Foregrounds the centrality of women across diverse Hindu traditions spanning time and geography.Women in Hindu Traditions showcases the centrality of women in the ritual and artistic traditions, religious institutions, and literature of Hindu traditions. It considers women's roles as everyday practitioners, gurus, epic protagonists, poet-saints, and performers across time and geography.The volume shows that Hindu women have long reworked elite theologies, scriptures, and rituals in ways that may perpetuate, challenge, and/or innovate upon so-called normative traditions. In this vein, the book is careful to include discussions about Hindu women from various caste and class backgrounds in multiple regions of the Indian subcontinent, as well as the global diaspora.In illuminating the many ways in which women are represented in and have contributed to Hindu traditions, Women in Hindu Traditions emphasizes the flexibility and fluidity of Hinduism more broadly. It discusses elite practices and texts—such as ancient Sanskrit narratives attributed to male authors—in conversation with vernacular texts and practices performed and authored by women in both historical and contemporary contexts. These discussions include an exploration of rituals that reveal women’s roles in domestic, public, and temple spaces in India and beyond, poem-songs in devotion to various gods and goddesses, and different iterations of female-authored epics, such as retellings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.Women in Hindu Traditions displays the incredible multiplicity of Hindu traditions, arguing for the value of comprehending religious traditions through women’s narratives and lives.
Emilia Bachrach
Emilia Bachrach is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and in the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Program at Oberlin College and author of Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Devotional Hinduism and In the Service of Krishna Illustrating the Lives of Eighty-four Vaishnavas from a 1702 Manuscript.
Jennifer D. Ortegren
Jennifer D. Ortegren is Associate Professor in the Religion Department at Middlebury College and author of Middle-Class Dharma: Women, Aspiration, and the Making of Contemporary Hinduism.
Sohini Sarah Pillai
Sohini Sarah Pillai is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Director of Film and Media Studies at Kalamazoo College and author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative.
Editorial Reviews
 | “Offers an innovative, accessible examination of women’s contributions to Hindu traditions across historical and geographical contexts. Integrating diverse sources—religious texts, rituals, artistic representations, and everyday practice—it reorients the field by centering women’s voices, prompting a critical, self-reflexive approach to the study of religion.”
—Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, author of Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance
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| “Drawing on the expertise of each of its co-authors, Women in Hindu Traditions is a welcomed interdisciplinary textbook that incorporates ethnographic, textual, and media studies. Importantly, it includes Hindu women’s experiences, leadership, and television representation in North America. The book models the ways in which the answers to questions about women in Hindu traditions are shaped by who is asking and answering them and thus will be multiple and shifting according to social and historical contexts.”
—Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Professor Emerita of Religion at Emory University
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| “These authors turn the conventional textbook approach to Hinduism on its head. And that’s good! To disrupt millennia of male-centered religious histories, practices, concepts and categories, they have to surprise, disorient, and refresh both new readers and experts. Starting with women-centered rituals instead of ancient texts; spotlighting Hindu women in diaspora, which is where most students can meet them; centering women poets in devotional worlds; tacking deftly between traditional epics and the creative ways in which women have tackled their presentation of gender, caste, and class; and writing the whole book collaboratively! Students, teachers, women, men, gender nonconforming, and all who want to learn about Hinduism will do well to read and reflect on this book.”
—Linda Hess, author of Bodies of Song
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| “Does work that has been long required in Hindu Studies-center the work of women instead of men within Hindu religious traditions....Women in Hindu Traditions is pathbreaking in synthesising and presenting a great deal of more recent scholarship on women in Hinduism-both in the textual and lived traditions- which has not been done before. It will be an invaluable resource for all scholars as a rich pedagogical source.”
—Srilata Raman, author of The Transformation of Tamil Religion: Ramalinga Swamigal and Modern Dravidian Sainthood
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