Prabhavati Reddy

Visiting Scholar, 2003-2004
Phone: 847-800-3677
Email: p-reddy@northwestern.edu

PRABHAVATI REDDY (Ph.D. Harvard University) is an interdisciplinary scholar of South Asian religions, South Asian literature, and Indian art history. She is interested in the historical and anthropological aspects of South Asian religious traditions, with special focus on Indian pilgrimage centers, religious traditions of South India, Hinduism and ecology, Hindu constructions of feminist theology and gender patterns, the ethnographic study of Hindu-Muslim communities in Andhra Pradesh, and South Asian diaspora traditions in the United States.

Reddy is currently working on her book, Lotus Land: Siva's Pilgrimage and the Remaking of Hindu Religious Thought. This work explores the ways in which the dynamic play of religion, cultural geography, and communal power politics in a South Indian pilgrimage center established both a centralized religious authority and its social identity. Her second book, Living Hinduism in Art: Reading and Interpretation of an Iconological Text, will draw on her study of 2,000 visual narratives from the Srisailam temple to reconstruct the historical development of Saiva schools of thought in medieval South India.

Reddy strongly believes that teaching should be an innovative and interactive process that stimulates intellectual inquisitiveness and develops students' cognitive abilities. Using interdisciplinary approaches and multimedia teaching tools, she has offered both introductory and advanced level courses at Northwestern University, including Hindu Religious Thought, Hindu Mythology in Literature and Performance, Introduction to Hinduism, Varieties of Religious Tradition, Yoga and Mysticism in Indian Religions and Pilgrimage in South Asian Religions. She has also taught courses in Hinduism and Sanskrit language and literature at Harvard and George Washington universities.

As the Chair of the Women's Forum of the American Telugu Association, Reddy is organizing two panel sessions on South Asian women at the 8th ATA Convention in Chicago in July 2004. She has presented papers at such professional conferences as the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion, the Annual Conference on South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the American Council for South Asian Art Symposium. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the American Academy of Religion, Harvard University and the Samuel Kress Foundation.