23. Patton Burchett | Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in North India

In this episode we talk with Patton Burchett about his latest
book A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga, and Sufism in
North India (2019, Columbia University Press) and his upcoming
course, YS 115 | A History of Yoga and Devotion. Patton tells
Seth about the teachers who inspired his studies, and how
academics confuse the social and interactive nature of Indian
devotional practices with a more solitary Judeo-Christian concept
of devotion. They also dive into the competing influences of
Persian and Sanskritic culture in North India that shaped the
growing Bhakti movements of the time, the communalist politics of
modern religious identities in North India, and the relations
between bhaktas like Kabīr and yogīs like Gorkhnāth.

Speaker Bio
Patton Burchett is an Assistant Professor of Religious
Studies at 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.  


Links


https://wm.academia.edu/PattonBurchett 

YS 115 | A History of Yoga and Devotion