Leela Prasad

Leela Prasad (Ph.D., Folklore & Folklife, University of Pennsylvania) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University. Her research spans the anthropology of ethics, colonial-era ethnography, prison pedagogy, Gandhi, and lived Hinduism. Leela is fluent in Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, and Hindi. Her work examines the lived, expressive dimensions of ethics in Hindu and other Indic contexts through various lenses such as narrative, art, material culture, ritual and everyday practice. She has articles on these subjects in Numen, Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Oral Tradition, Journal of South Asian History and Culture, and in various edited volumes. Her book, Poetics of Conduct: Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town (Columbia University Press, 2007) won the American Academy of Religion’s “Best First Book in the History of Religions” prize. She co-edited Gender and Story in South India (SUNY Press, 2006), and as guest-curator in 1999 of the first exhibition on Indian American life (Balch Institute/Historical Society of Pennsylvania), edited its catalogue and co-directed an accompanying documentary film called Back & Forth. Leela is at work on her next book, titled The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty through Storytelling in Colonial India. She is also co-directing Aftertone: Moved by Gandhi, an ethnographic film that explores how Gandhi exists, beyond the biographically known figure, in the emotional imaginary of individuals, moving them one way or the other. The film leads into her new ethnographic book project on Gandhian resonances in contemporary prison life in India and the US.