Calendar of Events

The Department of Religious Studies presents Professor Tulasi Srinivas talk "The Runaway Goddess: Water, Caste and Gender in India's Climate Apocalypse"

If water is life, as our popular understanding suggests, we ask what is a life without water? Highlighting the paradox between Hinduism's view of water as female, sacred and sentient, and the endemic pollution of water resources and climate- driven drought in contemporary India, this ethnographic and archival project considers the existential ethics at stake in apocalyptic climate change. Attempting to chart an Anthropology of Grace through the urgent task of repair, the talk seeks to think about anthropology's contributions to deepening our understandings of climate justice through a focus on caste and gender in a time of water scarcity.

Tulasi Srinivas is Professor of Anthropology, Religion and Transnational Studies at the Marlboro Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. She has served as a Fellow and Colorado Scholar at the Women's Studies in Religion Program at the Harvard Divinity School. She is author of the award-winning books Winged Faith: Rethinking Religious Pluralism and Globalization (2010), Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food and South Asia (2012) and more recently, The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder (2018). Srinivas has appeared on multiple podcasts and radio shows including NPR and WYNC, and is the winner of several teaching awards and fellowships; at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Berkley Center for Peace, and the Luce-American Council of Learned Societies. Her work has appeared in several scholarly and popular publications including The Immanent Frame, The Boston Globe, Scroll.In, The Economic and Political Weekly, The Conversation, JAAR, Journal of Asian Studies, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, The Times of India and The Hindu.

Monday, April 1 at 6:00pm to 8:00pm
John C Hodges Library, Room 101, 1015 Volunteer Blvd, Knoxville TN
https://calendar.utk.edu/event/anjali_lecture_in_hindu_studies_presents_the_runaway_goddess_water_caste_and_gender_in_indias_climate_apocalypse