church as a whole, this metaphor is also a means of justification for the absence of authority of women. A woman’s place in the church is analogous to her place in family life, submissive to the authority of her father and husband.
The metaphor of the family also has connections to the Protestant notion of “calling”, an application of religious meaning to worldly action. While “calling” typically applies economically, it has greater implications among WELS Lutherans where only men can be “called” or act as ‘heads’ of the family and faith. Therefore, with men as the sole conduits of divine will in the world, I argue that the familial metaphor and the concept of “calling” shape, not just Protestant notions of authority, but the very conception of personhood itself among women in WELS communities.
As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna as t... more As one of the most popular deities in contemporary Hindu worship, representations of Krishna as the divine lover are ubiquitous throughout South Asia. In recent years however, Krishna’s sexualized and eroticized iconography has also become a source of political capital for queer Hindu devotees and activists throughout India, especially those who continue to fight against the narrative that homosexuality is a colonial Western imposition. Using an analysis of GALVA activism and online community-building, this paper demonstrates the continuum of religious practices that leverage the mythography of Krishna to re-imagine queer identities that are viewed as distinctly Indian and Hindu. In this way, concepts of gender and sexuality become intimately linked with particular methods of political activism that focus on the role of religion in the acceptance of non-normative gender identity and expression.
My current syllabus for Anthropology of Religion, a cross-listed Anthropology and Religious Studi... more My current syllabus for Anthropology of Religion, a cross-listed Anthropology and Religious Studies class.
The Anthropology of Religion Syllabus, truncated for our shortened COVID term of 6 weeks.
My syllabus for a course I have now taught (with great popularity) for many years now. Divine Mad... more My syllabus for a course I have now taught (with great popularity) for many years now. Divine Madness/Culture and Mental Illness combines anthropological and psychological perspectives on mental health/illness with religion and, to some degree, neuroscience.
My current working syllabus for Intro to Cultural Anthropology (ANTH 101).
My current syllabus for a cross-listed Anthropology/South Asian Studies course.
By popular demand, this is my current syllabus for my new "Canon in Conversation" course for adva... more By popular demand, this is my current syllabus for my new "Canon in Conversation" course for advanced anthropology students.
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2022
Book review of Pallavi Guha's "Hear #MeToo in India" for South Asia: The Journal of South Asian S... more Book review of Pallavi Guha's "Hear #MeToo in India" for South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies