Loriliai Biernacki

Affiliated Faculty are not employees of the Center for Asian Studies. Please contact this faculty member at their home department.

Education

Ph.D., Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2000
B.A., Princeton University

Regional and Thematic Interests

Hinduism, Religion and Science, Tantra, Gender, Panentheism

Profile

Loriliai Biernacki (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include Hinduism, the interface between religion and science, and gender. Her first book, Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra (Oxford, 2007) won the Kayden Award in 2008. She is co-editor of God’s Body: Panentheism Across World Religions (Oxford University Press, 2013). Her study of the 11th century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism, was published from Oxford University Press in 2023. It addresses the 11th century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta's notions of selfhood, body, and cosmology, and won the American Academy of Religion Book Prize, Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective 2024. She is also currently working on the interstices between religion, science and panentheism.

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 take on Indian philosophy, titled "Dvaita." Emboldened by the relish of Indian food, with such a wondrous plethora of vegetarian variety, her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania brought her to new and foreign shores as she studied the 11th century Indian Tantric thinker Abhinavagupta. 

Selected Publications

Books (Peer-reviewed): 

The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism, Oxford University Press, 2023. (Winner of the American Academy of Religion Book Prize: Excellence in the Study of Religion, Constructive-Reflective category, 2024)

Co-Editor: Panentheism Across the World’s Religious Traditions, Oxford University Press, 2013. The Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, Oxford University Press, 2007. (Winner of the Kayden Book Award, 2008)

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters:

2023 “Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism in Dialogue with Contemporary Neuroscience: Vimarśa and Integrated Information Theory (IIT)” in Panentheism in Indian and Western Thought: Cross-cultural Interventions. New York: Routledge, 2023. (11,625 words). 

2022 “Tantric Bodies, AI Immortality and a Yogurt Model of Self” in Routledge Handbook on Religion and the Body. Eds., George Pati and Yudit Greenberg. New York: Routledge, 2022. (10,240 words).

2022 “Abhinavagupta’s Svātantryavāda: Mental Causality, Emergentism and Intuitionist Mathematics” in Cross Cultural Approaches to Consciousness: Mind, Nature and 2 Ultimate Reality. Eds., Itay Shani and Susanne Beiweis. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2022 (10,685 words). 

2022 “Body and Mind in Medieval Hinduism” in Cultural History of Hinduism in the PostClassical Age, 800-1500 CE. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2022 (10423 words).

2020 “The Body and Wonder in Tantra” in Contemplative Studies and Hinduism. Purushottama Bilimoria and Rita Sherma, Eds., New York: Routledge, 2020, 132-142 (5095 words).

2019 “Subtle Body: Rethinking the body’s subjectivity through Abhinavagupta” in Transformational Embodiment in Asian Religions: Subtle Bodies, Spatial Bodies. George Pati and Katherine Zubko, Eds., Routledge Press, 2019, 108-127 (13591 words).

2018 "Abhinavagupta" in Routledge History of Indian Philosophy, New York: Routledge, 2018, 437-445 (4182 words).

2017 “Material Subjects, Immaterial Bodies: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheist Matter” in Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science and the New Materialisms. Mary-Jane Rubenstein and Catherine Keller, Eds., Fordham University Press, 2017, 182-202 (9554 words).

2016 “Psychology of Meditation: Philosophical Perspectives” in The Psychology of Meditation: Research and Practice. Michael West, Ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, 93-118 (10422 words).

2016 “Connecting Consciousness to Physical Causality: Abhinavagupta’s Phenomenology of Subjectivity and Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory” Religions 7, 87 (2016), 1-11 (7071 words) DOI: 10.3390/rel7070087.

2016 “Words and Word-bodies: Writing the Religious Body,” in Words. Religious Language Matters., Hemel, Ernst van den, and Asja Szafraniec, Eds., New York: Fordham University Press, 2016, 70-83 (8714 words).

2015 “The Conscious Body: Thinking about the Relation between Mind and Body with Abhinavagupta’s Tantra” in Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality. Edward Kelly, Adam Crabtree and Paul Marshall, eds., Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. 2015, 349-386 (14856 words).

2014 "Abhinavagupta's Theogrammatical Topography of the One and the Many," in Divine Multiplicity: Trinities and Diversities, Chris Boesel, Ed., New York: Fordham Press, 2014, 85-105 (9372 words).

2013 “Panentheism Outside the Box” in Panentheism Across the World’s Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, 1-17 (6819 words).

2013 “Panentheism and Hindu Tantra: Abhinavagupta’s Grammatical Cosmology” in Panentheism Across the World’s Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, 161-176 (6868 words).

2013 “The Yoginī and the Tantric Sex Rite, or How to Keep a Secret” in ‘Yoginī’ in South Asia: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Istvan Keul, Ed. New York: Routledge Press, 2013, 213-225 (6662 words).

2011 "The Absent Mother and Bodied Speech: Psychology and Gender in Late Medieval Tantra" in Transformations and Transfer of Tantra in Asia and Beyond, Istvan Keul, Ed., De Gruyter Press, December 2011, 215-238 (9440 words).

2011 "Kālī Practice: Revisiting Women's Roles in Tantra" in Woman and Goddess in Hinduism: Reinterpretations and Re-envisionings, ed. Tracy Pintchman and Rita Sherma, Palgrave-McMillan, 2011, 121-145 (10420 words).

2007 "Possession, Absorption and the Transformation of Samāveśa": in Expanding and Merging Horizons: Contributions to South Asian and Cross-cultural Studies in Commemoration of Wilhelm Halbfass, Ed., Karin Preisendanz, Veroffentlichungen zu den Sprachen und KulturenSudasiens series. Wien: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007 and Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass 2007, 491-505 (7134 words).

2004 "Shree Maa of Kamakkhya" in The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the US, Oxford University Press, 2004, 179–202 (10624 words).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2018 “Darwinian selection and religion: emic and etic contrasts.” Religion, Brain & Behavior. DOI:10.1080/2153599X.2018.1513862, 2018 (2750 words).

2018 “Transcendence in Sports: How Do We Interpret Mysticism in Sports? Tantra and Cognitive Science Perspectives.” Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, July 2018, 4:24-39 (9233 words).

2017 “Imagining the Body in Tantric Contemplative Practice” International Journal of Dharma Studies 5(4), 1-15; Jan 2017, (8031 words). DOI: 10.1186/s40613-016-0043-7.

2014 “A Cognitive Science View of Abhinavagupta's Understanding of Consciousness,” Religions 5(3), 2014, 767-779 (6840 words).

2014 “The Paranormal Body: Reflections on Indian Perspectives towards the Paranormal.” Paranthropology 5:1, 2014, 81-92 (7137 words).

2014 “Miming Manu: Authority and Mimicry in a Tantric Context,” Journal of South Asian Studies, 36:4, 2014 644-660 (10514 words).

2012 "Real Men Say No: Representations of Masculinity in Hinduism" in English Language Notes, Fall/Winter 2012, 50:2, 49-62 (7427 words).

2011 “Towards A Tantric Nondualist Ethics through Abhinavagupta’s Notion of Rasa” in Oxford Journal of Hindu Studies, 4:3 October 2011, 4:3 October 2011, 258-273 (8487 words).

2006 “Sex Talk and Gender Rites: Women and Tantric Sex” in International Journal of Hindu Studies, 10:2 August, 2006, 187–208 (13536 words).