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Biography
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Vijaya Nagarajan
Associate Professor: Theology and Religious Studies | Environmental Studies
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Vijaya Nagarajan is an associate professor of South Asian religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco, where she teaches courses on Hinduism, Religion and Nonviolence, Religion and Environment, Nonwestern Religious Traditions, Religion and Health, Voice, Memory and Landscape, and Gender, Art, and Religion. Her interests range from gender, folklore, art history, cultural studies and ecology. She was awarded a 2001-2002 Fellowship in the Women's Studies in Religion Program, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, where she completed her book Drawing Down Desires: Women, Ritual and Art in Southern India (Oxford University Press, 2009 forthcoming). It is about the kolam --- intricate and beautiful rice flour patterns drawn daily at dawn on the thresholds of homes, temples and businesses by millions of Tamil women in southern India. The kolam expresses Tamil women's understanding of ritual, gender and ecology. She is the author of numerous articles. She was selected as the Davies Chair, University of San Francisco for Fall 1999, during which she conducted a series of public dialogues on the themes of Voice, Memory and Landscape with Arundhati Roy, Peter Matthiessen, Ivan Illich, and Maxine Hong Kingston, among others. She has also received extended research and language fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Contact Information:
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton St. San Francisco, CA 94117
Phone: (415) 422-5837
Fax: (415) 422-5356
Email: nagarajan@usfca.edu
Office: KA 158
Office Hours: By appointment
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