Colorado College Religion Department

Tracy Coleman
Associate Professor of Religion
(on leave in 2008-09)

Armstrong Hall 141
719-389-6195
tcoleman@ColoradoCollege.edu

Hinduism and South Asian Religions
Women and Gender in Religion

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Assistant Professor of Religion (2003-05)

Courses
Hinduism, Women in Hinduism and Buddhism, Devi: Goddesses of India, Bhakti: Devotion in South Asia, Feminist Religious Thought

Education
Ph.D., Brown University, 2001
M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School, 1993
M.A., Middlebury College (Paris), 1990
B.A., Rockford College, 1988

Research Interests
An innovative study of Hindu bhakti (devotion) in relation to the established social order, my current book manuscript questions previous scholarly claims that bhakti empowers women in social and religious life. Through a close study of bhakti's origins in classical and early medieval Sanskrit texts, with a focus on the Bhagavata Purana, this book demonstrates that despite the democratic potential of various devotional movements in which women are sometimes glorified, bhakti often functions as a conservative historical process upholding the traditional patriarchal order. By situating the development of bhakti within a larger cultural discourse on dharma (truth, duty, proper behavior), the book explores Krishna's celebrated relationships with women in contrast to the Buddha's ascetic renunciation of familial attachments and thus shows how competing conceptions of dharma were linked to heroic male figures as embodiments of truth and authority in socio-religious life. The book thereby provides a brief comparative history of gender and salvation in South Asian religions and thus offers a new interpretation of bhakti that holds relevance for the study of religion and social change in other cultures.

Publications

Agra, India

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