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Gender and Religions Research Centre Seminar Series Department of the Study of Religions, SOAS Rm 336, 14:30-16:00 NB: note time and date change from normal programme Tuesday , 29th May 2001 Professor Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University 'Life-saving Beauty: Divine Mothers and Human Sorrows in Rajasthan' Abstract The goddess in Rajasthan as elsewhere has multiple names and forms. Complex theologies of her nature and simple hymns praising her grace insist nonetheless on an ineffable, dazzling and singular reality to her power. We see her in small temples and shrines, permanently embodied in stone icons, and clothed in female garments. Such places are generative of miraculous tales unfolding the Devi's life-saving power. Other goddess images are created as temporary foci for worship by women performing calendrical rituals: a pile of pebbles on the purified earth; barley shoots garbed in scraps of bright cloth; a frail structure of pipal leaves weighted with offerings. These too channel blessings to households and persons, fields and community, as told in ritual narratives. How do the blessings devotees ask from the goddess, and the bhavana (deep feelings) with which they approach her, connect with her appearance -- whether temporary or stable, organic or artistically crafted? In concluding, I attempt to think about these questions using Elaine Scarry's ideas about beauty as sacred, unprecedented, life-saving, and deliberative -- that is, causing humans to rethink their positions and correct themselves. About the Speaker: Ann Grodzins Gold specialises in teaching and research on Hindu traditions in modern India, religion and gender, religion in the natural environment, and oral performance. Gold's extensive fieldwork in the North Indian state of Rajasthan has included studies of pilgrimage, gender relations, epic tales of world renunciation, and cultural constructions of the environment. She has received fellowship awards from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Spencer Foundation. Her publications include articles on spirit possession, semiotics of identity, the practice of ethnography, women's ritual storytelling, children's environmental perceptions, moral interpretations of climate change, memories as history, and feminist fieldwork, as well as four books: Fruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims, A Carnival of Parting: The Tales of King Bhartari and King Gopi Chand, Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India (co-authored with Gloria Raheja), and forthcoming in 2001, In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power and Memory in Rajasthan (co-authored with Bhoju Ram Gujar). With Department of Religion colleague, Philip Arnold, she has co-edited the forthcoming anthology, Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree. All are welcome! For more information contact Sian Hawthorne (tel: 020 7 898 4784; email: [log in to unmask]) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.