#98 – Keen on Yoga Podcast with Sravana Borkataky-Varma

Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social
entrepreneur. As a historian, she studies Indian religions
focusing on esoteric rituals and gender, particularly in Hinduism
(Śākta Tantra). As an educator, she is currently a lecturer at
Harvard Divinity School and at the University of North
Carolina-Wilmington. In the past she has taught at the University
of Houston, the University of Montana, Rice University, and
DaLian Neusoft University, China.


Sravana’s current project includes a co-edited volume
titled Living Folk Religions (under contract with
Routledge, 2022), Digital Tantra, a co-edited special
issue journal by International Journal of Hindu
Studies (under contract with Springer, 2022), and her
monograph titled Spotlight and Shadow: Superwomen, Women,
and Hijṛās (2023). In addition, book chapters such as
“Taming Hindu Śakta Tantra on the Internet: Online Pūjās for the
Goddess Tripurasundarī,” in Digital
Hinduism (Routledge, 2020), “The Yogic Body in Global
Transmission,” in The Handbook of Yoga and Meditation
Studies (Routledge, 2021), and “WhatsApp Bagalāmukhī:! The
Social Life and Experiences of a Tantric Goddess” in The
Ethnography of Tantra: Textures and Contexts of Living Tantric
Traditions (State University of New York Press, 2022). Also,
sample titles of her published articles are: “Red: An
Ethnographic Study of Cross-Pollination Between the Vedic and the
Tantric” (2019), “The Dead Speak: A Case Study from the Tiwa
Tribe Highlighting the Hybrid World of Śākta Tantra in Assam”
(2018).


In a previous non-academic avatar, Sravana worked in customer
service in the financial and IT industries. As a social
entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of a nonprofit, Lumen Tree
Portal. Sravana invests in building communities with individuals
from various faith backgrounds who believe in kindness,
compassion, and fulfillment.


Find Sravana on her website:
https://hds.harvard.edu/people/sravana-borkataky-varma