Faculty
Our faculty is comprised of expert scholars and educators in the fields of Yoga Studies, Indology, Religious Studies, and South Asian Studies.
Patton Burchett is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He earned his PhD in South Asian Religions from Columbia University in 2012 and then spent three years as an Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in Religious Studies at New York University (NYU). Patton's research focuses on early modern devotional (bhakti) traditions and tantric and yogic religiosity in North India and on the interrelations of magic, science, and religion in the rise of Indian and Western modernities. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on bhakti literature and Mughal-era Indian religious history (among other topics), and his first book, A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India (Columbia University Press) was published in 2019.
Courses taught:
Selected Publications:
- 2021. "The Value of Tantra: Markets, Modernity, and Mumbai's Master of Mantra." Co-authored with Lisa Björkman. Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
- 2020. "Ascetics, Kings, and the 'Triumphs' of Vaisṇavism in Mughal India: Myth and Memory in the Many Lives of Krishnadās Payahārī from Rajasthan to the Western Himalayas." South Asian History and Culture.
- 2019. A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India. Columbia University Press.
- 2019. "On the Virtues of Love's Savor: Humble Sufis, Arrogant Tantrikas, and Vaishnava Bhakti Ethics." Journal of Vaishnava Studies 28.1.
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