Thesis Chapters by Jeff S . Wilson
In this dissertation, I show that by persistently challenging and disrupting the normative worldv... more In this dissertation, I show that by persistently challenging and disrupting the normative worldviews presented by the text of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, the character Aśvatthāman serves as a walking category error that must be confronted, refuted, and excluded from the world of the text so that the normative order can prevail. Thus, when the heroic prince Arjuna finally triumphs over Aśvatthāman in Book X, Aśvatthāman’s defeat and exile allows the Pāṇḍavas to symbolically unify and rehabilitate the fractured conceptual world of the epic. The dissertation makes this argument over the course of five chapters, which explain how interlocking motifs—such as militant Brahmins, anger and desire, death, destruction, and devotion, and fierce debates on the normative concept of dharma—combine to produce the narrative arc of a character who effectively dramatizes key concerns about normativity, cosmology, and the interpretation of the text itself.
Papers by Jeff S . Wilson
International Journal of Comic Art, 2021
Conference Presentations by Jeff S . Wilson
Texas Asia Conference, 2019
This paper retraces the history of the Indian national goddess Bharat Mata (“Mother India”), from... more This paper retraces the history of the Indian national goddess Bharat Mata (“Mother India”), from her initial rise to popularity in the closing years of the nineteenth century to the present day activities of the all-female Hindu nationalist paramilitary group known as the Durga Vahini (“Durga’s Army”). Through close readings of Bankimcandra Chatterji’s revolutionary 1882 novel Anandamath, the sixth-century epic poem known as the Devi Mahatmya, the contemporary ideological literature of the Durga Vahini, and the 2012 documentary The World Before Her, this paper offers a brief glimpse of the many histories, prehistories, and counterhistories of the Mother India ideal. I argue that while Indic discourses on sovereignty have long employed and continue to employ multiple ritual and mythological scripts simultaneously, the modern concept of Mother India in particular serves as a unique site of encounter between postcolonial nationalisms and the problematics of gender.
In this case, the Mother India discourse is not a political theology but a political thealogy that its propagators have historically framed in essentialized, feminine terms. Likewise, this thealogy is inherently political, as it has from the very beginning engaged with emic ideas about the power of exception, the paradox of sovereignty, the proliferation of sovereign bodies, and bare life.
Teaching Documents by Jeff S . Wilson
In this course, we will examine the long and storied history of human contact with feminine divin... more In this course, we will examine the long and storied history of human contact with feminine divine beings from the mysterious Venus of Willendorf twenty-five thousand years ago to the presence of modern goddesses in contemporary film posters, music videos, and magazine ads. By the end of this course, students will be able to identify key trends, concepts, and controversies in the historical discourse surrounding both the worship of goddesses and the intersection of religion and gender more broadly.
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Thesis Chapters by Jeff S . Wilson
Papers by Jeff S . Wilson
Conference Presentations by Jeff S . Wilson
In this case, the Mother India discourse is not a political theology but a political thealogy that its propagators have historically framed in essentialized, feminine terms. Likewise, this thealogy is inherently political, as it has from the very beginning engaged with emic ideas about the power of exception, the paradox of sovereignty, the proliferation of sovereign bodies, and bare life.
Teaching Documents by Jeff S . Wilson