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Religious Studies Department
Department Faculty/Staff
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Department Minor
Department Courses
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Eliza KentEliza Kent

Professor

Office:  Ladd 209
Phone:  (518) 580-5405
Email:  ekent@skidmore.edu

EDUCATION:

  • Ph.D. The University of Chicago, History of Religions.  1999, with distinction.
  • M.A. The University of Chicago, Religious Studies. 1992.
  • B.A. Williams College, Religion and Women’s Studies.  1989, magna cum laude.

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

  • South Asian Religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam and Christianity): religious pluralism in India and its side effects, such as conversion, syncretism, crypto-conversion, reform and revival.
  • Religion and Ecology/Environmentalism
  • Religion, Gender, and Sexuality
  • Method and Theory in the Study of Religion

COURSES

  • Religion and Culture (RE103)
  • Methods and Theories in the Study of Religion (RE241)
  • Health and Healing in Asian Religions (RE218)
  • Hindu Mythology (RE217)
  • Religion and Society in Modern India (RE315)
  • Yoga: Theory, History and Practice (RE330)

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

Sacred Groves
Converting Women
 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).  Received a CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title of 2004 from the American Library Association.   Received Award for Best Book in Hindu-Christian Studies for 2003-2005 from the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies.
Lines in Water
 , co-edited with Tazim Kassam (Syracuse University Press, 2013).

JOURNAL ARTICLES

  • “Bus Stop Sami: Transient Temples in Urban South India,” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ) 18 (2018)
     
  • Co-authored with Isabella Orlowska, “Accidental Environmentalists: The Religiosity of Church Forests in Highlands Ethiopia,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture And Ecology, 2018.

  • Co-Authored with CardelĂșs, Catherine L., Scull, Peter, Wassie, Alemaheyu Woods, Carrie L., Klepeis, Peter, Kent, Eliza F., & Orlowska, Isabella. “Shadow conservation and the persistence of sacred church forests in northern Ethiopia.” Biotropica, 2017, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.12431
     
  • Co-Authored with Klepeis, Peter, Orlowska, Isabella,  Kent, Eliza F., CardelĂșs, Catherine L., Scull, Peter, Wassie, Alemaheyu, & Woods, Carrie, “Ethiopian Church Forests: A Hybrid Model of Protection,” Human Ecology, 44 (2016): 715–730.
  • “Convenience, Consumption and Creatureliness: Thoughts on Sacred Groves, Hindu and Christian,” Journal for Hindu-Christian Studies 27 (2014).
  • "What Are You Going to Do with a Degree in That? Arguing for the Humanities in an Era of Efficiency,” Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 11, 3 (July-August 2012): 273-284.

  • “Secret Christians of Sivakasi: Gender, Syncretism, and Crypto-Religion in Early Twentieth-Century South India,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, 3 (September 2011): 676-705.

  • “Forests of Belonging: The Contested Meanings of Trees and Forests in Indian Hinduism” [editor’s introduction], Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 4, 2 (June 2010): 129-138.

  • “A Road Runs through It: Changing Meanings in a Sacred Grove in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 4, 2 (June 2010): 213-231.

  • “Sacred Groves and Local Gods: Religion and Environmentalism in South India,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 13, 1 (April 2009): 1-39.  

  • “’What’s Written on the Forehead Will Never Fail’: Karma, Fate and Headwriting in Indian Folktales,” Asian Ethnology 68, 1 (2009): 1-26.

  • “Fierce Gods and Dense Forest: Sacred Groves in Coromandel,” with M.P. Ramanujam, Indian Folklife [Chennai, India] 26 (July 2007): 14-19.  

  • “Landscapes of Changes: Recent Ethnography on the Religious Meanings of Trees and Forests in India” [editor’s intro.], Indian Folklife [Chennai, India] 26 (July 2007): 3-4.  

  • "Representing Caste in the Classroom: Perils, Pitfalls and Potential Insight,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 17, 3 (2005): 231-241.

  • “Law of the Land: Indigenous Marriage Practices, Caste and Indian Christians in Nineteenth-Century India,” Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection (Delhi) (June, 2005): 431-443.  

  • “Tamil Bible Women in the Zenana Missions of Colonial Tamil Nadu,” History of Religions 39, 2 (November, 1999): 117-149.

ESSAYS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES

  • “Gender and the Creation and Destruction of Social Boundaries between ‘Hindus’ and ‘Christians,’” in Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, ed. by Chad Bauman and Michelle Voss Roberts (Routledge Press, 2021).
  • “Vernacular Christianities: Tamil Protestantism and Tamil Catholicism,” in Vernacular Catholicism, Vernacular Saints: Selva J. Raj on “Being Catholic the Tamil Way,” ed. by Reid Locklein (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2017)
     
  • "Hinduism and Environmentalism in Modern India,” in Hinduism in the Modern World, ed. by Brian A. Hatcher, 290-308 (New York: Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2016)
     
  • “Civilization and Conjugality: Indian Christian Marriage in Law and Literature,” in Conjugality and Beyond: Sexual Economies, Citizenship and the Marital Form in India, ed. by Lucinda Ramberg and Srimati Basu (New Delhi: Women Unlimited Press/Kali for Women, 2015).

  • “Feminist Approaches to the Study of Conversion,” in the Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, ed. by Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

  • “Introduction: Drawing Lines in Water: The Construction of Religious Boundaries in South Asia,” [editor’s introduction], Lines in Water: Religious Boundaries in South Asia, 1-36 (Syracuse University Press, 2013).  

  • “Syncretism and Sin: An Independent Christian Church in Nineteenth-Century South India,” in Lines in Water: Religious Boundaries in South Asia, 101-124 (Syracuse University Press, 2013).

  • “Mass Movements in South India, 1877-1936,” in Converting Cultures: Religion, Ideology and Transformations of Modernity, ed. by Kevin Reinhart and Dennis Washburn, 367-394 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Press, 2007).

  • “Raja Clarinda – Widow, Concubine, Patroness: Women’s Leadership in the Indian Church,” in The Beginning of the Protestant Churches in India, The Danish-Halle Mission in South India (1706-1845), vol. 2, 659-683 (Halle, Germany: The Francke Foundation, 2006).  

  • “Books, Boots and Bodices: Material Culture and Protestant Missions in Colonial South India,” in Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, Missions, ed. by Gareth Griffiths and Jamie S. Scott, 67-87 (New York: Palgrave-McMillan, 2005).

  • “Hinduism and Indian Ecstatic Religions,” in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices and Culture, ed. by Mariko Walker and Eva Fridman, 750-755 (Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2004).

  • “Redemptive Hegemony and the Ritualization of Reading,” in Riting Between the Lines: Popular Christianity in India, ed. by Corinne Dempsey and Selva Raj, 191-209 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).


FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND HONORS

  • New York Six Upstate Global Collective Working Group grant, sponsored by Mellon Foundation, for “Religious Freedom and Human Rights in Pluralist Societies,” with colleagues from Colgate, 91±ŹÁÏ, Union and Hobart William Smith Colleges.  June 2014 – August 2017.

  • Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute Faculty grant for “Does religious management mitigate the socio-ecological drivers of forest change in sacred groves of northern Ethiopia?” with Catherine CardelĂșs (Biology), Peter Klepeis and Peter Scull (Geography), along with Margaret Lowman (NC Museum of Natural Sciences & NC State University) and Alemayehu Wassie Eshete (Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia).   July 2013-June 2014.

  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for “Sacred Groves and Local Gods: Religion and Environmentalism in South India,” June 2007-December 2007

  • American Institute for Indian Studies, Senior Short Term Research Grant for “Sacred Groves and Local Gods: Religion and Environmentalism in South India,” 2005-2006

  • Committee on South Asian Studies Dissertation Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1997-99

  • Center for Gender Studies Research Grant, University of Chicago, 1998

  • Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Grant in Women’s Studies, 1997-98

  • Fulbright IIE Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1996-97

  • American Institute for Indian Studies Junior Research Grant, 1996-97

  • Foreign Language Area Studies Academic Year Fellowships in Tamil, 1992-95

  • American Institute for Indian Studies Summer Fellowship, Madurai, India, 1993

Religious Studies Department Contact

PHONE

518-580-5400

FAX

518-580-5409

Office Location

Ladd Hall, second Floor

mailing address

815 North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866

Department Chair

Professor Ryan Overbey

Administrative Coordinator

Jennifer Lewis