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Sun Min
Director of Media Relations
Alyssa Vine
Associate Director of Media Relations
Rachel McDermott
Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures
Chair of the Department
Rachel McDermott, Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures (AMEC), joined the Barnard faculty in 1994. In addition to her teaching duties for AMEC, she is affiliated with Barnard's Human Rights Studies Program. Professor McDermott is committed to the study of comparative religion and teaches comparative courses in which important religious themes are traced across cultures.
Professor McDermott's research focuses on the Hindu-goddess-centered religious traditions of the Bengal region of India. Her forthcoming book Of Fortunes and Festivals: Money, Power, and the Goddesses of Bengal, focuses on the Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatra Pujas and the relation between economics, politics, and religion as seen through the lens of these 300-year-old public festivals.
Selected Publications
Sources of Indian Traditions, 3rd ed., general editor (New York: Columbia University Press. Under contract).
Of Fortunes and Festivals: Money, Power, and the Goddesses of Bengal (New York: Columbia University Press, Under contract).
Breaking Boundaries with the Goddess: New Directions in the Study of Saktism; Essays in Honor of Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya, coedited with C. Humes (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers. Under contract.)
"Meeting 'the Mother Who Takes Across': Christian Encounters with the Fierce Goddesses of Hinduism," The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Vol. 16 (2003): 48–57.
Encountering Kali: At the Margins, At the Center, In the West. Co-edited with J. Kripal. Based upon the proceedings of the Kali Conference, Barnard College, September 1996 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kali and Uma in the Devotional Poetry of Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
"New Age Hinduism, New Age Orientalism, and the Second-generation South Asian," in an issue devoted to "Who Speaks for Hinduism?" The Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 68, No. 4 (December 2000): 721–731.
"Raising Snakes in Bengal: The Use of Tantric Imagery in Sakta Poetry Contexts," Tantra in Practice, D.G. White, ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000): 167–183.
"The Western Kali," Devi: The Goddess in India, J. S. Hawley and D. M. Wulff eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996): 281–313.
Associate Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures
Chair of the Department
Barnard College
212-854-5416
EDUCATION:
AB, University of Pennsylvania
MDiv, Harvard Divinity School
AM, PhD, Harvard
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SPECIALIZATIONS:
Comparative religion
Human rights studies