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.)