Public lecture by Elizabeth A. Cecil, Assistant Professor, Religions of South & Southeast Asia, Florida State University
Elizabeth A. Cecil is a historian of South and Southeast Asian religions with Sanskrit and Hindi as her primary research languages. Her forthcoming monograph—Mapping the Pāśupata Landscape: Narrative, Place, and the Śaiva Imaginary in Early North India (Brill, 2019) — examines the intersections of religion, politics, and place-making in Early Medieval India. Focusing on the geographic expansion of a religious community called the Pāśupatas, devotees of the Hindu deity Śiva, this project uses narratives, built landscapes, inscriptions, and icons to explore religion as spatial and material practice. With her new projects, she investigates the dynamics of transregional religious networks in early South and Southeast Asia and the use of material media—ranging from monumental temples and inscribed columns to votive sculptures and pocket-sized shrines— to communicate political aspirations and religious ideologies. Her materially grounded work is supported by field research in India, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
Dates:
Wednesday, January 30, 2019 – 4:30pm
Swift Hall Common Room