Dr Elena Mucciarelli
Assistant Professor of Hinduism in the Sanskrit Tradition - Gonda Lecturer
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Elena Mucciarelli is a specialist in ritual and performative traditions of South India. Her research combines philology, anthropology, and media studies. Her holistic approach brings together the study of primary sources in several languages and field work, especially in South India where she has been going for the last 10 years to study and document ritual as well as theater practices. She investigated female divine figures in Vedic rituals and its re-use in the construction of socio-political identities in premodern Karnataka. Her scholarly interests encompass ritual aspects in the performative tradition of modern Kerala and the conceptualization of magic through the analysis of ritual practices and textualized knowledge, and the articulation of materiality and cultural techniques in relation to indigenous categories. Related publications include the monograph, Changes in the Semantics between the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā and the Brāhamaṇas (2014), and articles for the peer-reviewed journals Numen, Journal of South Asian Intellectual History, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Cracow Indological Studies. Currently she is working on two interrelated and intertwined projects that investigate the concept of magic in South India through the analysis of possession ritual-theatre, domestic rituals and the medieval compendia of songs and incantations.