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.