DukeEngage Returns to India's Pearl City, Hyderabad!

In its second year's run, The Loom & the Wheel: Literacy & Livelihood in Hyderabad will once again see Duke undergraduates in the Pearl City in the summer of 2010 (June 7- August 7) . The program, co-directed by Leela (Dept of Religion, Duke) and Prasad (Vivekin Group) is a collaboration with the Association for India’s Development and the Smile for Life Foundation. Like in 2008, we will work with elementary school children in economically underprivileged communities on communicative English and storytelling skills, basic science experiments, and visual-art and theater-art projects. The goal: to make the experience of education fun, fruitful, and far-reaching, even transformative, for everybody involved in this collaboration.

Hyderabad is a beautiful city, known to its historians and its fans as the city that materializes the cusp between Muslim and Hindu cultures. Although these are two prominent populations of Hyderabad, it is home to other religious communities like Sikhs, Christians and Parsis, for example. One of the fastest growing cities of India, Hyderabad has become a global technology site in which its new glass architecture now sits intriguingly amidst its magnificent 500-year old stone monuments.

Our DukeEngage team will explore these and other juxtapositions and intersections, the glories and the worries they produce, and discover the rhythms of Hyderabadi daily life, food, its world-famous pearls and bangles, and the arts.

For more details, see http://www.duke.edu/~leela/dukeengage/

To apply for this program, click here

Leela Prasad wins Best First Book in the History of Religions

Leela Prasad, Associate Professor of Ethics and Indian Religions, has been awarded the American Academy of Religion Best First Book in the History of Religions for Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town (Columbia University Press, 2006). Here are some details about the award:

The Best First Book in the History of Religions Award was established by the American Council of Learned Societies in 1891 and is now administered by the American Academy of Religion. This award honors exceptional publications. Eligibility for the award is determined by three criteria: (1) the nomination must be the first book published by the nominee; (2) it must be in the field of "History of Religions" (in the broad sense that it raises historical and/or comparative methodological questions in the field of religion); (3) it must have been published within the calendar year of the given award period.

A committee of five, appointed by the Board of the American Academy of Religion, screens books nominated for the award. The nomination process is initiated by individual presses, who send copies of the nominated book, with a letter stating that the book meets the three criteria mentioned above. Presses may also include statements of the merits and special features of the book.

Awards will be presented at the AAR’s 2007 Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, November 17-20, 2007. Today's press release is available on the AAR site:

The American Academy of Religion 2007 Book Awards