معرفی
Nell Shapiro Hawley is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Religion at Vassar College since 2023. She specializes in South Asian religions, particularly Hinduism, with a focus on popular religious movements, gender studies, performance traditions, and the Mahabharata epic. Her research bridges classical and contemporary contexts, analyzing Sanskrit texts and their global cultural impacts.
Education: BA from Harvard University; PhD from the University of Chicago.
Research interests include the Mahabharata's performance traditions, transregional cultural history, and gender dynamics in Sanskrit epics. She is currently writing two academic books: *Veiled Narration* (on gender and narration in the Mahabharata's *Virataparvan*) and *The War That Wasn't* (tracing the *Virataparvan*'s transregional legacy). Additionally, she authored a biography of Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) for general audiences.
Teaching includes courses like 'Superstories: The Popular Culture of the Ramayana and Mahabharata,' 'Devotion and Detachment: Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita,' and 'Yoga: A Twisted History.'
