• Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies
• Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania)
• Director of Undergraduate Studies

Contact Information

Primary Teaching Areas and Opportunities for Student Supervision Hinduism Tantra Gender Studies Critical Theory Women in Religion Buddhism in India Asian Religions in America   Selected Publications The Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, Oxford University Press, 2007 "Wilhelm Halbfass: India and Philology": in Religious Studies Review, August 2007 "Possession, Absorption and the Transformation of Samāveśa": in Wilhelm Halbfass Commemoration Volume. Veroffentlichungen zu den Sprachen und KulturenSudasiens series. Wien: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007 “Sex Talk and Gender Rites: Women and Tantric Sex” in International Journal of Hindu Studies, 7:3 August, 2006. "Shree Maa of Kamakkhya" in The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the US, Oxford University Press, 2004

Overview

 
Loriliai Biernacki Loriliai Biernacki grew up in the deep rural South, in Louisiana , imbibing the hot humid summers full of lazy afternoons swimming in the creeks amidst the local alligators. How she made it to study on the East coast is a wonder, since neither she, nor anyone she knew, actually realized that it was possible to go to any other college than LSU or Southeastern University in Hammond, Louisiana until her senior year in high school when a mysterious recruiter for Princeton offered her the opportunity to skip out on a math test. She received her Bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University , where she studied creative writing, with an emphasis in poetry. She still enjoys poetry and once received honorable mention in a national poetry contest for a poem on her 007 "shaken not stirred" take on Indian philosophy, titled "Dvaita." Emboldened by the relish of Indian food, with such a wondrous plethora of vegetarian variety, her PhD. from the University of Pennsylvania brought her to new and foreign shores as she studied the 11th century Indian Tantric thinker Abhinavagupta.
 
Apart from her study of Indian religions with an emphasis on Tantra, her research interests include gender, critical theory and ethics. Her first book, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra ( Oxford , 2007), incorporates these interests in gender and critical theory. Her favorite superhero is Max Guevara, that is, after Che Guevara. She hopes one day to penetrate Abhinavagupta's arcane philosophy well enough to get a clue about the fabulous siddhis Tantra promises.