Dear friends/scholars,

Our panel on in shrines in South Asia has been accepted for ECSAS 2020!

It is entitled: "Art, Ritual, and Text at Shrines in South Asia: A Cross-Disciplinary and Diachronic Investigation of the Forms and Functions of Shrines". https://ecsas2020.univie.ac.at/panels/rwnxc/  

Long Abstract
In recent studies of shrines, altars, and votive offerings—throughout numerous religious traditions—there has been a vexing issue related to terminology. In this panel, we broadly apply the term shrine to designate places where exchanges between divine and devotee take place; these spaces are often accreted with materials and substances that are traces of these dynamic interactions. The material culture found at these places can be vast from paintings, metal statuary, and photographs to dried fish, grains, and relics. The materiality of the shrine—what it is made of, as well as the material objects left at these sites—is only part of the story. Some shrines have rich histories and deep connections with communities of faith. In some cases, shrines are places people have visited for centuries to increase fertility, to ask for forgiveness, to gain favor, to earn protection, and much more. Textually, altars and shrines are often carefully described and discussed in both ritual texts and hagiographic accounts where shrines often serve as backdrops for religious rites and spaces to express gratitude, among many other functions.

Organic, interactive, and layered, these often pastiche-like constructions are indices of the ever-evolving and deeply meaningful relationships between shrines and their communities. This panel invites papers that investigate these relationships and strata of material found at these complex sites throughout South Asia within its numerous religious expressions. Of particular interest are papers that include, but are not limited to, analyses of aesthetics, art history, ethnographic survey, space production, material culture, & ritual.

If you are interested in contributing to our panel or you know someone who would please let us know. You can submit your proposal directly via the ECSAS website. The submission instructions are here: https://ecsas2020.univie.ac.at/paper-submission-guidelines/. 

You can, of course, also contact us directly via email.  

The deadline to submit your proposal is November 17.

Best wishes and hopefully see many of you in Vienna next summer!

Melissa Kerin, Verena Widorn and  Borayin Larios