Lecture List
Hilary Term 2025

Sunday 19 January – Saturday 15 March 2025

Library opening hours are Monday to Friday, 9.30-5.30.

Hinduism 2: Tradition and Theologies

Dr Rembert Lutjeharms

Weeks 1-8, Friday, 4.00-5.00, Faculty of Theology & Religion

This paper traces the development of Hinduism from the medieval period through to modernity. The course will examine Hindu scholasticism, devotional and tantric traditions, and modern Hindu thought. The lectures will explore themes of liberation, the soul and the divine, Tantra and meditation, devotional literature and the formation of modern Hindu identity.

Readings in Vedānta

Dr Rembert Lutjeharms

Weeks 1-8, Thursday, 12.00-1.00, OCHS Library

Vedānta—theology grounded in the systematic exegesis of the Upaniṣads—has for centuries been the primary discourse for Hindu thought. These reading sessions are intended for students who have at least an introductory knowledge of Sanskrit and are interested in Vedānta texts.

Sanskrit and Pali Prelims 2

Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen

Sanskrit & Pali, Weeks 1-4, Wednesday, 10.00-11.00, Friday, 10.00-12.00, OCHS Library

Sanskrit, Weeks 5-8, Wednesday, 10.00-11.30, Friday, 10.30-12.00, OCHS Library

Pali, Weeks 5-8, Tuesday, 4.00-5.30, Thursday, 4.00-5.30, OCHS Library

The course provides an introduction to Sanskrit for the preliminary paper of the Theology and Religion Faculty in Elementary Sanskrit. Students of Pali will join the Sanskrit course in Michaelmas Term and for the first four weeks of Hilary Term. From week 5 of Hilary Term, Sanskrit and Pali will be taught as two separate courses, i.e. Sanskrit Prelims and Pali for Sanskritists.  Pali students will attend the same ‘Sanskrit and Pali’ classes as Sanskrit students in Michaelmas Term and weeks 1-4 of Hilary Term. From week 5 of Hilary Term, Pali and Sanskrit students will study in separate classes.

Senior Seminars in Indian Philosophy

Convened by Dr Jessica Frazier

Weeks 5 and 7, Wednesday, 2.30-4.00, OCHS Library

This series of regular seminars brings together scholars and students working on Indic philosophies and religions. It focuses on topics of current research: in each session, two people will present a context they are investigating for 20min, and then open it for discussion on key questions. All researchers, graduates and finalists in all areas are welcome to join.

All events are in the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS) Library, 15 Magdalen Street, OX1 3AE

Week 5: Wednesday 19th February, 2.30pm
 
Riccardo Paccagnella: Do Debates Have Prerequisites? 
 
This talk will explore Śrīharṣa’s first refutation in his Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya, a seminal work in Indian philosophy that in a very Nāgārjuna-like fashion rejects in toto not only the definitions of the most central philosophical concepts of the time (12th c.), such as pramā or pramāṇa, but also the very possibility of defining such concepts. This refutation aims to discredit the widely spread idea that debaters need to have already accepted the means of valid knowledge to undertake a debate.
 
Anthony Ruda: Another Look at Alokākāśa
 
This talk examines the “non-world space” of Jaina ontology in the context of gaṇitānuyoga (mathematical discipline as a vehicle toward liberation). Identifying Pythagorean, Platonic and Advaitic analogues, in the spirit of anekāntavāda (many-sidedness), this talk aims to show how various conceptions of reality may mutually illuminate each other.
 
Week 7: Wednesday 5th March, 2.30pm
 
Dr Jack Beaulieu: Udayana on Familiar Epistemic Situations
 
The notion of familiar epistemic situations (abhyāsadaśā) serves an important set of theoretical roles in Nyāya. Authors such as Vācaspati appeal to the notion of familiarity to solve a regress problem that traces back to Nāgārjuna, while authors like Udayana and Gaṅgeśa understand unfamiliar epistemic situations (anabhyāsadaśā) to constitute cases in which, intuitively, one is not in a position to learn that one learned. This talk explores Udayana’s remarks on this distinction in his Pariśuddhi, one of the few systematic Nyāya accounts available.
 
Jacob Parkinson: title tbc

Readings in Phenomenology

Prof. Gavin Flood FBA

Weeks 3-8, Monday, 12.00-1.00, OCHS Library

Phenomenology is one of the most important developments in philosophy in the twentieth century, and it has also had a deep impact on other theoretical fields more widely conceived.  We will continue reading Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception.

 

Talking About OCHS Publications

Prof. Gavin Flood FBA

Week 6, Monday 24 February, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

This is the first of a series of talks in which OCHS faculty members speak about one of their publications. This first talk by Gavin Flood will focus on his Religion and the Philosophy of Life (2019).

The Symbol of Ascent: At the Interface of Theology and Phenomenology

Prof. Gavin Flood FBA

Weeks 4, 5 and 6, Thursday, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Ascent has been concept, symbol, and metaphor in the history of religions and the history of civilizations more broadly. Through an inquiry into this symbol, the lectures explore the relationship between Theology and Phenomenology by tracing a history of ascent and showing how both Theology and Phenomenology have come to engage with it. While the origins of ascent may be rooted in deep time, the concept along with the symbol come to articulation in specific historical theologies, specific literatures, and in contemporary thinking ascent comes to be the focus of discussion about the very identity of Phenomenology.

The Symbol of Ascent: Beginnings and Theoretical Orientations

Week 4, Thursday 13 February, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

To understand the symbol of ascent across civilizations we need to develop a Phenomenology and to understand contemporary Phenomenology we have to locate it in relation to Theology. This first lecture will set the scene in discussing Phenomenology and Theology in order to present historical examples of the symbol of ascent from India and Europe in the next lecture.

Ascent in the History of Christian Theology

Week 5, Thursday 20 February, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

This lecture will focus on the highpoint of ascent as symbol in Scholasticism, plotting a narrative from the Church Fathers through the Augustinian tradition to Bonaventure. Scholastic theology developed its own understanding of transcendentality and so of ascent. This account will necessitate some exploration of allegory and the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. The lecture will focus on the Victorines who mark a highpoint in monastic thinking, especially Richard of St Victor’s The Ark of Moses and we will examine this as symbol of ascent par excellence.

Environmental Critique and Anti-Ascent Holiness

Week 6, Thursday 27 February, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

The symbol of ascent has arguably lost its power in modern global cultures because of its refiguration in ways that do not allow valence to a hierarchical symbol, and yet contemporary cultures continue to articulate a need for the symbol of ascent. The symbol yet has power to order lives and order desire in ways conducive to the common good. Our final discussion brings the symbol of ascent into contemporary discourse. The symbol of ascent comes under critique from a world affirming, environmentalist perspective and trajectories of thinking that have critiqued religion. Among the thinkers we will engage with are Helga Nowotny and the new materialism of Jane Bennett. However, a defense of the symbol of ascent could be rooted in a biologically grounded ontology, that the symbol points to a non-constructivist view of the human person that we need to articulate through a Phenomenology.

Lectures of the J.P. and Beena Khaitan Visiting Fellow

The Finitude of Love: Heidegger, Arendt, and Bultmann on the Human Condition

Dr Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere 

Week 3, Thursday 6 February, 4.00-5.00, OCHS Library

The idea of love has been a central theme in Hindu and Christian Theology. Through focussing on this, the lecture will develop what is distinctive about it with particular reference to Rudolf Bultmann and Hannah Arendt. Whereas Rudolf Bultmann’s theology is often understood as merely a naive theological application of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, this lecture demonstrates how Bultmann was actually a sophisticated philosopher in his own right who provided a better account of human finitude than Heidegger did. Specifically, Bultmann is a theologian and therefore cannot escape the fundamental human experience that Heidegger nevertheless neglects, namely: love. In order to show this, I compare the accounts given of the finitude of human existence by Heidegger (mortality) to that of both Arendt (natality) and Bultmann (historicity). In doing so, it will become clear that the fundamental experience characterising human existence is neither death (Heidegger), nor birth (Arendt), but the love that unfolds itself between these two events (Bultmann).

Phenomenology as a Queer Method

Dr Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere

Week 8, Thursday 13 March, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Phenomenology and queer theory, as a form of critical theory, are generally considered to be entirely distinct styles of thinking, if not straightforwardly opposed in their presuppositions and aims. However, this lecture will explore how—much to the contrary—phenomenology should instead be considered as an inherently queer method, reinvigorating it as the method of choice for the study of religion (a queer phenomenon if ever there was one). After all, characterised by the so-called ‘reduction of the natural attitude’, it exists precisely in what we could call the ‘bracketing of (hetero)normativity’. To that end, we will first consider how the project of a ‘queer phenomenology’ can be conceived in a properly methodological sense, distinguishing it from a limited phenomenology of sexuality or gender. Second, we will critically discuss contemporary phenomenological forms of heteronormativity, particularly in France, in order to illustrate how heteronormativity is not simply a political but a distinctly methodological—and thus phenomenological—problem. 


Nikolaas Cassidy-Deketelaere obtained a DPhil in Theology at Balliol College in 2020 and is now a Research Fellow at KU Leuven. He has published articles in journals such as Angelaki, Literature & Theology, and Modern Theology. He is the editor of The Pulse of Sense: Encounters with Jean-Luc Nancy (Routledge, 2021) and The Emmanuel Falque Reader (Bloomsbury, 2024). His work is situated at the intersection of phenomenology, systematic theology, and queer theory. Currently, he is working on a book that develops a phenomenology of queerness.

Lectures of the Shivdasani Visiting Fellow

Pir Sadardin's retelling of Vishnu mytho-history

Imran Visram 

Week 2, Friday 31 January, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Pir Sadardin was a lyricist, storyteller, and mystic-teacher of Persian ancestry who lived in the fourteenth-century. Through his lyrics, he disseminated the central teachings of a mystical tradition known as the Satpanth (‘Path of Truth’) in the regions and local languages of western North India.  


This lecture examines Pir Sadardin’s retelling of the Vishnu itihāsa (mytho-history) as expressed in his ārtīs (ritual praise songs) and chogaḍiyās (astrological songs). In these compositions, Pir Sadardin links each of Vishnu’s ten avatāras to specific moments, figures, and ideas known to the wider itihāsa. However, in his retelling he uniquely emphasises that each era (yuga) was marked by teacher (guru/pīr) and king (nar/shāh), through whom salvation is possible, extending the popular narrative history to include important figures from the Islamic tradition.

 

Depictions of Krishna in Ismaili Muslim literature

Imran Visram 

Week 5, Monday 17 February, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

This lecture explores how Krishna is depicted in the Ismaili ginān literature. The gināns are lyrical compositions authored by a family line of pīrs (mystic-teachers) who are associated with a stream of the Ismaili movement known as the Satpanth (‘Path of Truth’). The majority of the ginān corpus was composed at the height of Vaishnava bhakti in western North India, and these lyrics continue to be recited today by South Asian Ismaili Muslims. 

Several references are made in the ginān literature to episodes in Krishna’s life that align with the wider Indian narrative tradition. For example, his slaying of Putana and his defeat of Kaliya are noted, and central figures in like Draupadi and Sudama are used to teach about divine protection and generosity. Interesting, however, are those instances in the gināns wherein Krishna assumes the role of the narrator of the lyric to teach about key Islamic doctrines, and to persuade audiences to embrace the Satpanth (‘Path of Truth’). 

 

Imran Visram is a DPhil candidate in Theology and Religion at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His doctoral research examines the central themes and teachings that are conveyed in religious song-poems of North Indian provenance, of a genre known as the ginān, which have been preserved by Ismaili Muslims for over seven centuries. His broader areas of research interest include Indo-religious mythology, devotionalism in South Asia, and the revival and regeneration of living, oral traditions.

 

Other Talks and Seminars

Female Gurus in Vaishnavism

Prof. Ruby Sain 

Week 7, Thursday 6 March, 2.00-3.00, OCHS Library

Practices and performances conducive to asceticism, including praising and praying Krishna, facilitated the tempo of bhakti movement across borders of language, varna, class, and culture within India and beyond – more widely taking root in the Vaishnava tradition in subsequent centuries. Women conformed to their spirituality amidst the worldly realm, thereby generating a fresh lease of life to potential women devotees who wished to embark on a journey towards mokshya and enlightenment. The impact of their full-fledged surrender to Lord Krishna is broadly documented in different scriptural and hagiographical contexts, as their illustrious lives are invoked by erudite Vaishnava scholars and naïve devotees for seeking bliss, and peace of mind. This paper highlights the current scenarios of women’s journey toward spiritual authority within Gaudiya Vaisnavism  and reveals a landscape to enable a critical examination of whether Gaudiya Vaisnavism diverges from or aligns with the broader norms in its treatment of women gurus and ascetics.

Ruby Sain has completed her studies from University of Kalyani (B.A.,M.A., Ph.D.), She has been serving the profession of Sociology for over 30 years at Jadavpur University and now at Adamas University. She served as Guest Faculty at University of Manitoba, in Canada, Lund University and Gothenborg University in Sweden, Abo Academy University in Finland, University of California,Berkeley and Grand Valley State University, Michigan in USA, University of Bergen, Norway, Lancaster University and  also Visiting Fellow in Oxford University, UK. She has also delivered several distinguished lectures around throughout the south-Asian and Indian sub-continent and internationally at University of Leeds, UK, and Hiroshima University, Japan.


She has published many articles in different journals and contributed several chapters to many edited books and has also done various major and minor Research Projects for UGC (University Grants Commission, New Delhi) and also in collaboration with Gothenborg university in Sweden, Abo Academi University in Finland, University of Manitoba in Canada, Mahidol University in Thailand, University of Hiroshima, Japan and Lancaster University in England. In addition, she has already authored and edited eleven books namely, “Sociology of Religion: Past, Present and Future”, “Depression among the Elderly”, “White Collar Worker’s Trade Unions in Bengal 2005-2008: A Sociological Study”, “Contemporary Social Problems in India- Vol. 1” and Vol. I1 , “Ageing among the Muslim”, Religious Pluralism in Contemporary  India, The Future of Religious Studies  in India , ‘Debastuti’(in Bengali) ,  Reinventing  Syama Prasad Mookerjee  and Religion ,Environment and Society etc . She has also established the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society in the Department of Sociology at Jadavpur and now it’s Academic Advisor. This Centre is first of its kind in South Asia. She is Founding Editor of the first journal entitled “Jadavpur University Journal of Sociology” .Her forthcoming book is “Contemporary Social Problems in India- Vol. II1” (in press). She is Editor- in Chief of the Journal of Indian Religion and Society (newly launching in 2025). She has also published the future academic study of sociology of religion in the Routledge book of Future of Religious Studies in India.



The Origin of ‘Hindu’: Conceptions of ‘India’ and Gandhāra in the Earliest Iranian, South Asian, and Greek Sources

Prof. Alice Collett and Dr Rhyne King 

Week 4, Wednesday 12 February, 2.30-3.30, OCHS Library

In this paper, we reassess the earliest appearances of Hinduš and Gandhāra in the Iranian, South Asian, and Greek sources. We first demonstrate that the Persian conception of Hinduš and Gandhāra was imprecise, but that in a broad sense, the Persians considered Hinduš to be the Lower Indus and Gandhāra the Upper Indus. Contemporary South Asian sources place these toponyms in a similar area. A careful assessment of the range of sources indicates that the Persians borrowed these terms from indigenous South Asian words. In contrast, the Greeks largely ignored Gandhāra and imagined Hinduš as an expansive, fantastical land. 

 

Hinduš has been central to debates about the origins of ideas about a geographical region known as ‘India’ and the religion of the majority of its inhabitants known – in modern times – as ‘Hinduism.’ Initially, Hinduš was taken to refer to ‘India’, although the extent and range of the geographical or geopolitical landscape being inferred was uncertain. In more recent times, both scholars of ancient Persia and early South Asia have begun to translate the term as ‘Sindh’. We contrast Persian understanding of Hinduš with what Persian sources say about the region of Gandhāra, to demonstrate that, at times, the two regions were confused, and understanding of them limited. 

 

Alice Collett is a specialist in ancient Indian religions. Her research focus, to date, has been on women in early Indian Buddhism. Her publications include Women in Early Indian Buddhism: Comparative Textual Studies (OUP, 2013), Lives of Early Buddhist Nuns: Biography as History (OUP 2016) and Translating Buddhism: Historical and Contextual Perspectives (SUNY, 2021). Current projects include an outreach project that offers workshops to primary and secondary schools in and around Scotland on South Asian history, and a collaborative project with the School of Computer Science, working on digital tools for ancient inscriptions. During 2024-2025, she is visiting Oxford as a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 


Rhyne King is an Arts & Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2021. His primary research interests are in the social, economic, and political history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which stretched from the Indus and Central Asia to the eastern Mediterranean from 550 to 330 BCE. His first book, The House of the Satrap: The Making of the Ancient Persian Empire, is forthcoming with the University of California press in 2025.