Wendy Doniger's 2015 Haskins Prize Lecture
This year, longtime member and former president of the AAR, Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, was awarded the 2015 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lectureship by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Named for the first chairman of ACLS (1920–26), the Haskins Prize Lecture series is entitled “A Life of Learning” and celebrates scholarly careers of distinctive importance.
Doniger presented her lecture at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the ACLS on May 8 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The ACLS has posted the video of her lecture and the accompanying text.
Visit the ACLS website to learn more about the lecture series.
Doniger’s research and teaching interests revolve around two basic areas, Hinduism and mythology. Her courses in mythology address themes in cross-cultural expanses, such as death, dreams, evil, horses, and women; her courses in Hinduism cover a broad spectrum that, in addition to mythology, considers literature, law, gender, and zoology. She was awarded the AAR's Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion in 2008 and served as president of the guild in 1985.
Among over forty books published under the names of Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty and Wendy Doniger are seventeen interpretive works, including Siva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; Tales of Sex and Violence: Folkore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana; Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes; Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India; The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade; The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth; The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was; The Hindus: An Alternative History; and On Hinduism.
Among her translations are three Penguin Classics––Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit; The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit; and The Laws of Manu (with Brian K. Smith)—a new translation of the Kamasutra (with Sudhir Kakar), and Hinduism, for the Norton Anthology of World Religions. In progress are The Ring of Truth, and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry; Skepticism in the Shastras, or The Manipulation of Religion for Politics and Pleasure in Ancient India (the 2014 Terry Lectures at Yale); Memoirs of a Jewish Girlhood (the 2015 Mandel Lectures at Brandeis); and a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands.
Among over forty books published under the names of Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty and Wendy Doniger are seventeen interpretive works, including Siva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; Tales of Sex and Violence: Folkore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana; Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes; Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India; The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade; The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth; The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was; The Hindus: An Alternative History; and On Hinduism.
Among her translations are three Penguin Classics––Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit; The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit; and The Laws of Manu (with Brian K. Smith)—a new translation of the Kamasutra (with Sudhir Kakar), and Hinduism, for the Norton Anthology of World Religions. In progress are The Ring of Truth, and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry; Skepticism in the Shastras, or The Manipulation of Religion for Politics and Pleasure in Ancient India (the 2014 Terry Lectures at Yale); Memoirs of a Jewish Girlhood (the 2015 Mandel Lectures at Brandeis); and a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands.
- See more at: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/wendy-doniger#sthash.XMSOnM1n.dpuf
Among over forty books published under the names of Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty and Wendy Doniger are seventeen interpretive works, including Siva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; Tales of Sex and Violence: Folkore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana; Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes; Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India; The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade; The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth; The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was; The Hindus: An Alternative History; and On Hinduism.
Among her translations are three Penguin Classics––Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit; The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit; and The Laws of Manu (with Brian K. Smith)—a new translation of the Kamasutra (with Sudhir Kakar), and Hinduism, for the Norton Anthology of World Religions. In progress are The Ring of Truth, and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry; Skepticism in the Shastras, or The Manipulation of Religion for Politics and Pleasure in Ancient India (the 2014 Terry Lectures at Yale); Memoirs of a Jewish Girlhood (the 2015 Mandel Lectures at Brandeis); and a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands.
- See more at: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/wendy-doniger#sthash.XMSOnM1n.dpuf
Among over forty books published under the names of Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty and Wendy Doniger are seventeen interpretive works, including Siva: The Erotic Ascetic; The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; Tales of Sex and Violence: Folkore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana; Other Peoples' Myths: The Cave of Echoes; Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India; The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade; The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth; The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was; The Hindus: An Alternative History; and On Hinduism.
Among her translations are three Penguin Classics––Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, Translated from the Sanskrit; The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit; and The Laws of Manu (with Brian K. Smith)—a new translation of the Kamasutra (with Sudhir Kakar), and Hinduism, for the Norton Anthology of World Religions. In progress are The Ring of Truth, and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry; Skepticism in the Shastras, or The Manipulation of Religion for Politics and Pleasure in Ancient India (the 2014 Terry Lectures at Yale); Memoirs of a Jewish Girlhood (the 2015 Mandel Lectures at Brandeis); and a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands.
- See more at: https://divinity.uchicago.edu/wendy-doniger#sthash.XMSOnM1n.dpuf
Printer-friendly version
