Seminar on women in Mahabharata today

Manipal: The Department of Philosophy will organize seminars on Hierarchy and Deification of the Women in Mahābhārata-tātparyanirṇaya by Anusha Rao of Canada at Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal on August 28, 2019 at Manipal Center for European Studies – LH1, Department of Philosophy, 5th Floor, Advanced Research Centre, MAHE

The public talk which begins at 4 p.m. will examine the characterization of prominent female characters of the two epics in Madhva’s Mahabharata-tatparyanirnaya.

The speaker – Anusha S Rao is a research scholar in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She works on Hinduism, especially focusing on Dvaita Vedanta and its commentaries on the Mahabharata. Her research examines the intersections of religion and narrative, particularly in genres of hagiography and epic poetry in early modern south India. Anusha has a Master’s in Religious Studies from the University of Calgary and another Master’s in English literature from EFLU, Hyderabad.

These seminars are ongoing activities of the Manipal Mahabharata Lecture Series organised as a part of MAHE Mahabharata Digital Concordance Research Project available at www.mahabharata.manipal.edu. MAHE Mahabharata is the first digital concordance of highly cited three critical editions that helps researchers to conduct critical study on textual variations of Mahabharata recensions.

The lecture by Anusha is eighth in the series, which hosted lectures by scholars of international repute like Bannanje, Aklujkar (Canada), Guha, Falques (Spain), Sudyka (Poland), Capkova (Czechia) and Tholpadi from India and abroad. The Department of Philosophy of MAHE – Faculty of Liberal Arts, earlier known as the Dvaita Philosophy Resource Centre (DPRC) offers a Master’s in Indian Philosophy and also conducts the MAHE Mahabharata research project with the support of Manipal University.