[INDOLOGY] RBSN Symposium for the 2026 Annual Conference on South Asia Call for Papers

[Kshitij Jain]

Hello everyone,

With apologies for cross-posting, we hope this email finds you well.

Máire and I are pleased to announce that we will be organizing the Regional
Bhakti Scholars Network Symposium in October of this year at the Annual
Conference on South Asia in Madison, WI. For further correspondence and
proposals, feel free to email us at mairepwhite at stanford.edu and
kshitij.jain at balliol.ox.ac.uk.

Please respond to us by February 15th with a tentative title and an
abstract of 200-300 words.

The details are as follows:

Symposium Title: Bhakta Bodies: Memory, Presence, and Veneration of Human
Actors in South Asian Traditions

Description: The embodiment of divinities in South Asian traditions has
received much scholarly attention (Holdrege 2015; 2016; Holdrege and
Pechilis 2016; Waghorne et al. 1985). For instance, scholars have called
for "devotion" to be replaced by "participation," emphasizing bhakti's call
to engage in worship and the necessity of embodiment of the devout to
fulfill that obligation (Pechilis 2000). Novetzke underlines that "the
publics of bhakti in South Asia require 'embodiment,' the human as
medium”(Novetzke 2007). For this symposium, we invite scholars to
contribute papers that examine the conceptualization of embodiment,
veneration, and presences of human actors or bhaktas in bhakti publics.
Such human presences that are venerated need not be confined to a living,
flesh‑and‑blood human body. They may be embodied in multiple registers: as
living practitioners, as deceased figures whose presence continues to be
made real, or as non‑historical beings whose reality is affirmed through
ritual and material practices. Such embodiment is made perceptible through
the adornment, veneration, and circulation of their images, icons, literary
invocations, hagiographies, material traces, and so forth. In this sense,
the bhakta's presence is rendered real, tangible, and efficacious through
the sensory and material practices of bhakti publics.
Through this symposium, we aim to explore the diverse ways in which the
bodies of bhaktas are imagined, theorized, enacted, and brought into
relation with other embodied presences across South Asian traditions. We
particularly welcome studies that investigate the sites and modes of such
embodiment through a wide range of sources, including material and visual
culture, textual traditions, performative practices, and ethnographic
accounts.

Best,
Kshitij and Máire
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