Dr.Rufin Jamey Saul

Jeremy Saul

Information for CRS

September 8, 2021

Biography

2013. Jeremy Saul grew up in the United States and received a BA degree in East Asian Studies from Columbia University, an MA in Asian Art History from University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD in Asian Languages and Cultures with a specialization in the anthropology of Asian religions from University of Michigan in 2013. He has spent many years in Thailand, India, and Indonesia, and other countries in Asia, where he intensively studied Thai, Hindi, Indonesian, Nepali, Tamil, Sinhala, Khmer, and various other languages. He also studied Chinese and Sanskrit as a university student. With a Fulbright-Hays Research Fellowship in 2011, he carried out ethnographic fieldwork on modern-day devotional movements focused on miracle deities of Rajasthan, India. He currently takes an interest in teaching topics concerned with all geographical areas, with an emphasis on non-canonical religious practices, such as divine embodiment or shamanism, exorcism, and vernacular (folk) religion and performance, as well as Asian philosophical traditions.

Research interests

Current research has focused on the modern rise in popularity of miracle-granting deities in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and devotional populations that revere such deities throughout India. I take a particular interest in cosmological interpretations of modernity, cultural change associated with modernity, and the role of merchants as patrons of religious shrines. In past years I also carried similar research on deity worship in Thailand, especially associated with prosperity. Earlier on, I did fieldwork in Indonesia on archaeological sites, and also on contemporary deity-embodiment performance.

Selected publications

“The Popularization of Royal Hanumans: Visually Reconfiguring Bhakti for Modernity,” in Bhakti Visualities: Imaging Devotion in the Visual Arts Across Regional, Historical and Religious Boundaries, Karen Pechilis and Amy-Ruth Holt, eds., Bloomsbury Press, c.25 pages, forthcoming in 2022.

“Pilgrimage and Social Division at a Hindu Miracle Shrine in India,” in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Studies, forthcoming, c.20 pages.

“Forward-Looking Statements: How Mediums Make Their Publics,” in Communicating the Sacred: Varieties of Religious Marketing, Milos Hubina, ed., Peter Lang, c. 25 pages, forthcoming

“Navaratri as a Festival of Hanuman and Male Asceticism,” in Nine Nights of Power: Durga, Dolls and Darbars, Ute Huesken and Vasudha Narayanan, eds., Albany, NY: State University of New York (SUNY) Press, c. 25 pages, forthcoming in 2021.

“Bifurcated Hanumans and Mercantile Vaishnava Patronage: Reconstructing the Social Histories of Rajasthan’s Village Deities,” International Journal of Hindu Studies, c.35 pages, pending.

“Kaila Devi: The Great Goddess as Local Avatar of Miracles,” in Garland of Goddesses: Tales of the Feminine Divine from India and Beyond, Michael Slouber, ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020: 143-169.

“Danger and Devotion: Reflections on Hindu Ecology,” in Ethics, Ecology, and Religion,

Imtiyaz Yusuf, ed., Bangkok: Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2015, pp. 172-195.

“The Kali Yuga as the Era of Wealth-Pursuit: Perceptions of Patronage at a Hindu Shrine,”

Nidan: An International Journal for the Study of Hinduism, 26(1), Jul. 2014: 88-108.