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Devotional Visualities
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Description
This open access book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers.
This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage.
Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Patrice M. and John F. Kelly Fellowship in Arts & Letters at Drew University, USA.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Introduction: Looking Again at Devotion, Karen Pechilis (Drew University, USA) and Amy-Ruth Holt (independent scholar, USA)
Part I: Materializing Memory
1. The Beginnings of Mass-Produced Devotional Prints in Calcutta, Richard H. Davis (Bard College, USA)
2. Expanding Meanings of Bhakti in Bengali American Home Shrines, Ashlee Norene Andrews (University of North Carolina-Greensboro, USA)
3. Merchant Patronage and Royal Hanumans: A Modern Devotional Visuality, R. Jeremy Saul (Mahidol University, Thailand)
4. Evolving Material Authority: Devotion, History, and the Svaminarayana Museum, Shruti Patel (Salisbury University, USA)
Part II: Mirroring and Immaterializing Portraits
5. Kabir in Indo-Muslim Visual and Literary Culture, Murad Khan Mumtaz (Williams College, USA)
6. The Devotional Role of Paintings and Photographs in the Pushti Marga, Shandip Saha (Athabascau University, Canada)
7. The Iconic Surdas, John Stratton Hawley (Barnard College, Columbia University, USA)
8. The Visual Multiplicity and Materiality of Guru Nityananda's Portraits, Amy-Ruth Holt (independent scholar, USA)
9. Darsan in Twelve Ways: Portraying the Divine in Early Svaminarayana Art, Ankur Desai (The Kansas City Art Institute, USA)
Part III: Shaping the Return Look
10. Bhakti and Looking at What We Do Not Want to See, Karen Pechilis (Drew University, USA)
11. Mira's Iconography: From Miniature to Movie, Heidi Pauwels (University of Washington, USA)
Index
Product details
| Published | Jul 24 2025 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 336 |
| ISBN | 9781350214224 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 70 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Series | Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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