Meet the Faculty

David L. Haberman

• Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at University of Chicago, 1984

Contact Information

Background

• Journey Through the Twelve Forests received the American Academy Award for Excellence in 1994
• ACLS/SSRC NEH International Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Fulbright-CIES Research Scholar Fellowship
• Smithsonian-AIIS Senior Research Grant
• Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Research Abroad
• Trustees Teaching Award (2002)

I am interested in a wide range of South Asian religious traditions, and concentrate on the medieval and modern movements of northern India. I have spent the past two and a half decades focusing my research on the culture of Braj, an active pilgrimage site known for its lively temple festivals, performative traditions, and literary creations. My approach combines both textual research and anthropological field work. My Acting as a Way of Salvation (Oxford University Press, 1988) is a study of religious reality construction based on a close examination of a meditation technique devised by the theoreticians of Braj. I have published a book on the circular pilgrimage around Braj, entitled Journey Through the Twelve Forests (Oxford, 1994). I completed an annotated translation of a sixteenth-century Sanskrit text, The Bhaktirasamrtasindhu of Rupa Gosvamin (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2003), which presents the religious experience of bhakti in terms of classical Indian dramatic theory. My current research involves a study of the Yamuna River of northern India, which for centuries has been worshiped as a goddess. As a student of the religious cultures of India, I am interested in investigating the effects the current environmental degradation is having on the traditional religious culture which views the immanent world of nature as permeated with divine presence; I am also interested in learning how this traditional theology is being employed by Indian environmental activists to resist environmental degradation. I am involved in the emerging field of religion and ecology and am currently on the Advisory Board of the Forum on Religion and Ecology based at The Harvard University Center for the Environment. Moreover, I am engaged in a project that investigates Western constructions of Hinduism with the aim of opening up the study of those regions of Hindu culture that have been previously denied. Other interests include the study of ritual theory and practice, and exploration of theoretical approaches to the study of religion, especially as regards that never-ending question: "What is religion?"

Research Interests

• History of South Asian religions
• Indian arts and aesthetics
• Ritual studies
• Theories of religion
• Religion and Ecology

Courses Recently Taught

• Religions of the East
• Hinduism
• Religion, Ecology & The Self
• Living Through Nature: Permaculture
• Exploring a Hindu Text: The Bhagavad-gita

Publication Highlights

Books

River of Love in the Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Journey Through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. (Winner of American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence, Historical Category.)

Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rågånugå Bhakti Sådhana. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers in Delhi in 2001.

The Bhaktirasåmotasindhu of Rëpa Gosvåmin. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in association with Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2003.

Ten Theories of Human Nature. Co-authored with Leslie Stevenson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fourth edition 2004.

Articles

"Ír Nåthaj: The Itinerant Lord of Mount Govardhan." Journal of Vaisnava Studies 3, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 5-24.

"Divine Betrayal: Krishna-Gopal of Braj in the Eyes of Outsiders." Journal of Vaisnava Studies (special volume edited by Margaret Case, Consulting Editor of Princeton University Press) 3, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 83-111.

"On Trial: The Love of the Sixteen Thousand Gopees." History of Religions 33, no. 1 (August 1993): 44-70.