About

Vasudha Narayanan is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Bombay and was educated at the Universities of Madras and Bombay in India, as well as Harvard University. Her scholarly interests focus on Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia, and America, with particular attention to visual and expressive cultures and gender issues within these traditions. Currently, she is engaged in research on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia. Narayanan has authored or edited nine books and numerous articles, chapters, and encyclopedia entries, and serves as the associate editor of the seven-volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Her research has been supported by prestigious grants and fellowships from organizations such as the Centre for Khmer Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies/Smithsonian, and the Social Science Research Council. She has also held leadership roles including past President of the American Academy of Religion (2001-2002) and President of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies (1996-1998). In 2010, she was named the University of Florida’s Teacher Scholar of the Year. Together with the University of Florida, she helped establish the nation’s first Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra) to promote research, teaching, and public understanding of Hindu culture and traditions. In 2023, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• World Wide Web
• Medicine
• Geography
• Demography
• Gerontology
• Business
• Nursing
• Environmental health

Selected publications

• Women Sharing Bhakti, Women Singing Devotion

  2024-01-30 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  While gurus and acharyas are central in imagining religious leadership in Hinduism, they may well be in the margins of the daily lives of middle-class, working South Indian Hindu women in American suburbia. Here, other hierarchies operate, and women who can sing and express devotion become leaders of weekly recitations of Sanskrit, vernacular prayers, and the performance of bhajans. These women are not known by a leadership name and do not fit into a known category of leaders like gurus, acharyas, or purohits; without a recognizable nomenclature, they fly under the radar. This chapter aims at understanding the dynamics of this religious leadership, which is vital in so many neighborhoods in America, and at finding a category for them. It specifically focuses on three teachers, one in New Jersey and two in Illinois, using their distinctive oral histories, to illustrate the model of seva-facilitation-leadership. The chapter also examines possible categories and names to use in discussing the category of women and offer a nomenclature for these new women teachers who lead by ‘serving the cause’ they espouse.

  PublisherDOI

• ‘Fortune, Success, Well-being, Victory!’

  2023-09-28

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter looks at the theories proposed to explain the contested claims of how and why Indian culture became significant in South East Asia, especially Cambodia. Although Indian presence is dominant in several areas, including language and writing, deities, temple building, and names of places and kings, the Khmer people used their agency and power in picking and choosing those elements of Indian culture most relevant to them. Did the agency exercised by kings, their selective choice, and adaptation of philosophies and material culture also involve Hindus moving from India and settling in South East Asia? This chapter offers some perspectives on whether there was a ‘Hindu diaspora’ or sustained interaction and perhaps intermarriages between people coming from South East and South Asia. We also discuss origin stories, Angkor Wat, and other Viṣṇu monuments, to see if they offer clues about who was responsible for the creation of a Hindu ethos in the courts and in the temples.

  PublisherDOI

• Prestige Temples, Performing Arts, and Power

  2023-09-28

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter deals with the history of Hindus who migrated to the United States in the early twentieth century as well as the importance of temple-building and the performing arts in the transmission of Hindu culture after the 1960s. Early immigrants included the Watumulls in Hawaii. From the time of Dr S. and Lalitha Chandrasekhar in the 1930s, we see the growing importance of performing arts. Bollywood dancing and bharatanāṭyam are significant in preservation of identity. After the 1960s, there is an accelerated building of large, prestige temples, especially to Veṅkaṭeśvara by South Indians, and more recently sectarian temples by the Swaminarayan community.

  PublisherDOI

• Matters that Matter

  2023-10-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Hindus all over the world worship the goddess Sarasvati; and while most Hindus live in India, there are large numbers in many parts of the world. Using the Sarasvati image in Embassy Row as a segue into a discussion on material religion, people can develop several themes suggested by the statue and the sign under it, and explore their importance in the Hindu traditions in contemporary India. Temples, icons, paintings, art, music, texts, performance of recitation, ritual, and festivals are part of the networks of materiality. The paradox of the ‘materiality’ in practice and the perception of an underlying ‘spirit’ in the entire universe as gleaned from the Hindu compositions is still a conundrum which many schools of Hindu philosophy try to explain. There is no doubt that at least on one level such large statues are made for the same reasons why large ‘prestige’ temples were created in India and in Southeast Asia for millennia.

  PublisherDOI

• Oppenheimer often used Sanskrit verses, and the Bhagavad Gita was special for him − but not in the way Christopher Nolan’s film depicts it

  2023-08-16

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “Paradoxology”

  2023-08-30

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Gender in a Devotional Universe

  2022-05-07 · 1 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• National-Level Disparities in Internet Access Among Low-Income and Black and Hispanic Youth: Current Population Survey (Preprint)

  2021 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Demography

  <sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> Internet access is increasingly critical for adolescents with regard to obtaining health information and resources, participating in web-based health promotion, and communicating with health practitioners. However, past work demonstrates that access is not uniform among youth in the United States, with lower access found among groups with higher health-related needs. Population-level data yield important insights about access and internet use in the United States. </sec> <sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> The aim of this study is to examine internet access and mode of access by social class and race and ethnicity among youth (aged 14-17 years) in the United States. </sec> <sec> <title>METHODS</title> Using the Current Population Survey, we examined internet access, cell phone or smartphone access, and modes of connecting to the internet for adolescents in 2015 (unweighted N=6950; expanded weights N=17,103,547) and 2017 (unweighted N=6761; expanded weights N=17,379,728). </sec> <sec> <title>RESULTS</title> Internet access increased from 2015 to 2017, but socioeconomic status (SES) and racial and ethnic disparities remained. In 2017, the greatest disparities were found for youth in low-income households (no home access=23%) and for Black youth (no home access=18%) and Hispanic youth (no home access=14%). Low-income Black and Hispanic youth were the most likely to lack home internet access (no home access, low SES Black youth=29%; low SES Hispanic youth=21%). The mode of access (eg, from home and smartphone) and smartphone-only analyses also revealed disparities. </sec> <sec> <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> Without internet access, web-based dissemination of information, health promotion, and health care will not reach a significant segment of youth. Currently, SES and racial and ethnic disparities in access prolong health inequalities. Moreover, the economic impact of COVID-19 on Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities may lead to losses in internet access for youth that will further exacerbate disparities. </sec>

  PublisherDOI

• National-Level Disparities in Internet Access Among Low-Income and Black and Hispanic Youth: Current Population Survey

  Journal of Medical Internet Research · 2021 · 82 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Business

  BACKGROUND: Internet access is increasingly critical for adolescents with regard to obtaining health information and resources, participating in web-based health promotion, and communicating with health practitioners. However, past work demonstrates that access is not uniform among youth in the United States, with lower access found among groups with higher health-related needs. Population-level data yield important insights about access and internet use in the United States. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to examine internet access and mode of access by social class and race and ethnicity among youth (aged 14-17 years) in the United States. METHODS: Using the Current Population Survey, we examined internet access, cell phone or smartphone access, and modes of connecting to the internet for adolescents in 2015 (unweighted N=6950; expanded weights N=17,103,547) and 2017 (unweighted N=6761; expanded weights N=17,379,728). RESULTS: Internet access increased from 2015 to 2017, but socioeconomic status (SES) and racial and ethnic disparities remained. In 2017, the greatest disparities were found for youth in low-income households (no home access=23%) and for Black youth (no home access=18%) and Hispanic youth (no home access=14%). Low-income Black and Hispanic youth were the most likely to lack home internet access (no home access, low SES Black youth=29%; low SES Hispanic youth=21%). The mode of access (eg, from home and smartphone) and smartphone-only analyses also revealed disparities. CONCLUSIONS: Without internet access, web-based dissemination of information, health promotion, and health care will not reach a significant segment of youth. Currently, SES and racial and ethnic disparities in access prolong health inequalities. Moreover, the economic impact of COVID-19 on Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities may lead to losses in internet access for youth that will further exacerbate disparities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assistant Professor Tung-Mei Koh

  2020-09-21

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• John Carman

  39 shared

• Harold Coward

  36 shared

• M. Thangaraj

  Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

  36 shared

• Shalini J. Rukmani

  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  36 shared

• William Cenkner

  University of America

  36 shared

• John Stratton Hawley

  23 shared

• Helene Basu

  8 shared

• Knut A. Jacobsen

  University of Bergen

  8 shared

Labs

• Center for the Study of Hindu TraditionsPI

  Anita Anantharam Anita Anantharam joined the University of Florida's Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research as Assistant Professor in 2006. Professor Anantharam did her undergraduate work in Women's Studies at Columbia University, her MA at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and received her Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian Studies with a Designated Emphasis […]

Education

• Ph.D., Hinduism in India & the Diaspora

  University of Bombay

• M.A.

  Harvard University

• B.A.

  University of Madras

• B.A.

  University of Bombay

Awards & honors

• Past President of the American Academy of Religion (2001-200…
• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023
• University of Florida’s Teacher Scholar of the Year (2010)