Antoinette Elizabeth Denapoli
Biographic Data
| ID | 3768752 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Antoinette Elizabeth Denapoli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Antoinette Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Denapoli |
| SIGNATURE | DENAPOLI A E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas Christian University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Conclusion
We have reached the end of our journey concerning the study of holy women as "religious influencers" in Hindu culture
Can a Woman be a True Guru? Female Hindu Gurus’ Grassroots Religious Gender Activism in India, and the Performativity of Saintliness at the Kumbh Mela
This article represents a departure from existing scholarship on women’s political activism in Indian Hinduism. Women’s gender activism in Hindu nationalism encompasses a range of approaches, from hard-line to emancipatory, and is motivated by different concerns, from religious xenophobia to religious power. Thus, female religious leaders (gurus) advocating Hindutva Hinduism exercise more than one style of leadership in the public sphere. Based o…
Everyone Drinks from the Same Well
This article examines the emergent leadership of two female gurus in South Asia who have declared their status as Śaṅkarācāryās (i.e., heads of monastic institutions) based on revelatory experiences. They have done this in order to change patriarchal monastic (akhāṛā) culture and challenge entrenched ideas of women's inferiority in Hindu society. By combining ethnographic data and a gender studies-centered analysis of their narratives and teachin…
A Female Shankaracharya
This article examines the practices through which a female religious leader (guru) in India by the name of Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati (in shorthand, “Mataji”) constructs women’s alternative authority in a high powered lineage of male Hindu gurus called Shankaracharyas. Mataji’s appropriation of the Shankaracharya leadership demonstrates an Indic example of “dharmic feminism,” by virtue of which she advocates the female as normative and, through th…
"Earning God through the "One-Hundred Rupee Note
This article examines the everyday religious phenomenon of nirguṇa bhakti as it is experienced by Hindu renouncers (sādhus) in North India. As an Indian language concept, nirguṇa bhakti characterizes a type of devotion (bhakti) that is expressed in relation to a divinity who is said to be without (nir) the worldly characteristics and attributes of sex and gender, name and form, race and ethnicity, class and caste. Although bhakti requires a relat…
God Depends on the Lowest Devotees
The Freedom of Wandering, the Protection of Settling in Place
“On the Battlefield of Bhakti”
Chapter 4 investigates female sadhus' practices that articulate an ethos of caste ambivalence in vernacular asceticism. This chapter depicts a confluence of performance genres in the forms of song, story, and sacred text in the sadhus' rhetoric of renunciation and has a specific social element in mind: it illustrates how, and in what contexts, caste status matters to female sadhus and the role of regional or Mewari princely traditions in their re…
Performing Asceticism and Redefining Definitional Boundaries
Chapter 1 locates female sadhus’ practices within a performance studies-centered model of religious expressive culture and discusses the concept of “vernacular asceticism” as a lens for thinking about sannyās-as-lived in contemporary North India. It argues that the sadhus express a broad spectrum of meanings and interpretations for what they believe sannyâs and being a sadhu means in renunciation-as-lived. A number of scholars have noted that the…
“Forget Happiness! Give Me Suffering Instead”
Chapter 3 analyzes the vernacular religious narratives of female sadhus and their telling of local and/or regional hagiographical tales, particularly those concerned with mythic female bhakti saints, like Mira Bai, Karma Bai, and Rupa Rani, to legitimate their role and the authority it engenders. This chapter shines light on the multiple value systems inherent in female sadhus’ narratives and how sharing those stories with their devotees in satsa…
“Meeting and Parting in the Melā of Life”
The conclusion outlines the differences between the sometimes competing, and the sometimes complementary, models of Brahmanical sannyâs and female sadhus’ asceticism. To this end, the chapter reviews the book’s chief arguments and summarizes the concepts integral to female sadhus’ religious worlds. It shows the ways the female sadhus of Rajasthan represent, in both experience and practice, asceticism as a “mela” (carnival) of meeting and parting.…
Real Sadhus Sing to God
Drawing on ethnographic research spanning ten years, Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli offers a new perspective on the practice of asceticism in India today. Her work brings to light the little known and often marginalized lives of female Hindu ascetics (sadhus) in the North Indian state of Rajasthan. Examining the everyday religious worlds and practices of the mostly unlettered female sadhus, who come from a number of castes, Real Sadhus Sing to God…
Our own two hands create our destiny
This article describes and analyses the personal narrative performances of male Hindu renouncers (sādhus) in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. Based on 10 years of ethnographic research with sādhus in three districts of Mewar, south Rajasthan, it considers the telling of life stories as a 'narrative strategy' through which male sādhus not only interpret and experience their lives, but also give voice to the complexity of asceticism as practice…
Crossing Over the Ocean of Existence
Grace Jantzen’s exploration of the genealogy of Western mysticism illuminates the ways in which relations of power and gender have shaped the production of discourse about ‘mysticism. ’ Jantzen’s work evokes questions of how mysticism is constructed in the Hindu traditions and how gender and power interface in its production. If there is any term that functions like mysticism it is nirguṇī bhakti for female sādhus in Rajasthan. There are several …
Beyond Brahmanical Asceticism
In the last 25 years, significant conceptual and interpretive shifts have occurred in the scholarship on asceticism in South Asia that broaden not only 'what counts' as asceticism, but also 'who counts' as an ascetic. Moreover, the recent surge of anthropological and ethnographic studies, particularly those focusing on female asceticism, has contributed innovative and alternative models of asceticism to the more dominant, Sanskritic literary mode…
A Female Shankaracharya
This article examines the practices through which a female religious leader (guru) in India by the name of Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati (in shorthand, “Mataji”) constructs women’s alternative authority in a high powered lineage of male Hindu gurus called Shankaracharyas. Mataji’s appropriation of the Shankaracharya leadership demonstrates an Indic example of “dharmic feminism,” by virtue of which she advocates the female as normative and, through th…
God Depends on the Lowest Devotees
Our own two hands create our destiny
This article describes and analyses the personal narrative performances of male Hindu renouncers (sādhus) in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. Based on 10 years of ethnographic research with sādhus in three districts of Mewar, south Rajasthan, it considers the telling of life stories as a 'narrative strategy' through which male sādhus not only interpret and experience their lives, but also give voice to the complexity of asceticism as practice…
Crossing Over the Ocean of Existence
Grace Jantzen’s exploration of the genealogy of Western mysticism illuminates the ways in which relations of power and gender have shaped the production of discourse about ‘mysticism. ’ Jantzen’s work evokes questions of how mysticism is constructed in the Hindu traditions and how gender and power interface in its production. If there is any term that functions like mysticism it is nirguṇī bhakti for female sādhus in Rajasthan. There are several …
Beyond Brahmanical Asceticism
In the last 25 years, significant conceptual and interpretive shifts have occurred in the scholarship on asceticism in South Asia that broaden not only 'what counts' as asceticism, but also 'who counts' as an ascetic. Moreover, the recent surge of anthropological and ethnographic studies, particularly those focusing on female asceticism, has contributed innovative and alternative models of asceticism to the more dominant, Sanskritic literary mode…
Beyond Brahmanical Asceticism
In the last 25 years, significant conceptual and interpretive shifts have occurred in the scholarship on asceticism in South Asia that broaden not only 'what counts' as asceticism, but also 'who counts' as an ascetic. Moreover, the recent surge of anthropological and ethnographic studies, particularly those focusing on female asceticism, has contributed innovative and alternative models of asceticism to the more dominant, Sanskritic literary mode…
Crossing Over the Ocean of Existence
Grace Jantzen’s exploration of the genealogy of Western mysticism illuminates the ways in which relations of power and gender have shaped the production of discourse about ‘mysticism. ’ Jantzen’s work evokes questions of how mysticism is constructed in the Hindu traditions and how gender and power interface in its production. If there is any term that functions like mysticism it is nirguṇī bhakti for female sādhus in Rajasthan. There are several …
“On the Battlefield of Bhakti”
Chapter 4 investigates female sadhus' practices that articulate an ethos of caste ambivalence in vernacular asceticism. This chapter depicts a confluence of performance genres in the forms of song, story, and sacred text in the sadhus' rhetoric of renunciation and has a specific social element in mind: it illustrates how, and in what contexts, caste status matters to female sadhus and the role of regional or Mewari princely traditions in their re…
Performing Asceticism and Redefining Definitional Boundaries
Chapter 1 locates female sadhus’ practices within a performance studies-centered model of religious expressive culture and discusses the concept of “vernacular asceticism” as a lens for thinking about sannyās-as-lived in contemporary North India. It argues that the sadhus express a broad spectrum of meanings and interpretations for what they believe sannyâs and being a sadhu means in renunciation-as-lived. A number of scholars have noted that the…
“Forget Happiness! Give Me Suffering Instead”
Chapter 3 analyzes the vernacular religious narratives of female sadhus and their telling of local and/or regional hagiographical tales, particularly those concerned with mythic female bhakti saints, like Mira Bai, Karma Bai, and Rupa Rani, to legitimate their role and the authority it engenders. This chapter shines light on the multiple value systems inherent in female sadhus’ narratives and how sharing those stories with their devotees in satsa…
“Meeting and Parting in the Melā of Life”
The conclusion outlines the differences between the sometimes competing, and the sometimes complementary, models of Brahmanical sannyâs and female sadhus’ asceticism. To this end, the chapter reviews the book’s chief arguments and summarizes the concepts integral to female sadhus’ religious worlds. It shows the ways the female sadhus of Rajasthan represent, in both experience and practice, asceticism as a “mela” (carnival) of meeting and parting.…
Real Sadhus Sing to God
Drawing on ethnographic research spanning ten years, Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli offers a new perspective on the practice of asceticism in India today. Her work brings to light the little known and often marginalized lives of female Hindu ascetics (sadhus) in the North Indian state of Rajasthan. Examining the everyday religious worlds and practices of the mostly unlettered female sadhus, who come from a number of castes, Real Sadhus Sing to God…
Our own two hands create our destiny
This article describes and analyses the personal narrative performances of male Hindu renouncers (sādhus) in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. Based on 10 years of ethnographic research with sādhus in three districts of Mewar, south Rajasthan, it considers the telling of life stories as a 'narrative strategy' through which male sādhus not only interpret and experience their lives, but also give voice to the complexity of asceticism as practice…
The Freedom of Wandering, the Protection of Settling in Place
God Depends on the Lowest Devotees
"Earning God through the "One-Hundred Rupee Note
This article examines the everyday religious phenomenon of nirguṇa bhakti as it is experienced by Hindu renouncers (sādhus) in North India. As an Indian language concept, nirguṇa bhakti characterizes a type of devotion (bhakti) that is expressed in relation to a divinity who is said to be without (nir) the worldly characteristics and attributes of sex and gender, name and form, race and ethnicity, class and caste. Although bhakti requires a relat…
A Female Shankaracharya
This article examines the practices through which a female religious leader (guru) in India by the name of Trikal Bhavanta Saraswati (in shorthand, “Mataji”) constructs women’s alternative authority in a high powered lineage of male Hindu gurus called Shankaracharyas. Mataji’s appropriation of the Shankaracharya leadership demonstrates an Indic example of “dharmic feminism,” by virtue of which she advocates the female as normative and, through th…
Can a Woman be a True Guru? Female Hindu Gurus’ Grassroots Religious Gender Activism in India, and the Performativity of Saintliness at the Kumbh Mela
This article represents a departure from existing scholarship on women’s political activism in Indian Hinduism. Women’s gender activism in Hindu nationalism encompasses a range of approaches, from hard-line to emancipatory, and is motivated by different concerns, from religious xenophobia to religious power. Thus, female religious leaders (gurus) advocating Hindutva Hinduism exercise more than one style of leadership in the public sphere. Based o…
Everyone Drinks from the Same Well
This article examines the emergent leadership of two female gurus in South Asia who have declared their status as Śaṅkarācāryās (i.e., heads of monastic institutions) based on revelatory experiences. They have done this in order to change patriarchal monastic (akhāṛā) culture and challenge entrenched ideas of women's inferiority in Hindu society. By combining ethnographic data and a gender studies-centered analysis of their narratives and teachin…
Conclusion
We have reached the end of our journey concerning the study of holy women as "religious influencers" in Hindu culture
Philosophy (13 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (10 works) · Hinduism (9 works) · Religious studies (9 works) · Art (7 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works)