#98 – Keen on Yoga Podcast with Sravana Borkataky-Varma

Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social entrepreneur. As a historian, she studies Indian religions focusing on esoteric rituals and gender, particularly in Hinduism (Śākta Tantra). As an educator, she is currently a lecturer at Harvard Divinity School and at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. In the past she has taught at the University of Houston, the University of Montana, Rice University, and DaLian Neusoft University, China. Sravana’s current project includes a co-edited volume titled Living Folk Religions (under contract with Routledge, 2022), Digital Tantra, a co-edited special issue journal by International Journal of Hindu Studies (under contract with Springer, 2022), and her monograph titled Spotlight and Shadow: Superwomen, Women, and Hijṛās (2023). In addition, book chapters such as “Taming Hindu Śakta Tantra on the Internet: Online Pūjās for the Goddess Tripurasundarī,” in Digital Hinduism (Routledge, 2020), “The Yogic Body in Global Transmission,” in The Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (Routledge, 2021), and “WhatsApp Bagalāmukhī:! The Social Life and Experiences of a Tantric Goddess” in The Ethnography of Tantra: Textures and Contexts of Living Tantric Traditions (State University of New York Press, 2022). Also, sample titles of her published articles are: “Red: An Ethnographic Study of Cross-Pollination Between the Vedic and the Tantric” (2019), “The Dead Speak: A Case Study from the Tiwa Tribe Highlighting the Hybrid World of Śākta Tantra in Assam” (2018). In a previous non-academic avatar, Sravana worked in customer service in the financial and IT industries. As a social entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of a nonprofit, Lumen Tree Portal. Sravana invests in building communities with individuals from various faith backgrounds who believe in kindness, compassion, and fulfillment. Find Sravana on her website: https://hds.harvard.edu/people/sravana-borkataky-varma