Faculty

Affiliated Faculty

Anita Anantharam

Anita Anantharam joined the University of Florida's Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research as Assistant Professor in 2006. Professor Anantharam did her undergraduate work in Women's Studies at Columbia University, her MA at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and received her Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests are in the fields of nationalism and feminism in South Asia and her current manuscript is a comparative study of anti-state poetry from India and Pakistan during key moments of religious revitilization in the twentieth century. She is the editor of Mahadevi Varma: Essays on Women,Culture, and Society, a volume of translations, and is currently working on a book titled Illuminating Feminism: Religion, Nation, and Poetry in South Asia.

Professor Anantharam's areas of specialization include Transnational Feminism, Postcolonial Theory, Hindi and Urdu language and literature, and Marxist-feminist analyses of literary
and visual cultures of the South Asian Diaspora.

Amy Bard

Amy Bard earned her Ph.D. (2002), M. Phil., and M.A. from Columbia University’s Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures, and did undergraduate work at Bryn Mawr, Banaras Hindu University, and the University of Wisconsin. Bard works on literature and language use in both Hindi and Urdu, with particular attention to expressive traditions among women and to forms, including laments, that gained prominence in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries and still have vibrant (often religiously based) performance contexts today.  Much of her research explores how gender, regional identity, or sectarian tensions mediate poetic production, appreciation, and meaning in contemporary south Asia.  She is also interested in the anthropology of emotion/affect.  Some of Bard’s newer research documents the construction of linguistic identity and heritage in areas within south Asia where speakers of “major” languages form minority communities.

Kathleen M. Erndl

Kathleen M. Erndl (Ph.D. '87, University of Wisconsin, South Asian Language and Literature: Religions of South Asia) is an Associate Professor at Florida State University and holds a courtesy appointment with the Department of Religion/ CHiTra at UF. Dr Erndl teaches in the field of South Asian religions, especially Hinduism, as well as gender and religion, comparative studies, and Sanskrit. Professor Erndl's publications include Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual and Symbol (Oxford, 1993), a co-edited collection of essays entitled Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses (New York University Press and Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), and articles on Sakta traditions, spirit possession, women's religious expressions, methodology, and gender issues in Hinduism. She is currently writing a book entitled The Play of the Mother: Women, Goddess Possession, and Power in Hinduism. Other research interests include interactions between Hinduism and Buddhism in India, cross-cultural appropriations of Indian goddesses in North America, and Hinduism in the Caribbean. Professor Erndl has been the recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright-Hayes, and the American Institute of Indian Studies.

Joan D. Frosch

Joan D. Frosch is Professor of Dance and Assistant Director of the School of Theatre and Dance, affiliate faculty of the Centers for African Studies and Latin American Studies at the University of Florida, and consultant for such agencies as the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts. The 2003-2004 Gwendolen M. Carter Fellow in African Studies at the University of Florida, Professor Frosch is a dance ethnographer, Certified Laban Movement Analyst, choreographer and author. Co-director and co-founder of UF’s Center for World Arts (1996), a living laboratory exploring the interface of arts and culture, her research has attracted national and international funding, and numerous honors and awards, such as the national Lilly Fellowship for innovative curriculum in Dance in World Cultures, the National Endowment for the Arts (Dance-Creativity), and the Cologne Choreographers' Forum for her choreography, China.

Professor Frosch is currently directing and producing an in-depth documentary on contemporary African choreographers entitled Contemporary African Dance: A Movement (R)evolution, featuring such artists and companies as Sello Pesa (South Africa), Jant-Bi (Senegal), Raiz de Polon (Cape Verde), Rary (Madagascar), Béatrice Kombé (Cote d’Ivoire), and Kongo Ba Téria (Burkina Faso), among many others. In collaboration with the Centers for African Studies and Latin American Studies, she has developed numerous other collaborations with international artists moving from "cultural traditions" to contemporary expression, including conferences on the subject, such as the recent Movement (R)evolution Dialogues: Contemporary Performance In and Of Africa, and programming including such artists as: Los Pregones, Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor, African-American Dance Ensemble, DanceBrazil, Menaka Thakkar Dance Company, Pepatian, Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, ODC San Francisco, Urban Bush Women, and, most recently TchéTché, of Cote d'Ivoire.

Professor Frosch trained at the School of Performing Arts, The Juiliard School, California Institute of the Arts, Columbia University and the Laban Institute of Movement Studies. She has taught on the faculties of the University of Maryland, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Wesleyan University, Rotterdamse Dansacademie in the Netherlands, the International School of Beijing, and founded and directed a summer performing arts program based at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. She has also served as Advisor to the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife African Immigrant Project, President of the Florida Dance Association, and currently serves on the board of directors of the Congress on Research in Dance. Professor Frosch is a founding member of the Africa Consortium, a national organization of curators, presenters, and scholars dedicated to the vigorous artistic exchange of contemporary African performance.

Michael J. Gressett

Michael J. Gressett (Ph.D. student from 2003) graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in Religious Studies and took his master's degree from the University of Florida in South Asian religious traditions with an emphasis in Hinduism. His research interests are Hindu traditions in America and new religious movements in America. He has taught Sanskrit for four years and will teach Religions of India Fall 2006.

Vasudha Narayanan

Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion (2001-2002). She was educated at the Universities of Madras and Bombay in India, and at Harvard University. Her fields of interest are the Sri Vaishnava tradition and Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia and America.  She is currently working on Hindu temples and Vaishnava traditions in Cambodia.
She is the author or editor of seven books and over ninety articles, chapters in books, and encyclopedia entries. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from several organizations including the Centre for Khmer Studies (2007); the American Council of Learned Societies (2004-2005); National Endowment for the Humanities (1987, 1989-90, and 1998-99), the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1991-92), the American Institute of Indian Studies/ Smithsonian, and the Social Science Research Council. She was the president of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies from 1996-1998.

Vasudha Narayanan’s recent books include:

• The Life of Hinduism (2007) co-edited with John Stratton Hawley
• Hinduism (2004) .
  

Recent Articles and Chapters in books include:

"The Hindu Tradition" in World Religions: Eastern Traditions, ed. by Willard Oxtoby;
“Weaving Garlands of Tamil Poems” in An Anthology of Krishna-Resources, edited by Edwin Bryant (2007),“Performing Arts, Reforming Rituals,” in Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, edited by Tracy Pintchman (2007); “Sacred Land, Sacred Service: Hindu Adaptations to the American Landscape” in A Nation of Religions: The Politics of Pluralism in Multi-religious America, edited by Stephen Prothero (2006); “Heterogenous Spaces and Modernities: Hindu Rituals to Sacralize the American Landscape.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies (Spring 2005); “Sacred land, Common ground, Contested territory: The Healing Mother of Velankanni Basilica and the Infant Jesus Shrine in Bangalore” in Journal of Hindu Christian Studies, Vol.17, Fall, (2004) ; “Gurus and Goddesses, Deities and Devotees” inThe Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States, edited by Karen Pechilis (2004); her 2002 American Academy of Religion presidential address "Embodied Cosmologies: Sights of Piety, Sites of Power," in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 71/3 (Fall 2003); "'One Tree is Equal to Ten Sons': Some Hindu Responses to the Problems of Ecology, Population and Consumption" inJournal of the American Academy of Religion, 65/2 (June 1997); "Water, Wood, and Wisdom: Ecological Perspectives from the Hindu Traditions." Daedalus, 130/4 (Fall 2001); and "Vaishnava Traditions in Cambodia," in Festschrift for Dennis Hudson, Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 11/1 (September 2002 )

Jason Neelis

Jason Neelis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion specializing in South Asian Buddhist literature and epigraphy.  He received his Ph.D. in Asian Languages and Literature from the University of Washington, where he later became a post-doctoral researcher for the Early Buddhist Manuscripts project. His research centers upon rock inscriptions written by travelers and inhabitants who lived on the routes which connected the frontiers of northwestern India (now Pakistan) and the Tarim Basin in western China (Xinjiang province).  The routes were used by merchants for trans-Asian commerce and by Buddhist monks, missionaries, and pilgrims. The aim of this research is to better understand how Buddhism moves beyond India and adapts itself to various cultural environments.

Whitney Sanford

Whitney Sanford received her BA in English and Philosophy from Bowdoin College and M.A. and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in north Indian devotional traditions.

She teaches and researches in two main areas: Religion and Nature and Religions of Asia. In the area of Religion and Nature, she focuses on religious attitudes towards agricultural sustainability, particularly in South Asia. Her second book, Transforming Agriculture: Hindu Narrative and Ecological Imagination, explores how Hindu agricultural narratives provide the foundation to expand the ecological imagination in terms and rethink agricultural practice. She conducted fieldwork in Baldeo, India, examining narratives and practices related to Balaram, a deity associated with agriculture. Current research interests include the relationship between agricultural biotechnology and forms of neo-colonialism, particularly in Latin America and India. Her new project "Gandhi's Environmental Legacy: Food Sovereignty and Social Movements" investigates Gandhi's influence on sustainability and food and water sovereignty movements.

In the Religions of Asia area, she focuses on Braj devotional traditions. Her first book Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramanand's Poetry (SUNY 2008) explores the role of devotional poetry in ritual practice. She has published articles in JAAR, International Journal of Hindu Studies and Alternative Krishnas, edited by Guy Beck (SUNY Press, 2005).

Additionally, she is interested in how participation in outdoor recreation activities functions as religious experience and to what extent this participation leads to a practiced environmental ethic.

Travis L. Smith

Travis L. Smith (Ph.D. 2007, Columbia University Department of Religion) joined the UF Department of Religion in 2007. His research and teaching interests center on Sanskrit literature, in particular the epic, Puranic and Tantric traditions. His current research explores the relationships between traditional genres of Kavya ("poetry”), Purana ("ancient lore"), Tantra ("esoteric doctrine") and Itihasa ("history").

He has a special interest in the religious history and literary constructions of the sacred city of Varanasi, especially as represented in its classical Puranic “glorification” (mahatmya) literature. He continues to explore the importance of this city in the early formation and development of Saiva theistic traditions such as the Pasupatas and Saiva Siddhantins.

He also initiated and co-directs the UF in India study abroad program.

Gene Thursby

Gene Thursby has conducted archival and field research in India, Great Britain, and the United States at intervals during the last four decades on Fulbright-Hays and AIIS-Smithsonian Institution Fellowships and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the author of Hindu-Muslim Relations in British India (1975), The Sikhs (1992), articles in journals and in reference works, and chapters in edited books that include When Prophets Die (1991) and America's Alternative Religions (1995). With Sushil Mittal, he co-edited The Hindu World (Routledge, 2004) and Religions of South Asia (Routledge, 2006).

Visiting Faculty from Oxford

Kenneth Valpey

Kenneth Valpey is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies who, in 2003, completed doctoral studies at Oxford University, on Vaishnava-Hindu temple ritual and its transplantation to western contexts (recently published by Routledge). Now acting as adjunct lecturer in the U.F. Religion department, his academic interests include Indian aesthetic theory, ritual studies, and Hindu traditions in relation to educational theory and practice.

Ravi M. Gupta

Ravi M. Gupta is assistant professor of religion at Centre College, Kentucky. He earned his doctorate in Hinduism from Oxford University and was visiting assistant professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Chaitanya Vaishnava Vedanta of Jiva Gosvami (Routledge) and has contributed articles to several journals and books in the field. His research interests include Sanskrit commentary, Vaishnava devotional traditions, and comparative theology.

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