Publications of Leela Prasad    :chronological  alphabetical  combined listing:

%% Edited Books   
@misc{fds355107,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in
             Colonial India},
   Pages = {222 pages},
   Publisher = {Cornell University Press},
   Year = {2020},
   Month = {November},
   ISBN = {9781501752285},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781501752285},
   Abstract = {Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be
             reined in by forces of empire? Studying closely the oral
             narrations and writings of four Indian authors in colonial
             India, The Audacious Raconteur argues that even the most
             hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious
             raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative
             spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond
             subjugation. By drawing attention to the vigorous orality,
             maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and
             bilingualism in the narratives of these raconteurs, Leela
             Prasad shows how the ideological bulwark of
             colonialism—formed by concepts of colonial modernity,
             history, science, and native knowledge—is dismantled.
             Audacious raconteurs wrest back meanings of religion,
             culture, and history that are closer to their lived
             understandings. The figure of the audacious raconteur does
             not only hover in an archive but suffuses everyday life.
             Underlying these ideas, Prasad's personal interactions with
             the narrators' descendants give weight to her innovative
             argument that the audacious raconteur is a necessary ethical
             and artistic figure in human experience.},
   Doi = {10.1515/9781501752285},
   Key = {fds355107}
}

@misc{fds297759,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a
             South Indian Town},
   Publisher = {Columbia University Press},
   Year = {2007},
   Key = {fds297759}
}

@misc{fds309913,
   Author = {L. Prasad and Prasad, L and Bottigheimer, R and Handoo, L},
   Title = {Gender and Story in South India},
   Publisher = {State University of New York Press, Albany,
             NY.},
   Editor = {Prasad, L and Bottigheimer, RB and Handoo, L},
   Year = {2006},
   Key = {fds309913}
}

@misc{fds309914,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Live Like the Banyan Tree: Images of the Indian American
             Experience},
   Publisher = {Philadelphia: The Balch Institute for Ethnic
             Studies.},
   Year = {1999},
   Key = {fds309914}
}


%% Papers Published   
@article{fds373413,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {"Finding Anna"},
   Journal = {Critical Muslim},
   Volume = {44},
   Number = {1},
   Year = {2023},
   Key = {fds373413}
}

@article{fds344569,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Ethical Resonance: The Concept, the Practice, and the
             Narration},
   Journal = {Journal of Religious Ethics},
   Volume = {47},
   Number = {2},
   Pages = {394-415},
   Year = {2019},
   Month = {June},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jore.12261},
   Abstract = {This essay defines ethical resonance through an ethnographic
             interlude that paves the way for a broader theorization of
             the concept. It begins by contextually recounting the story
             of an individual who had stayed at Sevagram, Mahatma
             Gandhi’s last ashram in 1944, shadowing Gandhi for some
             20 days. The young man’s brief meeting with Gandhi in
             which Gandhi uttered only one sentence transformed him for
             his lifetime. I reflect on the experience and its narrative
             qualities to explore the broader question of why one is
             moved, and moved enough to be altered. I propose that the
             theorization of resonance in modern physics, in
             phenomenology, and in 11th-century Sanskrit poetics is
             productive for understanding the subjective and the
             trans-subjective elements that underlie ethical persuasion.
             I argue that the idea of resonance helps bridge the
             affective and the aesthetic in moral self-formation that
             occurs in everyday life.},
   Doi = {10.1111/jore.12261},
   Key = {fds344569}
}

@article{fds344570,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Nameless in history: when the imperial English become the
             subjects of Hindu narrative},
   Journal = {South Asian History and Culture},
   Volume = {8},
   Number = {4},
   Pages = {448-460},
   Year = {2017},
   Month = {October},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2017.1371504},
   Abstract = {This article analyses an intriguing unfinished long
             narrative poem published in 1894 about the ‘origin and
             rise’ of the English empire in India. Written in Sanskrit
             by eminent literary scholar, P. V. Ramaswami Raju, Sreemat
             Rajangala Mahodyanam (The Great Park of the English Raj)
             also contains an English translation that he himself
             provides alongside. The story dramatically describes the
             birth of the English race through the fall to earth of a
             celestial musician in heaven who is cursed to be nameless.
             This article argues that Ramaswami Raju devised creative
             strategies and adapted Indian forms of narration such as the
             purāṇa to tell this story boldly, without fear of
             censure. With the imperial ruler being its subject, the
             narrative curates two ways of speaking within and across the
             Sanskrit and English texts–unfolding a double register of
             praise and critique–that creates an ethos of irony that
             suffuses the poem. Raju’s creative strategy of a double
             register becomes ‘visible’ to a bilingual reader who is
             also literate in a religious idiom. The inclusion of a
             colonial power into a Hindu mythology and cosmos creates a
             moral caesura in the narrative of British imperial glory and
             makes the very idea of ‘English’ history impossible.
             Colonial-era genre debates with their focus on categories
             such as folk and classical largely overlooked the highly
             improvisational ways in which Indian scholars such as
             Ramaswami Raju represented controversial subjects through
             their creative work. In the light of the creative freedom
             they display, authors like Ramaswami Raju express a cultural
             sovereignty that transcends their political
             subalternity.},
   Doi = {10.1080/19472498.2017.1371504},
   Key = {fds344570}
}

@article{fds340935,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Co-being, a praxis of the public: Lessons from hindu
             devotional (bhakti) narrative, arendt, and
             gandhi},
   Journal = {Journal of the American Academy of Religion},
   Volume = {85},
   Number = {1},
   Pages = {199-223},
   Year = {2017},
   Month = {March},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfw040},
   Abstract = {Most controversies about religious representation enact
             conceptions of the public that construct boundaries which
             stridently mark insiders and outsiders, friends and foes, or
             practice and theory. This article begins with a controversy
             in California over representations of Hinduism in
             middle-school textbooks. A legal settlement closed the
             controversy but brought little sense of closure. Asking more
             broadly why publics fail, I put together, through deliberate
             anachronism, elements of a praxis of the public taking from
             political philosopher Hannah Arendt and bhakti poets of the
             Hindu tradition from the sixth century to the sixteenth
             century. This alternative praxis of the public creates
             "co-being," a state of society achieved by reimagining how
             we occupy space, how we own things and ideas, and how we
             form pacts. Gandhi's ashram, in concept and practice,
             exemplifies how an unlikely commonality is a possible one
             and is in fact the foundation of a meaningful and
             sustainable public.},
   Doi = {10.1093/jaarel/lfw040},
   Key = {fds340935}
}

@article{fds344572,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Maithil Women's Tales: Storytelling on the Nepal-India
             Border},
   Journal = {JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE},
   Volume = {130},
   Number = {518},
   Pages = {478-480},
   Year = {2017},
   Key = {fds344572}
}

@article{fds344571,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Hindu Pilgrimage: Shifting Patterns of Worldview of Shri
             Shailam in South India},
   Journal = {ASIAN ETHNOLOGY},
   Volume = {76},
   Number = {1},
   Pages = {180-182},
   Year = {2017},
   Key = {fds344571}
}

@article{fds328641,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Unearthing Gender: Folksongs of North India. By Smita Tewari
             Jassal . Durham: N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012. xviii,
             296 pp. ISBN: 9780822351306 (paper, also available in cloth
             and as e-book).},
   Journal = {The Journal of Asian Studies},
   Volume = {75},
   Number = {4},
   Pages = {1157-1158},
   Publisher = {Duke University Press},
   Year = {2016},
   Month = {November},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021911816001510},
   Doi = {10.1017/s0021911816001510},
   Key = {fds328641}
}

@article{fds318861,
   Author = {Prasad, LEELA},
   Title = {Cordelia’s Salt: Interspatial Reading of Indic Filial-Love
             Stories},
   Journal = {Oral Tradition},
   Volume = {29},
   Number = {2},
   Pages = {245-270},
   Publisher = {Center for Studies in Oral Tradition},
   Year = {2015},
   Key = {fds318861}
}

@article{fds297760,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Text, tradition, and imagination: Evoking the normative in
             everyday hindu life},
   Journal = {Numen},
   Volume = {53},
   Number = {1},
   Pages = {1-47},
   Publisher = {BRILL},
   Year = {2006},
   Month = {Spring},
   ISSN = {0029-5973},
   url = {http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000238823300001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=47d3190e77e5a3a53558812f597b0b92},
   Abstract = {For over two thousand years, the notion of ®stra has had an
             astonishing presence in Hindu normative thought and culture,
             and ®stras, as codifications of knowledge, have been
             composed in virtually every aspect of life from love and
             politics to thieving and horse rearing. The concept of
             ®stra yokes precept and practice in a way that perhaps no
             other concept in Hindu life does, and indexes a complexity
             that is understated by dictionary meanings of the term which
             include “to instruct,” “order,” “command,”
             “precept,” “rules,” “scientific treatise,” or
             “law-book.” Drawing on my ethnographic research in the
             Hindu pilgrimage town of Sringeri, south India, my essay
             explores how the notion of ®stra, or, more widely, the
             “normative,” is expressed in everyday contexts of
             Sringeri. The location of Sringeri itself is significant. A
             small town in the lush southwestern mountains of India,
             Sringeri is famous for its sm®rta maflha (monastery) and
             its temples which are believed to have been founded by
             Ankara in approximately 800 A.D. Historical records of the
             maflha show that in an unbroken lineage of over 1200 years,
             the gurus who head the maflha have counseled royalty and
             laypersons on matters ranging from military campaigns and
             land disputes to propriety of marriage alliances and
             business practice. The maflha today is an influential
             interpreter of the Hindu codes of conduct, the
             Dharma®stras, for a large following of Hindus in south
             India. To a visitor to Sringeri, the monastic institution
             with its emphasis on ®stra, would seem to symbolize a
             normative centrality in the lives of Sringeri residents.
             However, conversations and oral narratives from Sringeri
             challenge this assumption, and demonstrate that ®stra is
             one concept among others such as paddhati (custom), ®c®ra
             (proper conduct), samprad®ya (tradition), and niyama
             (principle; restraint) that individuals employ to indicate
             moral authority and enactment. While these terms are often
             used interchangeably, they highlight subtle differences in
             agency, textuality, historicity, jurisdiction, and
             permissibility in the context of the normative. I argue that
             underlying ethical practice is a dynamically-constituted
             “text” that draws on and weaves together various sources
             of the normative — a sacred book, an exemplar, a
             tradition, a principle, and so on. Such a text is
             essentially an imagined text, a fluid “text” which
             engages.},
   Doi = {10.1163/156852706776942320},
   Key = {fds297760}
}

@article{fds297761,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Conversational Narrative and the Moral Self:},
   Journal = {Journal of Religious Ethics},
   Volume = {32},
   Number = {1},
   Pages = {153-174},
   Publisher = {Wiley},
   Year = {2004},
   Month = {March},
   ISSN = {0384-9694},
   url = {http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000189211200007&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=47d3190e77e5a3a53558812f597b0b92},
   Abstract = {<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p>This article
             presents material from my ethnographic study in Śringēri,
             south India, the site of a powerful 1200‐year‐old
             Advaitic monastery that has been historically an interpreter
             of ancient Hindu moral treatises. A vibrant diverse local
             culture that provides plural sources of moral authority
             makes Śringēri a rich site for studying moral discourse.
             Through a study of two conversational narratives, this essay
             illustrates how the moral self is not an ossified product of
             written texts and codes, but is dynamic, gendered, and
             emergent, endowed with historical and political agency and
             an aesthetic capacity that mediates many normative sources
             to articulate “appropriate” conduct. In so doing, the
             essay shows the value of including oral narrative in ethical
             inquiry, especially in narrative ethics, which, for most
             part, has focused on written sources.</jats:p>},
   Doi = {10.1111/j.0384-9694.2004.00158.x},
   Key = {fds297761}
}

@article{fds297762,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {The Authorial Other in Folktale Collections in Colonial
             India: Tracing Narration and its Dis/Continuties},
   Journal = {Cultural Dynamics},
   Volume = {15},
   Number = {1},
   Pages = {5-40},
   Publisher = {SAGE Publications},
   Year = {2003},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0921374003015001107},
   Abstract = {Between 1860 and 1920, a staggering number of collections of
             Indian folklore was published by British administrators,
             missionaries, wives and daughters of officials, and Indian
             scholars. Rich in local detail, these collections of
             folklore contain copious prefaces, notes and explanatory
             appendixes. I examine the prefatory material of two folktale
             collections-Mary Frere's Old Deccan Days (1868), and
             Georgiana A. Kingscote and S.M. Nateśa Śāstri's Tales of
             the Sun (1890)-for their display of multiple levels of
             engagement between co-authors, informants, and
             representatives of colonial authority, calling into question
             the concept of a stable authorial center. I argue that these
             collections comment on how collectors of folklore delineated
             alterity and subjectivity while themselves experiencing
             shifting subaltern positions.},
   Doi = {10.1177/0921374003015001107},
   Key = {fds297762}
}

@article{fds297756,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Gatekeeping “the Subaltern?” A Response to Frank
             Korom’s review of exhibit, Live Like the Banyan
             Tree.},
   Journal = {Journal of American Folklore},
   Volume = {114},
   Number = {451},
   Pages = {73-75},
   Year = {2001},
   Key = {fds297756}
}

@article{fds376464,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Gatekeeping 'the subaltern'? A response to Frank J. Korom's
             review of the exhibition 'Live Like the Banyan Tree, Images
             of the Indian American Experience'},
   Journal = {JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE},
   Volume = {114},
   Number = {451},
   Pages = {73-75},
   Year = {2001},
   Key = {fds376464}
}


%% Articles in a Collection   
@article{fds318860,
   Author = {Prasad, LEELA},
   Title = {Hinduism in South India},
   Pages = {15-30},
   Booktitle = {Hinduism in the Modern World.},
   Publisher = {New York: Routledge},
   Year = {2015},
   ISBN = {978-0-415-83604-3},
   url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203362037-10},
   Abstract = {As new technologies and new diasporas emerge across the
             world, as tourism and the marketplace offer new religious
             mobilities and goods, and as modern governance exerts its
             claim on ancient political structure, Hinduism in modern
             South India invents and adapts itself. One illustration is a
             weekly Telugu-language television program called Dharma
             Sandehalu (Doubts about Dharma) that is viewed both through
             a live broadcast and through YouTube recordings by more than
             five million viewers across Asia, the Middle East, and North
             America. The program features an expert on South Indian
             Hindu traditions who resolves callers’ dilemmas of
             practicing Hinduism amidst the exigencies and diversity of
             modern life. In another example, temples in the Hindu
             diaspora commonly adjust their ritual calendars to
             accommodate the work routines of host countries and extend
             maps of traditional Hindu sacred landscapes to include their
             new local geographies. The Sri Venkateshvara temple in
             suburban Pittsburgh, the oldest temple in North America,
             uses its hilly geographic setting to authenticate its
             belonging to the network of temples in the tradition of the
             famous hill temple of Sri Venkateshvara in Tirupati in South
             India. Almost every temple today has a cyber-presence: an
             elaborate website and Facebook pages that detail its origin
             stories and devotional experiences, web links to related
             temples, audiovisual streaming media of the worship rituals,
             and, often, facilities for ‘e-worship’ through which
             devotees can request and pay for particular rituals. Cell
             phone apps bring ritual procedures to handheld devices such
             as goddess worship in a South Indian format to an iPhone
             app. These new applications and mediations reflect the
             changing contours of sacred space and time and religious
             experience.},
   Doi = {10.4324/9780203362037-10},
   Key = {fds318860}
}

@article{fds297754,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Constituting Ethical Subjectivities},
   Series = {Cambridge Companion to Religions},
   Pages = {360-379},
   Booktitle = {The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies},
   Publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
   Editor = {Orsi, RA},
   Year = {2011},
   Key = {fds297754}
}

@article{fds297753,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Ethical Subjects: Time, Timing, and Tellability},
   Pages = {pp. 174-191},
   Booktitle = {Ethical Life in South Asia},
   Publisher = {Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press},
   Editor = {Pandian, A and Ali, D},
   Year = {2010},
   Month = {Fall},
   Key = {fds297753}
}

@article{fds297752,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Sita’s Powers: ‘Do You Accept My Truth, My Lord?’ A
             Women’s Folksong},
   Booktitle = {Ramayana Stories in Modern South India: An
             Anthology.},
   Publisher = {Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press},
   Editor = {Richman, P},
   Year = {2008},
   Key = {fds297752}
}

@article{fds297750,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Anklets on the Pyal: Women Present Women’s Stories from
             South India},
   Pages = {1-33},
   Booktitle = {Gender and Story in South India.},
   Publisher = {SUNY Press},
   Editor = {Prasad, L and Bottigheimer, R and Handoo, L},
   Year = {2006},
   Key = {fds297750}
}

@article{fds297751,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Celebrating Allegiances, Ambiguated Belonging: Regionality
             in Festival and Performance in Sringeri, South
             India."},
   Booktitle = {Region, Culture, and Politics in India},
   Publisher = {Manohar Publications, New Delhi.},
   Editor = {Vora, R and Feldhaus, A},
   Year = {2006},
   Key = {fds297751}
}

@article{fds297749,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Hindu Goddesses" (254-259); "Character Stereotypes in
             Folklore" (107-109); "Folklore about the British" (77-79);
             "Hospitality" (287-89); "Mary Frere" (232-233); "Pandit S.
             M. Natesa Sastri" (436-438)},
   Booktitle = {South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia.},
   Publisher = {New York: Routledge},
   Editor = {Mills, M and Claus, P and Diamond, S},
   Year = {2002},
   Key = {fds297749}
}

@article{fds297755,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Bilingual Joking-Questions: Narrating Ethnicity and Politics
             in Indian Citylore},
   Pages = {211-225},
   Booktitle = {Folklore in Modern India},
   Publisher = {Mysore, India: Central Institute of Indian
             Languages},
   Editor = {Handoo, J},
   Year = {1998},
   Key = {fds297755}
}


%% Book Reviews   
@article{fds297758,
   Author = {Prasad, L},
   Title = {Raja Nal and the Goddess: The North Indian Epic Dhola in
             Performance},
   Journal = {Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
             East},
   Volume = {26},
   Number = {1},
   Pages = {157-59},
   Year = {2006},
   Month = {Spring},
   Key = {fds297758}
}


%% Cassettes and Videos   
@misc{fds186312,
   Author = {Leela Prasad and Baba Prasad},
   Title = {Moved by Gandhi [A documentary film]},
   Year = {2015},
   Key = {fds186312}
}