Dr. Karen Pechilis - Religious Studies Department


Faculty - Karen Pechilis
Intro
	Karen Pechilis NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director of the Humanities Program Professor of Religious Studies Asian Religions & Comparative Religion Ph.D., The University of Chicago, 1993	Recent Publications & Professional Activities
		Special Section on "Feminist Theory and the Study of South Asian Religions" accepted for 2008 publication in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Issue 24:1). Convener and Contributor of Introduction and Article, "Chosen Moments: Mediation and Direct Experience in the Life of the Classical Tamil Saint, Karaikkal Ammaiyar" Special Issue on “Bodily Transformations Across Indian Religions.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 10:2 (August 2006). Guest Editor and Contributor of Introduction and Article, "The Story of the Classical Tamil Woman Saint, Karaikkal Ammaiyar: A Translation of Her Story from Cekkilar's Periya Puranam" (pp. 173-86) The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States. Oxford University Press, 2004. Editor and Contributor of Introduction ("Hindu Female Gurus in Historical and Philosophical Context" pp. 3-49) and Article on "Gurumayi: The Play of Shakti and Guru" (pp. 219-243) The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India. Vidya Dehejia with essays by Richard H. Davis, R. Nagaswamy and Karen Pechilis Prentiss. American Federation of Arts and University of Washington Press, 2002. Contributor of Article "Joyous Encounters: Tamil Bhakti Poets and Images of the Divine," pp. 65-79 The Embodiment of Bhakti. Oxford University Press, 1999. Author Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, American Academy of Religion 2003-(2008) Book Review Editor, International Journal of Hindu Studies, June 2006-Present


	Biography
	Professor Pechilis explores issues of interpreting the embodied self through poetry, biography, and practice in devotional traditions of Hinduism. She understands `devotion’ to be a site for the intersection of wonder and self-expression, and for an exquisitely participatory impetus, especially in the arts and letters. Over the past twenty years she has conducted research in Chennai (Madras), south India through grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Fulbright Program, and the Asian Cultural Council. Her published work, both independent and collaborative, engages many scholarly discussions, including the making of religious tradition, interpretive history, translation, cultural analysis, and feminist and gender studies. Professor Pechilis currently directs the Humanities Program at Drew, an innovative interdisciplinary program designed especially for college students. Professor Pechilis’ special interest is to foreground global contacts among cultures considered in Humanities Program courses. All courses in the program are team-taught by professors from different disciplines. Each semester the program offers a course on a period in Western history. Each fall the program offers a course that recognizes contributions of cultures across the globe to world and Western history (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East). Each spring the program offers a half-semester current issues course that considers a timely topic from multi-disciplinary perspectives. For more information please see the Humanities Program website at: http://depts.drew.edu/hum/. In fall, 2008 Professor Pechilis will resume her regular teaching curriculum on Asian Religions and Comparative Religion in the Religious Studies Department.

	Contact
	Faulkner House Room 9 Telephone: (973)408-3124 Fax: (973)408-3991 E-mail: kpechili@drew.edu

	Translations of Classical Tamil Language Texts into English:
	Tevaram (devotional poetry), in The Embodiment of Bhakti (OUP 1999): 157-188 Tiruvarutpayan (couplets on divine grace), in The Embodiment of Bhakti: 189-209 Tirumuraikantapuranam (story of the making of a canon), in International Journal of Hindu Studies 5:1 (April 2001): 1-44 Periya Puranam-Story of Nantanar (hagiography), in Eleanor Zelliot and Rohini Mokashi-Punekar, eds., Untouchable Saints: An Indian Phenomenon (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005): 95-107 Periya Puranam-Story of Karaikkal Ammaiyar (hagiography), in International Journal of Hindu Studies 10:2 (September 2006) The poetry of female saint and author Karaikkal Ammaiyar, in progress