Wendy Doniger

Wendy Doniger (born November 20 1940) is an American scholar of history of religion. Much of her work is focused on translating, interpreting and comparing elements of Hinduism through modern contexts of gender, sexuality and identity. From 1978, she has taught at the University of Chicago, where she currently is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the Committee on Social Thought.

Background

Doniger holds two doctorates, from Harvard University and the University of Oxford, in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. She sits on the fourteen-member editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica. She is also renowned for her writings on Comparative Mythology, namely commonalities between the myths of Ancient India and Ancient Greece.

Doniger is the author, translator, and editor of almost thirty books in as many years. She has translated many Sanskrit texts including the Rig Veda, Laws of Manu, and Kamasutra. Her current works in progress include a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands and an interpretive work, The Mythology of Horses in India. Her latest book, The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was, is about the mythology of self-imitation in ancient India, Shakespeare, medieval Celtic, German, and French romances, and Hollywood films. It forms the basis for her lecture, which is entitled "Self-Imitation in Ancient India, Shakespeare, and Hollywood."

Over her long career, Doniger's work has proceeded on two levels. On the first, she has made available to a general readership translations of Hindu texts, offering detailed introductions and notes to facilitate understanding. On the second, she has worked as a mythologist, bringing into comparison a wide range of narratives through the application of various interpretive lenses, such as feminist and Freudian analyses. Although her original research focused on Hindu mythology, reflecting her original training, she has increasingly diversified the field from which she draws her material and the cultures from which they derive. Her approach illuminates the similarities in tensions regarding gender, sexuality, and identity in narratives from a range of cultures.

The visibility of Doniger's scholarship led to some protests; in one incident, an egg was thrown at her during a November 2003 University of London lecture.

Criticism

A BBC article wrote about Wendy Doniger as, "Professor Wendy Doniger is known for being rude, crude and very lewd in the hallowed portals of Sanskrit Academics. All her special works have revolved around the subject of sex in Sanskrit texts ranging from Siva: The Erotic Ascetic to Tales of Sex and Violence."

Wendy Doniger has been criticized by Hindus and scholars from academia including Michael Witzel, Nicholas Kazanas, Antonio De Nicolas, Krishnan Ramaswamy, S.N. Balagangadhara for her negative portrayals of Hinduism; in particular, her article on Hinduism for Microsoft's Encarta encyclopaedia was so criticised. Subsequently, Microsoft removed Doniger's article and replaced it with an article by Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University. A Washington Post article covering the controversy quoted a former Microsoft engineer (Sankrant Sanu), a persistent critic (Rajiv Malhotra), and various academics, including Doniger.

Professor Michael Witzel of Harvard University has claimed that Wendy Doniger's of Vedic Sanskrit is severly flawed. When Witzel was publicly challenged to prove this claim, he published examples of Doniger's mistranslations and termed her translation as "UNRELIABLE and idiosyncratic". Nicholas Kazanas, a European Indologist, also criticized Doniger's works and wrote that Doniger seems to be obsessed with only one meaning, the most sexual imaginable. In the Journal of Indo-European Studies, Kazanas wrote, "[Doniger] seems to see only one function ... of fertility and sexuality, copulation, defloration, castration and the like: even bhakti 'devotion' is described in stark erotic terms including incest and homosexuality (1980:87-99:125-129). Surely, erotic terms could be metaphors for spiritual or mystical experiences as is evidenced in so much literature?".

Famous Quotes

During the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign, Wendy Doniger criticized Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, of many hypocrisies but that ultimately, "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

Works by Wendy Doniger

• "Tales of Sex and Violence : Folklore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• "Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• "Dreams, Illusions and Other Realities" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• The Oresteia: A New Translation for the Theater by Aeschylus, translated by Wendy Doniger and David Grene
• Mythologies (2 vols.) edited by Yves Bonnefoy, translated under the direction of Wendy Doniger
• The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth by Wendy Doniger
• The Laws of Manu translated with an introduction by Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith
• Purana Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts edited by Wendy Doniger
• The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was: Myths of Self-Imitation by Wendy Doniger
• "The Concept of Duty in South Asia" edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty and J. Duncan M. Derrett
• "The Critical Study of Sacred Texts" edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• "Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts" by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• "Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism" edited and translated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty ; with Daniel Gold, David Haberman, and David Shulman
• "The Rig Veda : An Anthology : One Hundred and Eight Hymns" selected, translated and annotated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• "Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian traditions" edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• "Off with Her Head! : The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture" edited by Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Wendy Doniger
• Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit translated with an introduction by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• Other People's Myths: The Cave of Echoes by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• Siva: The Erotic Ascetic by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty
• Myth and Method edited by Laurie L. Patton and Wendy Doniger
• Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India by Wendy Doniger
• Bed as Autobiography: A Visual Exploration of John Ransom Philips by John Ransom Philips, introduction by Wendy Doniger, interview by Ariel Orr Jordan
• "The Bedtrick : Tales of Sex and Masquerade" by Wendy Doniger
• Kamasutra by Mallanaga Vatsyayana, translated by Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar

External links

• Doniger's homepage at the University of Chicago Divinity School website
• Links to articles by Doniger at University of Chicago Experts website
• "Wendy Doniger" by Annette Keogh Stanford Presidential Lecture in the Humanities and Arts
• Series of blogposts by Doniger at On Faith: A Conversation on Religion at Newsweek.WashingtonPost.com
• Webpage on Splitting The Difference at University of Chicago Press website more titles

Interviews

• Video, October 2005 Myths of Self-Masquerade

Criticism

• Invading the Sacred—An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America
• "U.S. Hinduism Studies: A Question of Shoddy Scholarship" an article in Beliefnet.com by Sankrant Sanu
  • Scholars of Hinduism Under Attack" a response by Martin E. Marty
• "Biases in Hinduism Studies: PART-I" By Abhijit Bagal September 12, 2004 PART-IIPart III
• "The interpretation of gods" By Amy M. Braverman, an article in University of Chicago magazine