Ann Grodzins Gold, professor of religion and anthropology at Syracuse University, will speak on "Landscapes of the Heart: Ecology and Community in Rural North India" as part of the Goodspeed Lecture Series. This convocation, set for 8 p.m. on Monday (Oct. 1) in Slayter Auditorium, will explore complex accounts of nature, morality, and society in rural north India. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Gold specializes in teaching and research on popular religious practice in modern India, gender and religion, and religions and natural environment. Gold's extensive work in the North Indian State of Rajasthan has included studies of pilgrimage, performance, world-renunciation, women's expressive traditions, and cultural constructions of the environment.

"Ideas about ecological and social well-being are intertwined in narratives of the past gathered from elderly persons in rural Rajasthan, North India," says Gold. "These men and women, mostly farmers and herders, embrace democracy and have no desire to return to past regimes of kings and colonial exploitation. Nonetheless, they say that community life -- once characterized by generosity and compassion -- is today marred by anger and selfishness; while trees, wildlife, and rainfall have all radically decreased. My lecture explores these complex accounts of nature, morality, and society."

Gold is a 1992 winner of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, and was a 1993 winner of the CIES Fulbright Scholar Award for research in India. She has received recent fellowship awards from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Spencer Foundation. She is the author of three books includingFruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrimsand among her publications are articles on spirit possession, semiotics of identity, the practice of ethnography, women's ritual storytelling, children's environmental perceptions, and memories of history.

Gold earned her bachelor's (1975), master's (1978), and doctoral (1984) degrees in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

The Goodspeed Lecture Series features scholars whose work is the field of religion or is related to religious issues. The fund is named in honor of the late Edgar J. Goodspeed, an 1890 Denison graduate, who was one of nine biblical scholars who worked on the Revised Standard Version of the Scriptures, published in 1946, which has superseded the King James Version in official usage in many American denominations.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

For press inquiries:

Name

Barbara Stambaugh

Position Title

Director, Media Relations

Primary Email

stambaughb@denison.edu

Business Phone

(740) 587-8575