Encountering Kali
Encountering Kali

Author: Rachel Fell McDermott

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 9788120820418

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Encountering Kali explores one of the most ramarkable divinities the world has seen. The Hindu goddess Kali is simultaneously understood as a blood thirsty warrior a deity of ritual possession a tantric sexual partner and an all loving compassionate mothe. Popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the west in recent years. Responding to this phenomenon McDermott and Kripal`s volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kali in both her indigenous south Asian settings and her more recent Western incarnation. Through the shifting lenses of scriptural history temple architecture political reflection and the goddess`s recent guises on the Internet the contributors pose questions that illuminate our understanding of Kali while addressing the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross cultural interpretation.

Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal
Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal

Author: Rachel Fell McDermott

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 023112919X

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Annually during the months of autumn, Bengal hosts three interlinked festivals to honor its most important goddesses: Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri. While each of these deities possesses a distinct iconography, myth, and character, they are all martial. Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri often demand blood sacrifice as part of their worship and offer material and spiritual benefits to their votaries. Richly represented in straw, clay, paint, and decoration, they are similarly displayed in elaborately festooned temples, thronged by thousands of admirers. The first book to recount the history of these festivals and their revelry, rivalry, and nostalgic power, this volume marks an unprecedented achievement in the mapping of a major public event. Rachel Fell McDermott describes the festivals' origins and growth under British rule. She identifies their iconographic conventions and carnivalesque qualities and their relationship to the fierce, Tantric sides of ritual practice. McDermott confronts controversies over the tradition of blood sacrifice and the status-seekers who compete for symbolic capital. Expanding her narrative, she takes readers beyond Bengal's borders to trace the transformation of the goddesses and their festivals across the world. McDermott's work underscores the role of holidays in cultural memory, specifically the Bengali evocation of an ideal, culturally rich past. Under the thrall of the goddess, the social, political, economic, and religious identity of Bengalis takes shape.

Woman of Light
Woman of Light

Author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Publisher: One World

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0525511342

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical” (Roxane Gay) epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina “Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you’re swimming under a big, sparkling night sky.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You A PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK AND AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories. Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion. Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love—filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz. LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION

Gothic Peregrinations
Gothic Peregrinations

Author: Agnieszka Lowczanin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-06

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0429859708

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For over two hundred years, the Gothic has remained fixed in the European and American imaginations, steadily securing its position as a global cultural mode in recent decades. The globalization of Gothic studies has resulted in the proliferation of new critical concepts and a growing academic interest in the genre. Yet, despite its longevity, unprecedented expansion, and accusations of prescriptiveness, the Gothic remains elusive and without a straightforward definition. Gothic Peregrinations: The Unexplored and Re-explored Territories looks at Gothic productions largely marginalized in the studies of the genre, including the European absorption of and response to the Gothic. This collection of essays identifies landmarks and ley lines in the insufficiently probed territories of Gothic scholarship and sets out to explore its unmapped regions. This volume not only examines Gothic peregrinations from a geographical perspective but also investigates how the genre has been at odds with strict demarcation of generic boundaries. Analyzing texts which come from outside the Gothic canon, yet prove to be deeply indebted to it, like bereavement memoirs, stories produced by and about factory girls of Massachusetts, and the Mattel Monster High franchise, this volume illuminates the previously unexplored fields in Gothic studies. The chapters in this volume reveal the truly transnational expansion of the Gothic and the importance of exchange – exchange now seen not only as crucial to the genre’s gestation, or vital to the processes of globalization, but also to legitimizing Gothic studies in the global world.

She Is Everywhere! Volume 3
She Is Everywhere! Volume 3

Author: Mary Beth Moser

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2012-02-15

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9781462064342

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She Is Everywhere! Volume 3 presents a bold, brave, and beautiful compilation of womanist/feminist essays, poems, and artwork showcasing work from an international community of women and men who honor the Sacred Female. The fifty contributors in this anthologyscholars, creative writers, and visual artistsshare their vision for a world that reclaims the inviolability of the Divine Female in all Her many and varied manifestations. She Is Everywhere! Volume 3 is the latest edition of a leading-edge series which, like its predecessors, offers an invaluable contribution to womens spirituality, religion, philosophy, and womens studies. The contemporary voices contained within its pages echo an ancient clarion call to embrace the values of justice with compassion, equality for all people, and transformation. We have a calling in this worldnamely, to prevent the destruction from continuing. Claudia von Werlhof I am in the presence of a divine Mother, and She is fulfilling a deep longing inside of me. Nicole Margiasso-Tran She was, I am, my daughter is because we are all Her. Etoyle McKee Just as dark matter (mother) in space shapes galaxies and holds them together, we are shaped and held by the African Dark Mother who has given us Her life force, and resides in the very depths of our being, where the macrocosm is literally reflected in the microcosm. Leslene della-Madre

The 1947 Partition in The East
The 1947 Partition in The East

Author: Subhasri Ghosh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-12-28

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 100046282X

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This book explores the experiences of people affected by the Partition of British India and princely states in 1947 through first-person accounts, memoirs, archival material, literature, and cinema. It focuses on the displacement, violence and trauma of the people affected and interrogates the interrelationships between nationalism, temporality, religion, and citizenship. The authors examine the mass migrations triggered by the 1947 Partition, amidst nationalist posturing, religious violence, and debates on crucial issues of refugee rehabilitation and redistribution of land and resources. It focuses on the drawing of the borders and the ruptures in the socio-cultural bonds within regions and communities brought on by demographic changes, violence, and displacement. The volume reflects on the significant mark left by the event on the socio-political sensibilities of various communities, and the questions of identity and citizenship. It also studies the effects of Partition on the politics of Bangladesh and India’s east and northeast states, specifically Bengal, Assam and Tripura. A significant addition to the existing corpus on Partition historiography, this book will be of interest to modern Indian history, partition studies, border studies, sociology, refugee and migration studies, cultural studies, literature, post-colonial studies and South Asian studies, particularly those concerned with Bengal, Northeast India and Bangladesh.

Yoga, Bhoga and Ardhanariswara
Yoga, Bhoga and Ardhanariswara

Author: Prem Saran

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-04-27

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1136516476

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This book is a social–scientific interpretation of the 15 centuries-old Hindu and Buddhist traditions of tantra. It is a self-reflexive study, informed by an insider’s empathy and the apprehension of an Indologist-cum-anthropologist who is also a mystic and an initiated practitioner of the cult himself. Using his personal praxis to inform his research, the author examines three core themes tantra: a ‘holonic’ mandalic individuality that conduces to the mystical experience; a positive valorisation of pleasure and play; and cultural attitudes of gender-mutuality and complementarity as neatly encapsulated in the icon of Shiva as Ardhanariswara. This analysis —as captured by the tantric mandalas of deities in intimate union who vividly enact the three themes — leads to his compelling metathesis, that of tantra serving as a permanent counterculture within Indic civilisation. This book should be of interest to those in anthropology, South Asian studies, religious studies, gender studies, psychology, and philosophy, as also the general reader.

India, Empire, and First World War Culture
India, Empire, and First World War Culture

Author: Santanu Das

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-09-13

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 1107081580

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This is the first cultural and literary history of India and the First World War, with archival research from Europe and South Asia.

Kali and the Rat Snake
Kali and the Rat Snake

Author: Zai Whitaker

Publisher: Kane/Miller Book Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 19

ISBN-13: 1933605103

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Kali's father is a snake catcher - the best in the village. Kali knows that is really something to be proud of, but at school he sometimes gets embarrassed. The other children seem to think there is something very strange about having a snake catcher for a father and eating things like fried termites for a snack. Plus, Kali is the teacher's pet. How will he ever make friends?

Sacred Places of Goddess
Sacred Places of Goddess

Author: Karen Tate

Publisher: CCC Publishing

Published: 2005-11-01

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1888729341

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Uncovering the past through the lens of sacred travel, this travel book includes both academic and popular religious perspectives, and is filled with photographs of both famous and lesser-known locales from every corner of the world. Each site-specific explanation of the significance of Goddess today and in centuries past deftly combines current trends, academic theories, and historical insights. From the Middle East, to Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the images of feminine divinity presented in this work are as uniform in their beauty as they are diverse in cultural tradition. For each location-be it the shrines in Kyoto and Kamakura or the sites worshipping the Virgin Mary in Bolivia, France, Trinidad, and the Saut D'Eau Waterfalls of Haiti-this book provides a history of each site in conjunction with the photography.