Devotional Visualities: Seeing Bhakti in Indic Material Cultures

by Karen Pechilis (Editor), Amy R. Whitehead (Editor), Amy-Ruth Holt (Editor)

Overview

This open access book is the first to focus on material visualities of bhakti imagery that inspire, shape, convey, and expand both the visual practices of devotional communities, as well as possibilities for extending the reach of devotion in society in new and often unexpected ways. Communities of interpreters of bhakti images discussed in this book include not only a number of distinctive Hindu bhakti groups, but also artisans, diaspora women, South Asian Sufis, businessmen, dancers, and filmmakers.

This book's identification of devotional practices of looking, such as materializing memory, mirroring and immaterializing portraits, and shaping the return look, connect material and visual cultures as well as illustrate modes of established and experimental image usage.

Bhakti is one of the most-studied aspects of Indic devotionalism on account of its expression through emotive poetry, song, and vivid hagiographies of saints. The diverse devotional visualities analyzed in this book meaningfully circulate bhakti images in past and present, generating their renewed relationship to contemporary concerns.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Patrice M. and John F. Kelly Fellowship in Arts & Letters at Drew University, USA.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350214224
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/24/2025
Series:	Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Karen Pechilis is NEH Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Religion at Drew University, USA. She is the author of Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry and Legacy of a Female Bhakti Saint of India (2011), The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States (2004), and The Embodiment of Bhakti (1999). She is co-editor of South Asian Religions: Tradition and Today (2012), and is on the advisory editorial boards of the International Journal of Hindu Studies, the International Journal of Dharma Studies, andReligion and Gender.

Amy Whitehead is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Massey University, New Zealand.

Amy-Ruth Holt is an independent scholar based in the USA.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Introduction: Looking Again at Devotion, Karen Pechilis (Drew University, USA) and Amy-Ruth Holt (independent scholar, USA)
Part I: Materializing Memory
1. The Beginnings of Mass-Produced Devotional Prints in Calcutta, Richard H. Davis (Bard College, USA)
2. Expanding Meanings of Bhakti in Bengali American Home Shrines, Ashlee Norene Andrews (University of North Carolina-Greensboro, USA)
3. Merchant Patronage and Royal Hanumans: A Modern Devotional Visuality, R. Jeremy Saul (Mahidol University, Thailand)
4. Evolving Material Authority: Devotion, History, and the Svaminarayana Museum, Shruti Patel (Salisbury University, USA)
Part II: Mirroring and Immaterializing Portraits
5. Kabir in Indo-Muslim Visual and Literary Culture, Murad Khan Mumtaz (Williams College, USA)
6. The Devotional Role of Paintings and Photographs in the Pushti Marga, Shandip Saha (Athabascau University, Canada)
7. The Iconic Surdas, John Stratton Hawley (Barnard College, Columbia University, USA)
8. The Visual Multiplicity and Materiality of Guru Nityananda's Portraits, Amy-Ruth Holt (independent scholar, USA)
9. Darsan in Twelve Ways: Portraying the Divine in Early Svaminarayana Art, Ankur Desai (The Kansas City Art Institute, USA)
Part III: Shaping the Return Look
10. Bhakti and Looking at What We Do Not Want to See, Karen Pechilis (Drew University, USA)
11. Mira's Iconography: From Miniature to Movie, Heidi Pauwels (University of Washington, USA)
Index

Editorial Reviews

Delving into this underexplored dimension of Hindu devotion, this volume makes an invaluable and engaging contribution to our understanding of bhakti. Collectively the essays invite readers to gaze into its immensely rich visual practices and varied imaginings of its most beloved saints, portrayed and embodied to facilitate devotion but equally to foster or to radically challenge spiritual and social complacency.” —Nancy M. Martin, Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Chapman University, USA

“Devotional Visualities offers compelling perspectives on visual cultures, devotional imagery, and mediated networks. Exploring an array of Indic contexts, this wide-ranging collection of essays highlights ways in which religious participation can be reimagined through a focus on visuality and mediation. It is a vital and highly original contribution which raises critical questions about the material cultures and lived experiences of devotion. It will spark interest across disciplines.” —Radha Sarma Hegde Department of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University, USA

“[A] powerful contribution that augments an already exciting field of study … Karen Pechilis and Amy-Ruth Holt have invited readers into a fascinating world of devotional visualities and they are all the better for it.” —Journal of Contemporary Religion

From the Publisher