Research Focus Group Discussion with Amanda Lucia about Her Book Reflections of Amma

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The meeting will be hosted by our South Asia RFG colleague William Elison, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at UCSB, as part of his seminar on Religion and Ideology in Modern India: Current Approaches. This seminar session will feature a discussion with Amanda Lucia about her book, Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (2014), which provides an ethnographic analysis of transnationalism and gender in a global movement centered around Amritanandamayi, who is celebrated as Amma, “Mother,” and the “hugging saint.” Following is the UC Press’s description of the book:

“Globally known as Amma, meaning “Mother,” Mata Amritanandamayi has developed a massive transnational humanitarian organization based in hugs. She is familiar to millions as the “hugging saint,” a moniker that derives from her elaborate darshan programs wherein nearly every day ten thousand people are embraced by the guru one at a time, events that routinely last ten to twenty hours without any rest for her. Although she was born in 1953 as a low-caste girl in a South Indian fishing village, today millions revere her as guru and goddess, a living embodiment of the divine on earth. Reflections of Amma focuses on communities of Amma’s devotees in the United States, showing how they endeavor to mirror their guru’s behaviors and transform themselves to emulate the ethos of the movement. This study argues that “inheritors” and “adopters” of Hindu traditions differently interpret Hindu goddesses, Amma, and her relation to feminism and women’s empowerment because of their inherited religious, cultural, and political dispositions. In this insightful ethnographic analysis, Amanda J. Lucia discovers how the politics of American multiculturalism reifies these cultural differences in “de facto congregations,” despite the fact that Amma’s embrace attempts to erase communal boundaries in favor of global unity.”

Amanda Lucia is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion at UC Riverside. Her research explores the global exportation, appropriation, and circulation of Hindu traditions, focusing on religious encounters between South Asians and North Americans since the early nineteenth century.

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Sponsored by the IHC’s South Asian Religions and Cultures Research Focus Group