Description:

GSA Guest Lecture: Presentation by Professor Marko Geslani

Professor Geslani is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina. Professor Geslani is a historian of religion who specializes in ritual studies and medieval Hinduism. His first book, Rites of the God-King: Śānti and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism (2018), forms a historiographic critique of Hinduism through a history of omen-appeasement (śānti) rituals, from late Vedic ritual manuals to medieval Hindu purāṇas. His current research explores the role of the astral tradition (jyotiḥśāstra) on the problems of personhood and state formation in early Hinduism, engaging theories of gender, masculinity, and ornamentation. He is also working on a racial critique of the study of Asian religions as a setting for new approaches to Orientalism and premodern Asian studies.