Our community was pleased to welcome Professor Shubha Pathak (American University) for an Open House discussion held on Thursday, February 12, 2015. The lively session was recorded and is available for viewing below.
While viewing this discussion, participants might like to read the following focus passages in the handout below (taken from Divine Yet Human Epics: Reflections of Poetic Rulers from Ancient Greece and India by Shubha Pathak).
Focus Passages for this Discussion: from the Iliad, Odyssey, Rāmāyana, and Mahābhārata (PDF)
You can watch the video on our YouTube channel, or below:
For further videos please visit the Watch page.
If you have comments, questions, or observations about the passages and themes discussed, members can start and continue the conversation associated with this event in this Forum thread.
Shubha Pathak
Associate Professor Department of Philosophy and Religion Shubha Pathak is a historian of religions who studies the mythological literatures of India, Greece, and Rome. In addition to teaching courses on comparative philosophy and comparative religion, she is researching Greco-Roman and Indian epics in their original and later literary forms, focusing on their theological and narratological dimensions. Her monograph, Divine Yet Human Epics: Reflections of Poetic Rulers from Ancient Greece and India (Center for Hellenic Studies, Trustees for Harvard University, 2014), reveals the similar ways in which the primary Greek and Sanskrit epics address their respective audiences’ existential needs. Her edited volume, Figuring Religions: Comparing Ideas, Images, and Activities (State University of New York Press, 2013), shows how metaphor and metonymy theories can be used in comparative religious studies.
Degrees:
AM (divinity), PhD (history of religions), University of Chicago Divinity School; PhD (social and behavioral sciences), Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health; AB (religion), Princeton University http://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/pathak.cfm
Imaage credit
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indo-GreekBanquet.JPG