At the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Thursday, November 6, 2003
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
Corwin Pavilion
Los Angeles, CA 93106

The University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Religious Studies presents "Hindu Traditions in America:  Temple Space and Cyberspace," the Michaelsen Endowed Visiting Scholars Lecture with Vasudha Narayanan.

The lecture will focus on the ways in which Hindus in the United States sacralize the American landscape and transform and are transformed by the country in which they live. It will explore the architectural and ritual contexts of temple worship and the mechanisms of transmission of religious culture through performing arts and digital technologies in cyberspace.

Vasudha Narayanan is Professor of Religion at the University of Florida and the former President of the American Academy of Religion. An eminent scholar of South Asian religions and cultures, she has made seminal contributions to our understanding of Hindu traditions in India and North America through her wide-ranging studies of Sri Vaishnava devotional (bhakti) traditions, Hindu temple traditions in the diaspora, South Asian ecological perspectives, and gender issues. Her publications include The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (1994); The Way and the Goal: Expressions of Devotion in the Early Srivaisnava Tradition (1987); and The Tamil Veda: Pillan's Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli (1989). Her lecture will draw on her most recent book, The Hindu Traditions in the United States: Temple Space, Domestic Space, and Cyberspace, which will be published by Columbia University Press in 2003. She is currently working on an extended study of Hindu temples and Vaishnava traditions in Cambodia.

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Cost : Free

Sponsor(s): University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)