| Wendy Doniger | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 20, 1940 New York, New York |
| Residence | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | History of Religions, Hinduism, Sanskrit literature, Mythology |
| Institutions | University of Chicago |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Oxford University |
| Doctoral advisor | Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Sr. |
| Doctoral students | Over 100, including: David Gordon White, Jeffrey Kripal, David Dean Shulman, Laurie Patton |
Wendy Doniger (O'Flaherty) (born November 20, 1940) is an American Indologist and Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the Committee on Social Thought. She has taught at the University of Chicago since 1978.[1]
Much of her work is focused on translating, interpreting and comparing elements of Hindu mythology through modern contexts of gender, sexuality and identity. She describes herself as "a Sanskritist, indeed a recovering Orientalist"[2] and "an old-fashioned philologist".[3]
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Doniger was born in New York City to immigrant non-observant Jewish parents, and raised in Great Neck NY, where her father, Lester L Doniger (1909–1971), ran a publishing business. While in high school, she studied dance under George Balanchine and Martha Graham. She graduated summa cum laude in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Radcliffe College in 1962, and received her M.A. from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in June 1963. She then studied in India in 1963–1964 with a 12-month Junior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies. She gained her first Ph.D. from Harvard University in June 1968, with a dissertation on 'Asceticism and Sexuality in the Mythology of Siva,' supervised by Daniel H. H. Ingalls, Sr.. She obtained her second, a D. Phil. in Oriental Studies from Oxford University, in February 1973, with a dissertation on ‘The Origins of Heresy in Hindu Mythology,’ supervised by R.C.Zaehner. She has since been awarded six honorary doctorates.[1]
Doniger holds the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Chair in History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and has served on the editorial board of History of Religions since 1979, as well as editing a dozen other publications over her lifetime. In 1984 she was elected President of the American Academy of Religion, and in 1997 President of the Association for Asian Studies. She serves on the International Editorial Board of the Encyclopædia Britannica.[1]
In June 2000, she was awarded the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for excellence in multi-cultural literature, non-fiction, for Splitting the Difference; and in October, 2002, the Rose Mary Crawshay prize from the British Academy, for the best book about English literature written by a woman, for The Bedtrick. The American Academy of Religion awarded her the 2008 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.[1] She was invited to give the 2010 Art Institute of Chicago President's Lecture at the Chicago Humanities Festival, which was entitled, "The Lingam Made Flesh: Split-Level Symbolism in Hindu Art"[4]
Since she began writing in the 1960s, Doniger has gained the reputation of being "one of America's major scholars in the humanities".[5] Her books both in Hinduism and other fields have been positively reviewed by Indian scholar Vijaya Nagarajan[6] and American Hindu scholar Lindsey B. Harlan, who noted as part of a positive review that "Doniger's agenda is her desire to rescue the comparative project from the jaws of certain proponents of postmodernism".[7] Of her Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit, Indologist Richard Gombrich wrote: "Intellectually, it is a triumph..."[8] Gombrich called Doniger's Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva "learned and exciting".[8] Doniger's Rigveda, a translation of 108 hymns selected from the canon, was deemed among the most reliable by historian of religion Ioan P. Culianu[9] She has also been called "one of the most distinguished mythologists of our time" by Sudhir Kakar.[10]
Doniger's 2009 book The Hindus: An Alternative History received many positive reviews, e.g. from the Library Journal,[11] the Times Literary Supplement,[12] the New York Review of Books,[13] the New York Times,[14] and The Hindu.[15] According to the Hindustan Times, The Hindus was a #1 bestseller in the non-fiction category in India in 2009.[16] In January 2010, the National Book Critics Circle named The Hindus as a finalist for its 2009 book awards.[17] The Hindu American Foundation protested this decision, alleging inaccuracies and bias in the book.[18]
Beginning in the early 2000s, a disagreement arose within the Hindu community over whether Doniger accurately described their traditions. Together with many of her colleagues, she was the subject of a critique by Rajiv Malhotra[19] for using psychoanalytical concepts to interpret non-Western subjects. Malhotra claimed that Hinduism was being demonized to create shame amongst Hindu youth.[20] Christian Lee Novetzke, associate professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Washington, summarizes this controversy as follows: "Wendy Doniger, a premier scholar of Indian religious thought and history expressed through Sanskritic sources, has faced regular criticism from those who consider her work to be disrespectful of Hinduism in general." Professor Novetzke cites Doniger's use of "psychoanalytical theory" as "a kind of lightning rod for the censure that these scholars receive from freelance critics and 'watch-dog' organizations that claim to represent the sentiments of Hindus."[21]
Martha C. Nussbaum, concurring with Novetzke, adds that while the agenda of those in the American Hindu community who criticize Doniger appears similar to that of the Hindu right-wing in India, it is not quite the same since it has "no overt connection to national identity", and that it has created feelings of guilt among American scholars, given the prevailing ethos of ethnic respect, that they might have offended people from another culture.[22] While Doniger has agreed that Indians have ample grounds to reject postcolonial domination, she claims that her works are only a single perspective which does not subordinate Indian self-identity.[23]
In March 2010, Hindu American Foundation co-founder and urologist Aseem Shukla debated elements of the book The Hindus: An Alternative History with Doniger on a Washington Post-sponsored blog on faith and religion, and accused her of sexualising and exoticising some of the holiest passages in the Hindu scriptures. Doniger replied that her book has sold well in India and asked her critics to show specifically where her interpretations of texts were wrong.[24]
Earle Waugh, Professor Emeritus of Divinity at the University of Alberta, refers to the controversy as an example of the conflict between religious tradition and the use of Western analytic tools such as Freudian psychology.[25]
Doniger has written 16 books, translated (primarily from Sanskrit to English) with commentary 9 other volumes, has contributed to many edited texts and has written hundreds of articles in journals, magazines and newspapers. These include New York Times Book Review, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Times, The Washington Post, U. S. News and World Report, International Herald Tribune, Parabola, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Daedalus, The Nation, and the Journal of Asian Studies.[1]
Published under the name of Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty:
Published under the name of Wendy Doniger:
Published under the name of Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty:
Published under the name of Wendy Doniger:
Published under the name of Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty:
Published under the name of Wendy Doniger:
That is why, with the exception of Geldner's German translation, the most reliable modern translations of the Rgveda-W. O'Flaherty's being one of them-are only partial. However, W. O'Flaherty has, in her present translation, a wider scope than other scholars – Louis Renou, for instance, whose Hymnes speculatifs du Veda are a model of accuracy – who prefer to limit their choice to one thematic set of hymns.
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| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Annette Peach Lucy Newlyn |
Rose Mary Crawshay Prize 2002 and K. Flint |
Succeeded by Jane Stabler Claire Tomalin |