[INDOLOGY] Emerging Scholars in Jain Studies - Lecture by Dr. Miki Chase, University of Wisconsin-Madison (March 7th, 2025)

[Ana Bajzelj]

Apologies for cross-posting.

Dear Colleagues,

We are happy to invite you to the next lecture in our “Emerging Scholars in
Jain Studies” virtual series co-organized by the Departments of Religious
Studies at UC Davis and UC Riverside. The lecture will be delivered by
*Dr. **M**iki Chase *(University of Wisconsin-Madison) on *Friday, March
7th, 2025, 9:00-10:20am PST*. You will find more information about the
lecture and the speaker below.

Register for the event here:
https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/zKGvnMwaRNCZZxRADNYaaA

Please note that you will need to sign into your Zoom account before
entering the Zoom room.

Best wishes,
Ana Bajzelj and Lynna Dhanani



*Between Doctrine and Domesticity: Gender, Ethics, and the Vow of
Sallekhanā*

Santhāra, the Jain ritual fast until death, unfolds for lay practitioners
within the intimate spaces of kinship, shaped by gendered expectations of
care, renunciation, and self-effacement. Practiced primarily by elderly
laywomen, santhāra employs a religious idiom to shift the burdens of aging
and death within the household, where norms of ascetic, maternal, and
elderly self-effacement converge. This talk draws on ethnographic research
to follow the aftermath of two laywomen’s fasts, tracing how santhāra
unfolds within familial entanglements. Jethiben’s years of small,
deliberate acts toward renunciation culminated in her departure from
household life despite her family’s reluctance, while Manishaben’s
declining health led her children to “give” her the vow, acting as proxies
in desperation. These contrasting cases complicate assumptions about
ascetic agency, revealing santhāra not just as a religious practice but as
an ethical gesture of repair—one in which gender informs the
reconfiguration of motherhood, kinship, and vulnerability at the end of
life.

*Dr. Miki Chase* is Assistant Professor and Śrī Anantnāth Chair in Jain
Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the Johns
Hopkins University in 2022. Based on two years of fieldwork in Mumbai,
Jaipur, and Delhi, her research explores the intersections of anthropology
of law and religion with the ethics of death and dying, and her current
book project in progress is an examination of women's gendered negotiations
of the ascetic ethical disposition in the Jain voluntary fast unto death.
Her research has been funded by the American Institute of Indian Studies
(AIIS) (2019-20) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research (2018-19).

-- 

Ana Bajzelj
Associate Professor
Shrimad Rajchandra Endowed Chair in Jain Studies
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department for the Study of Religion
Cooperating Faculty Member
Department of Philosophy
University of California, Riverside
Co-Chair, Jain Studies Unit, American Academy of Religion
She/her/hers
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