New Books in Religion

What recourse did you have in Ming China if your very excellent local official was leaving your area and moving on to a new jurisdiction? You could try to block his path, you could wail and tear your hair out – or you could house an image of him in a temple, make offerings before it, and create a ‘living shrine.’In Shrines to Living Men in the Ming Political Cosmos (Harvard University Asia Center, 2018), Sarah Schneewind explores every angle of this practice, covering everything from what living shrines looked like and how many there were, to how they functioned as both expressions of gratitude and (more importantly) ways through which Ming subjects could speak out publicly. Beautifully written and elegantly built, this book not only tells you everything you never knew you wanted to know about living shrines, it makes reading about them a joy.Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the History and East Asian Languages program. She is interested in translation, Manchu books, and anything with a kesike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Dr Brendan McGeever,  Lecturer in Sociology at Birkbeck, University of London, traces the complex history of the Antisemitism in the Russian Revolution. McGeever examines Bolshevik and Jewish communists' attempts to confront antisemitism, including within the revolutionary movement itself. McGeever's book, based on brilliant archival research, is highly readable, provocative and thoughtful.Dr Max Kaiser teaches at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiserm@unimelb.edu.au  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

This ground-breaking work on Indian philosophical doxography examines the function of dialectical texts within their intellectual and religious milieu. In Dialogue and Doxography in Indian Philosophy: Points of View in Buddhist, Jaina, and Advaita Vedānta Traditions (Routledge, 2020), Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette examines the Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā of the Buddhist Bhāviveka, the Ṣaḍdarśanasamuccaya of the Jain Haribhadra, and the Sarvasiddhāntasaṅgraha attributed to the Advaitin Śaṅkara, focusing on each of their representation of Mīmāṃsā, to arguing that each of these doxographies represent forms of spiritual exercise.We refer to Bouthillette's Instragram account in the interview. You can find it here.For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today I talked to Richard McBride II about Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Ŭich’ŏn (University of Hawaii Press, 2016). The book is a comprehensive study of the Koryŏ (918-1392) Buddhist exegete, Ŭichŏn, that convey’s his life and work through letters, speeches, memorials, addresses, and poetry, from three epigraphical accounts. During a time of contention between the the doctrinal (敎) and meditation (禪) schools, Ŭich’ŏn traveled to Song (宋), China (960-1270) to study with the Huayan (華嚴) master, Jinshui Jingyuan (晉水淨源) (1011-1088). During his fourteen-month stay in China, he became well-acquainted with monks of the Huayan, Tiantai, Vinaya, Chan, and Consciousness-only schools. Upon his return to Koryŏ, he compiled the "New Catalog of the Teachings of All the Schools," the first comprehensive catalog of essays and commentaries that reflects a pan-East Asian tradition. Ŭich’ŏn has been historically associated with abandoning his affiliation with the Huayan school, and founding the Ch’ŏnt’ae (Tiantai, 天 台) order of Korean Buddhism. Despite this, letters to Master Jinshui Jingyuan, in combination with addresses to novice disciples reveal that Uicheon did not abandon Huayan thought,but advocated that all forms of doctrinal knowledge be thoroughly understood in an age of declining dharma.Trevor McManis is a student at California State University, Stanislaus, who specializes in cultural geography with an interest in applying geographic thought to the study of East Asian Religions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In Vyāsa Redux: Narrative in Epic Mahābhārata (Anthem Press, 2019), Kevin McGrath examines the complex and enigmatic Vyāsa, both the primary creative poet of the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata and a key character in the very epic he composes. In doing so McGrath focuses on what he considers the late Bronze Age portions of the epic feature prioritizing the concerns if the warrior class. In his discussion, McGrath distinguishes between plot and story and how this distinction comes to bear on the differences between preliterate and literate phases of the epic’s compositional history.For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

In her spellbindingly brilliant new book, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University Press, 2020), Maria Rashid conducts an intimate and layered ethnography of militarism and death in Pakistan, with a focus on the lives, aspirations, and tragedies of soldiers and their families in rural Punjab. How does the Pakistani military’s regulation and management of affect and emotions like grief authorize and sustain the practice of sacrificing the self in service to the nation? Rashid addresses this question through a riveting and at many times hauntingly majestic analysis of a range of themes including carefully choreographed public spectacles of mourning, military regimes of cultivating martial subjects, fissures between official scripts and unofficial unfoldings of grieving, anxieties over the representation of maimed soldiers, and ambiguities surrounding the appropriation of martyrdom (shahādat) for death on the battlefield. Theoretically incisive, ethnographically charged, and politically urgent, Dying to Serve is a landmark publication in the study of South Asia, Pakistan, and modern militarism that is destined to become a classic. It is also written with lyrical lucidity, making it an excellent text to teach in a range of undergraduate and graduate courses on modern Islam, South Asia, religion and violence, gender and masculinity, affect studies, and theories and methods in anthropology and religion.SherAli Tareen is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available here. He can be reached at sherali.tareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The history of the Caribbean Island of Trinidad bears witness to an important interplay between the religious practices of peoples of South Asian and those of peoples of African descent, and in particular the manner in which colonial religious categories shaped that interplay. In The Regulation of Religion and the Making of Hinduism in Colonial Trinidad (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Alexander Rocklin draws on colonial archives and ethnographic work in this pioneering examination of the realities of indentured workers in colonial Trinidad wherein he illuminates in tandem the roots of the Caribbean Hindu diaspora and the very roots of Hinduism itself and its status as a World Religion. Join us on the follow up interview on Rocklin’s fascinating findings.For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Today I talked to Dr. Nicholas Sutton speaks about his work at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. We discuss his teaching philosophy, his mandate of making the study of Hinduism accessible to public audiences, and the Centre’s exciting collection of online courses. We also talked about two books he's recently published in the Oxford Centre's series on Hinduism: The Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation and Study Guide (Mandala Publishing, 2019) and The Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Study Guide (Mandala Publishing, 2019).For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

What would you do if you questioned your religious faith, but revealing that would cause you to lose your family and the only way of life you had ever known? Dr. Ayala Fader explores this question in Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in a Digital Age––her new book with Princeton University Press (2020). She tells the fascinating, often heart-wrenching stories of married ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and women in twenty-first-century New York who lead “double lives” in order to protect those they love. While they no longer believe that God gave the Torah to Jews at Mount Sinai, these hidden heretics continue to live in their families and religious communities, even as they surreptitiously break Jewish commandments and explore forbidden secular worlds in person and online. The internet, which some ultra-Orthodox rabbis call more threatening than the Holocaust, offers new possibilities for the age-old problem of religious uncertainty. Fader shows how digital media has become a lightning rod for contemporary struggles over authority and truth.Drawing on five years of fieldwork with those living double lives and the rabbis, life coaches, and religious therapists who minister to, advise, and sometimes excommunicate them, Fader delves into universal quandaries of faith and skepticism, the ways digital media can change us, and family frictions that arise when a person radically transforms who they are and what they believe.Dr. Ayala Fader is professor of anthropology at Fordham University investigating contemporary North American Jewish identities and languages in urban centers. She is the author of another book from Princeton University Press: Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Brian Collins' book The Other Rāma Matricide and Genocide in the Mythology of Paraśurāma (SUNY Press, 2020) examines a fascinating, understudied figure appearing in Sanskrit narrative texts: Paraśurāma, i.e., “Rāma with the Axe”. Though he is counted as among the ten avatāras of Viṣṇu, his biography is quite grisly: Paraśurāma is best known for decapitating his own mother and launching a genocidal campaign to annihilate twenty-one generations of the warrior caste. Why do ancient Sanskrit mythmakers elevate such an arguably transgressive and antisocial figure to so exalted a religious status? The Other Rāma explores this question by undertaking analysis of the Paraśurāma myth cycle using the methods of comparative mythology and psychoanalysis.For information on your host Raj Balkaran’s background, see rajbalkaran.com/scholarship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion