The Religious Studies Department invites you to this Fall’s Huntington Lecture, “Engendering Emotion?:  The Devotional Theology of an 8th Century Hindu Woman Poet-Mystic,” on Monday, September 23, 2013 at 7 p.m. in the Wallace All Faiths Chapel.

Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, of Lancaster University, UK will be lecturing on the popular South Indian devotional saint Andal, whose poetry provides rare but direct access to her self-expression as she describes what it feels like to be a young woman in the eighth century and her gendered self-understanding in her love for God.

Prof. Chakravarthi’s wider research interests include theories of the self and of consciousness (including neurophilosophical aspects of meditative states); theoretical possibilities offered in interpreting political and public religion in the world, outside the constraints of the modern liberal Western experience, especially through a comparative theological analysis of the politics of secularism; and comparative studies of Indian and Chinese philosophies.   His most recent book is entitled Divine Self, Human Self: The Philosophy of Being in Two Gītā Commentaries (2013).

Engendering Emotion Lecture 9.23.13 Flyer