Tracy Coleman

I am a scholar of Hinduism and its traditions of bhakti (devotion), especially Krishna-bhakti in the Sanskrit epics and purāṇas, and my teaching and research address issues of women, men, and gender in religion and society.  In my work on Krishna's relationships with women in the Harivaṃśa, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, I reconsider the prevalent claim that bhakti empowers women in social and religious life, and I argue instead that despite the revolutionary potential of various devotional movements in which women are sometimes glorified, bhakti often functions as a conservative historical process upholding the traditional gender hierarchy. Situating the development of bhakti within larger cultural discourses on dharma (truth, duty, proper behavior), I read Krishna traditions in relation to constructions of masculinity, including the Buddha's ascetic renunciation of women and family, and Rāma's unjust treatment of Sītā in the Rāmāyaṇa.  My work thus explores how women and femininity function within the context of narratives about heroic male figures who embody dharma and thus represent truth, authority, and power in socio-religious life.  In addition to a monograph in progress on these topics, I have work in print on Krishna and Rādhā, with a focus on Jayadeva's Gītagovinda, and more recently I have published an analysis of Śrīdhara's commentary on select chapters and passages in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.  While I am primarily a scholar of Sanskrit literature, I have also studied Odia, and I have an M.A. in French and competence in German.  Since 2016, I have been the Editor in Chief of Oxford Bibliographies--Hinduism.  In the Department of Religion at Colorado College where I have taught since 2001, I was Department Chair from 2011 to 2016.