Meet the Faculty

David L. Haberman

• Professor, Department of Religious Studies
• Department Chair, Religious Studies

Education

• Ph.D. at University of Chicago, 1984

Contact Information

Background

• Journey Through the Twelve Forests received the American Academy Award for Excellence in 1994
• ACLS/SSRC NEH International Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Fulbright-CIES Research Scholar Fellowship
• Smithsonian-AIIS Senior Research Grant
• Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Research Abroad
• Trustees Teaching Award (2002)

I am interested in a wide range of South Asian religious traditions, and concentrate on the medieval and modern movements of northern India. I have spent the past two and a half decades focusing my research on the culture of Braj, an active pilgrimage site known for its lively temple festivals, performative traditions, and literary creations. More recently I have shifted my research interests to include the ancient city of Banaras, a pilgrimage center and temple town located on the bank of the Ganges River.  My approach combines both textual research and anthropological fieldwork. My Acting as a Way of Salvation (Oxford University Press, 1988) is a study of religious reality construction based on a close examination of a meditation technique devised by the theoreticians of Braj. I have published a book on the circular pilgrimage around Braj, entitled Journey Through the Twelve Forests (Oxford, 1994). I completed an annotated translation of a sixteenth-century Sanskrit text, The Bhaktirasamrtasindhu of Rupa Gosvamin (Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2003), which presents the religious experience of bhakti in terms of classical Indian dramatic theory. My passion these days is for the field of Religion and Ecology; I am involved in developing this emerging field and am currently on the Advisory Board of the Forum on Religion and Ecology now based at Yale University School for Forestry and Environmental Studies. As a student of the religious cultures of India, I am interested in investigating the effects the current environmental degradation is having on the traditional religious culture which views the immanent world of nature as permeated with divine presence; I am also interested in learning how this traditional theology is being employed by Indian environmental activists to resist environmental degradation. My latest book, River of Love in an Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India (University of California Press, 2006), is a study of the Yamuna River, which for centuries has been worshiped as a goddess.  In this book I explore various conceptions of this aquatic goddess with texts stretching back over a period of three millennia and current ethnographic research at a number of temples located on the banks of the river; I examine how the current pollution of the river is affecting the religious culture associated with it; and I track the manner in which the religious community associated with the river is marshalling its religious resources to fight the pollution of the river.  My current book project, which is entitled People Trees: Worship of Trees in Northern India, explores the conception of trees in the context of the tree shrines of northern India while reexamining such concepts as animism and anthropomorphism. Moreover, I am engaged in a project that investigates Western constructions of Hinduism with the aim of opening up the study of those regions of Hindu culture that have been previously denied. Other interests include the study of ritual theory and practice, and exploration of theoretical approaches to the study of religion, especially as regards that never-ending question: "What is religion?"

Research Interests

• History of South Asian religions
• Indian arts and aesthetics
• Ritual studies
• Theories of religion
• Religion and Ecology

Courses Recently Taught

• Religions of the East
• Hinduism
• Religion, Ecology & The Self
• Living Through Nature: Permaculture
• Exploring a Hindu Text: The Bhagavad-gita

Publication Highlights

Books

River of Love in the Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Journey Through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. (Winner of American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence, Historical Category.)

Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rågånugå Bhakti Sådhana. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Reprinted by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers in Delhi in 2001.

The Bhaktirasåmotasindhu of Rëpa Gosvåmin. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in association with Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2003.

Ten Theories of Human Nature. Co-authored with Leslie Stevenson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fourth edition 2004.

Articles

"Ír Nåthaj: The Itinerant Lord of Mount Govardhan." Journal of Vaisnava Studies 3, no. 3 (Summer 1995): 5-24.

"Divine Betrayal: Krishna-Gopal of Braj in the Eyes of Outsiders." Journal of Vaisnava Studies (special volume edited by Margaret Case, Consulting Editor of Princeton University Press) 3, no. 1 (Winter 1994): 83-111.

"On Trial: The Love of the Sixteen Thousand Gopees." History of Religions 33, no. 1 (August 1993): 44-70.