Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Humanities — Religion — Asian and Asian American Studies

This book studies how knowledge changes.  What enables epistemic shift, and what constrains it?  How do historians recognize such a shift?  With these words, Gyatso (Buddhist studies, Harvard) opensBeing Human in a Buddhist World, which is now the benchmark for English-language scholarship of Tibetan medicine and culture.  Gyatso is renowned for bringing Tibetan Buddhist literature into conversations with broader topics in the humanities.  InApparitions of the Self (CH, Jul'98, 35-6170), she broke ground by exploring Tibetan autobiography through the lens of Western literary theory.  In the present volume, Gyatso analyzes 7th17th century Tibetan textual and visual sources to tease out a history of probative medicine within the context of a putatively orthodox Buddhist society.  Though the exploration of esoteric yogic physiology will be slow going for nonspecialists, Being Human speaks to all readers interested in the broader negotiation of religion and science.  Several chapters can serve as readings in other disciplines: e.g., Gyatsos close analysis of Tibetan medical illustrations (chapter 1) will be an excellent addition to visual cultures syllabi, and her treatment of women and gender in Tibetan medical works (chapter 6) will enrich gender studies courses.  This is a fascinating intellectual history by a mature scholar at the top of her game.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

In this book, contributors broadly examine the Hindu Right in contemporary India through 20 essays organized into six sections: The Past and the Present, Democratic Media, Political Parties and Movements, Creating an Inclusive Public Culture, Gender and Democracy, and Indias Politics on the US Stage.  The volumes essays derive from a 2005 conference at the University of Chicago Law School and were provoked by the 2002 genocide in Gujarat.  Doniger and Nussbaum (both, Univ. of Chicago) assume readers have some knowledge about Hindu nationalism and the Indian states, yet the variety of essays is useful to undergraduate neophytes as well as seasoned researchers.  The essays exemplify interdisciplinary cooperation, employing history, political science, economics, philosophy, law, religious studies, media studies, and literature.  The essays provide additional insight from authors in journalism, publishing, and the arts, generating an unusually rich conversation centered around the implementation of the state's constitution in light of Indias diversity and repeated assaults on pluralistic values.  This case study in the past and future of democratic survival posits some requirements for any healthy democracy.  Doniger and Nussbaum's exceptional contribution will likely shape the future of how scholars examine Hindu nationalism and Indias diverse culture.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers and faculty.

With this volume, Curtis (Indiana Univ.) makes a major contribution to the literature on Islamic and diaspora studies.  He uses Bilal Ibn Rabah (580-640), the freed Ethiopian slave who became the first muezzin in the original Muslim community, as the symbolic identity figure for people of African descent in Islam.  Curtis employs a broad view of African Muslim identity in the diaspora, including those who strongly identify with a black and/or African heritage along with Muslims whose identity is constructed in a non-African key.  This inclusiveness raises issues about boundary and the nature of African Muslim identity.  The majority of Curtis's case studies concern those who identify with their African heritage either physically or spiritually.  He covers a wide range of historical and ethnographic studies of Islam in North Africa and the Middle East, India and Pakistan, and Europe and the Americas.  In each case study, he shows how African-descended Muslims either kept to the traditional ritual practices of Islam, e.g., the five daily prayers, or incorporated other elements, such as Zar-Bori African spirit possession.  This reviewer found the chapter on the Siddis and Habshis in South Asia particularly fascinating.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

The publication of this translation by two eminent Indologists is a great event, since the only complete English translation of theRigveda appeared in an 1890s version that is almost unreadable.  Comprising 1028 hymns divided into ten books or mandalas, theRigveda was composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent (c. 15001200 BCE) and is the oldest Sanskrit religious and literary text.  As a liturgical text, theRigvedapraises the gods and codifies ritual elements and procedures in order to persuade the gods to provide prosperity and fertility to their worshipers and to preserve the cosmic order.  The present monumental edition includes a comprehensive introduction on the compilation and history of the text and informative outlines of Vedic ritual, theology, society, language, and poetics.  The translation of each hymn is prefaced by detailed commentsmany as long as or longer than the hymn itselfthat consider its meaning and focus and connect it to other hymns and broader themes in Vedic thought.  Jamison (UCLA) and Brereton (Univ. of Texas, Austin) are to be commended for a translation that is both accurate and accessible to a wide audience.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. General readers.