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This symposium seeks to amplify the interventions on the multifaceted nature of divine embodiments in the context of bhakti in South Asian traditions by bringing together scholars across disciplines working on hagiography, literature, and lived religion (Waghorne, Cutler, and Narayanan 1985). It endeavors to critically intervene in contextualizing the role of the divine as an embodied self wherein the divine is not confined to abstract transcendence but is intimately woven into the fabric of everyday life.

As of yet, scholarly attention has focused on divine-devout relationships centering the devotee as the agent of bhakti. In this symposium, we hope to amplify and shed light upon the embodied divine as the perceived agent. The papers in this symposium illuminate how divine embodiments derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike (Pintchman and Dempsey 2016).

We examine what it means for the divine to exert agency in an earthly form: can we decenter the devout in making the divine? How does the divine act within relationships of bhakti? What role does materiality or the lack thereof play in embodying the divine in South Asia? How do oral and written texts substantiate beliefs and practices in lived religion that aid in embodying the divine as a living being subject to human-like conditions?

The papers span a chronological arc from pre-modern textual and epigraphic sources, ritual analysis and philosophy, and anthropological analysis. Spanning varied religious traditions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, this symposium addresses issues of materiality, paradox (i.e. a transcendent deity whose earthly embodied self is subjected to human-like conditions), and wonder (Srinivas 2023). Through such varied lenses, we invite scholars of bhakti to rethink the role of the divine in creating the social of bhakti.

This symposium seeks to uncover the latent principles that engender both the positive and negative analytics that the term deploys. First, the term transgression is often used with a positive valence in bhakti scholarship, wherein it implies value judgments suggesting that transgressions of traditional Hindu caste and gender hierarchies in pursuit of greater equality are – and should be – viewed in a positive light. In the case in many scholarly works on bhakti, most particularly those focused on caste and gender, bhakti poets, gurus, temples, and traditions are often unreflexively celebrated for their transgressive contestations and refusals of “traditional” structures of Hindu hierarchy with the goal of greater inclusivity. Second, in the negative valence, the term transgression tends to be used in relation to the behaviors of bhaktas that are deemed either adharmic (meat eating, alcohol drinking, caste violations, sexual practices, and so on) or illegal (murder, rape, fraud, tax evasion, immigration violations, prostitution, embezzlement, and so on). These transgressions are often marked by criminality and as such are also, by definition, socially and historically constructed and the result of political processes defined by those with social influence and juridical power.

The symposium provides an arena in which to think critically about the term “transgression” and the broader lexicon in which it is embedded. It seeks to locate and interrogate exercises in cultural evaluation, and to question the concept of “value neutrality” and how value judgments are deployed with intention, awareness, care, and critical self-reflexivity. In hosting this pre-conference event, the co-coordinators aim to unearth the latent and historically contingent ideologies that inform both the positive and negative valences of the notion of “transgression,” and in so doing reveal the ways that scholars unwittingly reassert Brahmanical dominance as idealized tradition and Anglo-European liberalism as the ethical norm.

This symposium focuses on the aspired, actualized, and theorized sensations resulting from intentional uses of senses. The symposium will investigate the connections among sensory interactions, the sacred and material worlds, and resultant sensations – whether involuntarily felt or intentionally fostered. How and why are such connections created, reinforced, recreated, or dissolved? Examining the role of sensory impairment and sensory imagination within devotional contexts, the symposium discusses the creative functions of sensations in building desired devotional relations.

Past RBSN symposia have discussed various methodologies to study bhakti as a lived phenomenon, including disciplinary modes of assessing bhakti, technologies of publishing bhakti, and “visuality” as a lens to examine new forms and new social contexts of bhakti. Through this year’s symposium, we expand on these productive conversations to attend to the making of realities, affective and conceptual, through sensory engagements. We highlight regional and sectarian articulations of a bhakti sensorium; we discuss archives of exemplary and desired sensations; and we analyze tools of sensing.

“Sensing,” broadly construed, involves literary depictions and practices of engaging and knowing through the senses, including the mind. We situate senses at intersections–of materiality and cognition, gender and emotion, caste and belonging, synesthetic connections and desired devotional relations–to attend to the lived realities of devotion. By bringing in scholars who cover diverse regions, languages, and tradition, we foster cross-regional and inter-linguistic conversations on sensing, sensations, and related cognitive dimensions of bhakti.

Postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic, this symposium capitalized on the conference’s online-only modality by using an innovative hybrid asynchronous/synchronous format that encouraged substantive discussion while avoiding Zoom fatigue. One week before meeting live online during the scheduled symposium, presenters’ abstracts and video presentations were made available on a Humanities Commons website. Viewers left comments in the website, which functioned as a springboard for the live discussion during the symposium meeting.

This symposium investigated the impact of print technology on bhakti traditions during the long 19^th century (roughly 1800-1930).  The medium of print—both text and image—offered new possibilities for authorship, representation, and dissemination of knowledge.  It conveyed information (both traditionally construed and critically formed) about bhakti groups to new configurations of literate audiences.  Limited access to presses, especially when run by Christian missionary groups, privileged some voices over others.  This critical period in Indian history, with its new inflows of foreign knowledge and power-knowledge disparities under colonialism, transformed in many ways how Indians perceived and talked about their earlier traditions—discussions that were frequently initiated, caught, and pursued in print.  In some languages and regions, print not only brought traditional bhakti canons into publication; it contributed to the very process of canon formation itself.

Yet, for as much as scholars and devotional communities today rely on printed materials as sources, the complex conditions under which they first came to be published are rarely considered.  On a conceptual level, since early 20^th-century scholars relied on printed materials as they theorized about bhakti generally, this medium shaped modern ideas about bhakti—including our own understandings.  Across diverse languages and regions, there are many distinct and surprising stories to tell, shaped by local politics and personalities.  Just as bhakti traditions differ from one another, these stories do not fit a single mold, and some question the boundaries and constitution of bhakti itself.  Juxtaposing multiple histories of print and bhakti will deepen our understanding of this complex historical, textual, and discursive terrain.

(The shortened schedule below reflects the sequence of our live discussion section, which assumed that everyone had already watched the previously uploaded video presentations on our temporary Humanities Commons website.)