South Asian Studies Initiative hosts daytime lectures, (formerly part of CSAMES Brown Bag lectures), organized as South Asia Friday Talks @ 11. All Friday Talks are virtual, on Fridays from 11 AM to 12 PM.
Talk: Glorification of the Solitary Liṅga: Myth, Kingship, and Political Landscape in Medieval Rajasthan
Glorification of the Solitary Liṅga: Myth, Kingship, and Political Landscape in Medieval Rajasthan, traces the religious and political history of the Mewar kingdom in southern Rajasthan, India, from the tenth century to the late fifteenth century. Through an examination of Hindu Sanskrit literary works and royal architectural sites, I investigate how landscapes, literary productions, and imagined identities mutually contributed to the production of political power and religious authority for the royal court of Mewar. This is the first ever study of several major Sanskrit literary works, including inscriptions and textual narratives, emerging from the kingdom of Mewar during the medieval period.
Adam Newman is the co-director of Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois. His research interests include Hinduism, the religious and political history of South Asia, Sanskrit literature, Purāṇas, sacred space and landscape, and religious conceptions of the body. Some of his recent publications include a book chapter (2023) “Body, Community, Cosmos: A Śaiva Siddhānta Rite of Initiation.” in Y. Kornberg Greenberg and G. Pati’s edited volume of The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body, and an article (2022) titled “Lineage in Its Spatial Context: Epigraphy, Geography, and the Formation of Political Unity in Medieval Mewar” published in the Journal of Hindu Studies.