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Authors in Conversation
Exploring the Place of Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism
With Keynote Speaker Sukanya Sarbadhikary
(Moderated by Nilambar Chakrabarti)
Saturday, October 31, 2026
6:00 PM IST
Online (Microsoft Teams)
Free Admission
Academic Discourse Overview & Abstract
Hindu devotional traditions have long been recognized for their sacred geographies as well as the sensuous aspects of their devotees' experiences. Largely overlooked, however, are the subtle links between these religious expressions. Based on intensive fieldwork conducted among worshippers in Bengal’s Navadvip-Mayapur sacred complex, this book discusses the diverse and contrasting ways in which Bengal-Vaishnava devotees experience sacred geography and divinity. Sukanya Sarbadhikary documents an extensive range of practices, which draw on the interactions of mind, body, and viscera. She shows how perspectives on religion, embodiment, affect, and space are enriched when sacred spatialities of internal and external forms are studied at once.
Distinguished Keynote Speaker(s)
Sukanya Sarbadhikary
Keynote Speaker
Profile →
Sukanya Sarbadhikary is Professor of Sociology at Presidency University, Kolkata. She
works at the interface of the anthropology of religion, anthropology of embodiment and
materiality, religious studies, and philosophy. She locates the body, senses, intuition,
experience, imagination, and consecration in the interstices of everyday natural and cultural
lives, and strong philosophical traditions. She is also trying to merge these concerns with
imminent understandings of planetary anxieties. Her first book, an ethnography of Bengal-
Vaishnava aesthetic sacrality, The Place of Devotion (University of California Press), was
published in 2015. She is also passionately interested in South Asian aesthetics and music, and
their relations with sacred embodiment. She has thus also published on a range of devotional
instruments, the communities involved in their making, playing, listening, meditating, and
associated traditions of sonic metaphysics. She has published her interdisciplinary work in several journals including the Contributions to Indian Sociology, Modern Asian Studies, Religions, EPW, South Asian History and Culture, Journal of Hindu Studies, Journal of Dharma Studies, and contributed to more than ten edited collections. She is currently
preparing a monograph on the overlaps of the marine and social lives of the turbinella pyrum (domestic conch).
works at the interface of the anthropology of religion, anthropology of embodiment and
materiality, religious studies, and philosophy. She locates the body, senses, intuition,
experience, imagination, and consecration in the interstices of everyday natural and cultural
lives, and strong philosophical traditions. She is also trying to merge these concerns with
imminent understandings of planetary anxieties. Her first book, an ethnography of Bengal-
Vaishnava aesthetic sacrality, The Place of Devotion (University of California Press), was
published in 2015. She is also passionately interested in South Asian aesthetics and music, and
their relations with sacred embodiment. She has thus also published on a range of devotional
instruments, the communities involved in their making, playing, listening, meditating, and
associated traditions of sonic metaphysics. She has published her interdisciplinary work in several journals including the Contributions to Indian Sociology, Modern Asian Studies, Religions, EPW, South Asian History and Culture, Journal of Hindu Studies, Journal of Dharma Studies, and contributed to more than ten edited collections. She is currently
preparing a monograph on the overlaps of the marine and social lives of the turbinella pyrum (domestic conch).
Session Moderator
Nilambar Chakrabarti is a doctoral research scholar in Philosophy at Jadavpur University, a Sylff Fellowship recipient, and former Research Fellow at Smith College in South Asian Studies. He regularly moderates the Poorvam Cite It! and Authors in Conversation academic symposia series.