Devotional Visualities - (Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion) by Karen Pechilis & Amy-Ruth Holt

About the Book

This book looks at the development of bhakti devotion and its influences across India and in the diaspora from the perspective of its material items.

Book Synopsis

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.

Bhaktiis 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 bhaktiimages 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 Drew University, USA.

Review Quotes

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

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

About the Author

Karen Pechilis is Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of History of Religions at Drew University, USA. She is General Editor of A Cultural History of Hinduism (Bloomsbury, Forthcoming).

Amy-Ruth Holt is an independent scholar who holds a Ph.D. in South Asian art history from The Ohio State University, USA.