Dheepa Sundaram

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Institutional Affiliation

University of Denver
Department of Religious Studies

Gender and Women's Studies; Asian Studies

Education

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature, University of Illinois, 2014
• MA, Comparative Literature, University of Illinois, 2008
• BA, Comparative Literature; Religious Studies, Indiana University, 2000

Regional and Thematic Interests

South Asia
Critical Theory
South Asian traditions of performance, aesthetics, and ritual

Profile

Dr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is scholar of performance, ritual, and digital culture at the University of Denver. Her research examines the formation of Hindu virtual religious publics, online platforms, social media, apps, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Dr. Sundaram's current monograph project examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a new, digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively "branding" religious identities through a neoliberal "Vedicizing" of virtual spaces. Her most recent article explores how Instagram helps foster virtual, ethnonationalist, social networks within India, highlighting issues of access/accessibility to religious spaces and the viability and visibility of online counter-narratives, especially those from minoritized/marginalized caste, gender, and class communities.

Selected Publications

Purana-s Reader, co-edited with Deven Patel, Cognella Publishing, (forthcoming, 2018)