workshops

This full-day public symposium will convene scholars who use various methods and approaches to share their view of the state of bhakti scholarship and, eventually, contribute to a field-defining “handbook” of bhakti studies.

Behind this project are twelve years of collaborative labor in the Regional Bhakti Scholars Network (RBSN) to research across regions, languages, traditions, and methodologies. Through ten annual Madison symposia with 81 unique presenters, two multi-day workshops elsewhere, a special journal issue and co-edited volume, and a large grant-supported digital humanities project (the Bhakti Virtual Archive or BHAVA), the RBSN has nurtured innovative studies of bhakti by bringing together scholars and knowledge that earlier had been sequestered in region- and language-specific fields.

In the months before the symposium, participant teams (eventually co-authors) will use BHAVA’s bibliographic database to explore recent scholarship on their topic across South Asia. Topics (eventual chapters) include the history of bhakti studies, semantic range of bhakti in emic and etic usage, relationships to living communities, bhakti in non-Hindu traditions, embodiment, gender, literary forms, visual culture, caste, teaching, and more. Symposium participants will summarize their findings and identify trends, lacunae, and future research avenues.

Through ensuing discussion, we all will refine the scope of each topic/chapter and the larger “handbook” project further, with practical next steps: virtual follow-up meetings and brainstorming the optimal format of the eventual publication (perhaps identifying a sharper term than “handbook”). We will envision the state of current scholarship together, discuss issues around an eventual publication, and—above all—to articulate the dimensions of “bhakti studies” generally, with the help of many scholars who have shaped it. As a crucial stepping-stone toward a publication that defines the field, the content of this symposium far exceeds the time of a single or double panel.

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.)

The aim of the Symposium was to explore the Conference theme of ‘Artistry’, as well as to extend the RSBN Symposium discussions, now in their sixth year, in the new direction of a specific focus on images of bhakti. Paper presentations were selected to reveal the ‘bhakti visuality’ or visual agency of imagery to pull out emotive sentiment from individuals and larger communities, to promote new forms of devotion and its circulation and shape social context, rather than just reflect it. Presentations took into account the use of textual sources to define visual imagery, but prioritized less emphasized fields of study such as bhakti images generated by image-making in performance (ritual, performing arts, material culture) and in the production and circulation of artistic images (fine and popular arts). Both historical and contemporary examples of bhakti were engaged, involving a range of scholarly viewpoints across academic disciplines, differing religious perspectives, visual mediums, and diverse cultural regions and languages. This Symposium was organized by Amy-Ruth Holt (Ph.D. in Art History, The Ohio State University) and Karen Pechilis (Professor of History and Religion, Drew University).

Main research questions engaging the presenters included: How do images of bhakti promote bhakti or translate bhakti? What meanings are emphasized in images that engage bhakti? Which aspects of bhakti imagery appear continuous with tradition and which seem new? Presenters explored the question within the themes of performance of modern bhakti social messages; unexpected portraits of bhakti; materiality as bhakti presence; and mass-produced images of bhakti. Papers in this Symposium expanded our understanding of bhakti through the diversity of people who engage bhakti through image devotion and the unexpected yet recognizable ways of interpreting bhakti that divulge the extent to which the audience they create reaches beyond traditional religious communities.

The 5th annual symposium of the RSBN focuses on ethnographic approaches to the study of bhakti. The aim is to balance the textual and broadly historical emphases of previous RSBN symposia. We encourage proposals from all scholars working with contemporary and living devotional communities, in all regions of South Asia. We anticipate that ethnographic perspectives will suggest approaches and raise questions for those who work on textual and archeological materials pertaining to bhakti. We also expect to address ethical issues arising from fieldwork with living communities.

This symposium encourages presenters to share new or ongoing fieldwork that contributes to our understanding of living bhakti and its multiple expressions in the contemporary world of South Asia. This includes both communities grounded on medieval bhakti traditions and new forms of devotional expression and community arising in colonial and post‐colonial South Asia. How do today’s communities offer strategies for living in the fast‐changing nations of southern Asia? In what ways does participation in a bhakti community offer ways of reframing citizenship and the relationship of individual and society? How do modern phenomena of mobility and national (and international) media affect questions of regionality and vernacularism in contemporary bhakti? In what ways are devotional performative traditions changing in contemporary settings? Are there changes in aesthetic understandings of bhakti arts?

The 2018 symposium theme also acknowledges the challenges that scholars working with contemporary bhakti communities encounter with respect to questions of authority, power, and ethics. We encourage discussion on a range of ethical issues and real‐time concerns that affect research with people whose practices and ideals have repercussions on bhakti research. What ethical concerns arise when the field researcher establishes trust and is given access to data whose publication could bring harm to the informant or community?

Last year, we experimented with a collaborative format that encouraged cross-regional, inter-linguistic and cross-religious dialog. The robust conversations that emerged helped us rethink the protean boundaries of bhakti as a category of analysis, paying particular attention to the tension between the ways bhakti is used emically, and how it is deployed in scholarly discussions of the subject. Equally, the role of social networks and institutions in formulating what constitutes bhakti also emerged as a dominant theme across the papers. This year’s symposium builds on the success of the collaborative format, but also offers a corrective to the over-reliance on textual materials as the primary resource in the study of bhakti. This year’s gathering invites a more sustained and informed engagement with bhakti along interdisciplinary lines, to bring art-historical and performative dimensions into dialogue with textual and historical studies of bhakti. This year’s theme encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration on bhakti to help us tackle not only what constitutes bhakti, but how it might be shaped in different medial forms.

Our program involves five collaborative, interdisciplinary teams. A four member team unpacks the relationship between yoga and bhakti using a variety of sources — textual, performative and historical — from four different linguistic and regional bhakti traditions from Maharashtra and North-central India. Another team examines cross regional representations of “sainthood” across popular cultural forms including, dance, theater, and cinema. Two collaborators focus on the Vallabha and Swaminarayan traditions to map the relationship of word, ritual, and musical performance. Conversations between two scholars of Islamic devotional literature in Telugu and Tamil demonstrate the negotiations, adaptations of different linguistic and cultural streams under the umbrella of bhakti. Our last group of scholars draw on inscriptional sources and ritual activity to focus on the South Indian temple as a site of bhakti religiosity.

The interdisciplinary, cross-regional theme of this symposium encourages adventurous conversations about bhakti, and is an important intervention in the text-heavy focus of bhakti studies. Moreover, this year’s symposium will include several new scholarly voices in bhakti studies, and will afford them the opportunity to present their research in the bhakti symposium for the first time. These experimental partnerships all revolve around the concerns that invigorate the RBSN: to understand what “bhakti” signifies in various contexts and the roles it has played in social history, literature, and politics.

This year’s symposium follows a more experimental format to push us out of our comfort zones and off familiar research paths: collaborative teams who intentionally cross boundaries. Using the RBSN listserv, scholars have located colleagues who shared a common interest to study intentionally from transdisciplinary, cross-regional, and inter-linguistic angles. Having committed to collaboration, each team sets a research agenda and presentation style that suits its peculiar needs. The freedom engendered in this approach makes it difficult to anticipate final outcomes, but the format encourages innovation by requiring participants to go beyond familiar linguistic and regional boundaries.

Our tentative program includes eight collaborative teams who explore a variety of issues. For example, some teams study topics with explicit ties across conventional boundaries, such ritual uses of bhakti for demonic deities in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and a pandit-poet who composed both poetry and philosophy in both Marathi and Sanskrit. Other teams explore a common topic from distant locations, such as gendered discourse surrounding female Śaiva poet-saints in Kashmir and Tamil Nadu, and bhakti inflected literatures and practices at sufi dargahs in Andhra Pradesh and Delhi.

These collaborations arose because this symposium offers scholars an arena in which to experiment and discover new connections. The topics dealt with by the teams are as diverse as they are path-breaking and adventurous. Nonetheless, these partnerships all revolve around the basic concerns that drive the RBSN: to understand what “bhakti” signifies in various contexts and its relation to society, thought, literature, and politics in South Asia.

This year’s RBSN symposium explores a key rhetorical motif – the religious Other and acts of othering. Who are the Others of regional bhakti traditions’ saints and poets, how do they position themselves over against Others, and how do these Others vary from region to region?  Are there broad patterns in how sociopolitical contexts raise the stakes of making such judgments and marking boundaries? How are Others actually represented (through text, performance, ritual, etc.) and are these representations mirrored in sources outside what we identify as associated with “bhakti”? And what discursive strategies are employed in the process of othering?

Exploring such questions within this framework has multiple benefits.  The diversity of South Asian devotional traditions makes them an especially rich source for examining social and religious fault lines across India, thereby furthering our understanding of how communalism and sectarianism form. An intentionally multi-regional and multi-linguistic analysis of “who is out” of the bhakti fold can illuminate trends, interests, and motivations for demarcating “who is in” within the rubric of devotionalism.  Do all bhakti traditions similarly constitute their own identities by setting themselves off against explicitly Others? Can we find patterns in understanding what constitutes a “good” bhakta and thus an identifiable core of bhakti, or are the various constructions too disparate from each other?

Two important categories within the conversation of the bhakta’s Other: so-called “orthodox” Hinduism, most often represented by figurations of the Brahmin, and non-bhakti competitors (yogis, tantrikas, village goddess followers, etc.), as well as “non-Hindus” entirely (Jains, Muslims, etc.).   How much do these categories retroject contemporary boundary sensibilities onto a past that had different social contours and typologies of alterity? This symposium reconsiders inherited, often over-simplified notions of the bhakta’s Other and unmask processes of representation that involve adoption, appropriation, and rejection of different social and religious agents. Drawing on the diverse expertise of the RBSN members and other participants, this symposium enables a broad yet context-specific and nuanced discussion that will deepen understanding of the South Asian religious landscape.