This volume examines several theoretical concerns of embodiment in the context of Asian religious practice. Looking at both subtle and spatial bodies, it explores how both types of embodiment are engaged as sites for transformation, transaction and transgression. Collectively bridging ancient and modern conceptualizations of embodiment in religious practice, the book offers a complex mapping of how body is defined. It revisits more traditional, mystical religious systems, including Hindu Tantra and Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, Chinese Daoism and Persian Sufism and distinctively juxtaposes these inquiries alongside analyses of racial, gendered, and colonized bodies. Such a multifaceted subject requires a diverse approach, and so perspectives from phenomenology and neuroscience as well as critical race theory and feminist theology are utilised to create more precise analytical tools for the scholarly engagement of embodied religious epistemologies. This a nuanced and interdisciplinary exploration of the myriad issues around bodies within religion. As such it will be a key resource for any scholar of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Gender Studies.

The Global Humanities Reader is a collaboratively edited collection of primary sources with student-centered support features. It serves as the core curriculum of the University of North Carolina Asheville's almost-sixty-year-old interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Its three volumes--Engaging Ancient Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 1), Engaging Premodern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 2), and Engaging Modern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 3)--offer accessible ways to explore facets of human subjectivity and interconnectedness across cultures, times, and places. In highlighting the struggles and resilient strategies for surviving and thriving from multiple perspectives and positionalities, and through diverse voices, these volumes course correct from humanities textbooks that remain Western-centric. One of the main features of the The Global Humanities Reader is a sustained and nuanced focus on cultivating the ability to ask questions--to inquire--while enhancing culturally aware, reflective, and interdisciplinary engagements with the materials. The editorial team created a thoroughly interactive text with the following unique features that work together to actualize student success: * Cross-cultural historical introductions to each volume * Comprehensive and source-specific timelines highlighting periods, events, and people around the world * An introduction for each source with bolded key terms and questions to facilitate active engagement * Primed and Ready questions (PARs)--questions just before and after a reading that activate students' own knowledge and skills * Inquiry Corner--questions consisting of four types: Content, Comparative, Critical, and Connection * Beyond the Classroom--explore how ideas discussed in sources can apply to broader social contexts, such as job, career, project teams or professional communities * Glossary of Tags--topical 'hubs' that point to exciting new connections across multiple sources These volumes reflect the central role of Humanities in deepening an empathic understanding of human experience and cultivating culturally appropriate and community-centered problem-solving skills that help us flourish as global and local citizens.

The Global Humanities Reader is a collaboratively edited collection of primary sources with student-centered support features. It serves as the core curriculum of the University of North Carolina Asheville's almost-sixty-year-old interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Its three volumes--Engaging Ancient Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 1), Engaging Premodern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 2), and Engaging Modern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 3)--offer accessible ways to explore facets of human subjectivity and interconnectedness across cultures, times, and places. In highlighting the struggles and resilient strategies for surviving and thriving from multiple perspectives and positionalities, and through diverse voices, these volumes course correct from humanities textbooks that remain Western-centric. One of the main features of the The Global Humanities Reader is a sustained and nuanced focus on cultivating the ability to ask questions--to inquire--while enhancing culturally aware, reflective, and interdisciplinary engagements with the materials. The editorial team created a thoroughly interactive text with the following unique features that work together to actualize student success: * Cross-cultural historical introductions to each volume * Comprehensive and source-specific timelines highlighting periods, events, and people around the world * An introduction for each source with bolded key terms and questions to facilitate active engagement * Primed and Ready questions (PARs)--questions just before and after a reading that activate students' own knowledge and skills * Inquiry Corner--questions consisting of four types: Content, Comparative, Critical, and Connection * Beyond the Classroom--explore how ideas discussed in sources can apply to broader social contexts, such as job, career, project teams or professional communities * Glossary of Tags--topical 'hubs' that point to exciting new connections across multiple sources These volumes reflect the central role of Humanities in deepening an empathic understanding of human experience and cultivating culturally appropriate and community-centered problem-solving skills that help us flourish as global and local citizens.

This volume examines several theoretical concerns of embodiment in the context of Asian religious practice. Looking at both subtle and spatial bodies, it explores how both types of embodiment are engaged as sites for transformation, transaction and transgression. Collectively bridging ancient and modern conceptualizations of embodiment in religious practice, the book offers a complex mapping of how body is defined. It revisits more traditional, mystical religious systems, including Hindu Tantra and Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, Chinese Daoism and Persian Sufism and distinctively juxtaposes these inquiries alongside analyses of racial, gendered, and colonized bodies. Such a multifaceted subject requires a diverse approach, and so perspectives from phenomenology and neuroscience as well as critical race theory and feminist theology are utilised to create more precise analytical tools for the scholarly engagement of embodied religious epistemologies. This a nuanced and interdisciplinary exploration of the myriad issues around bodies within religion. As such it will be a key resource for any scholar of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Gender Studies.

The Global Humanities Reader is a collaboratively edited collection of primary sources with student-centered support features. It serves as the core curriculum of the University of North Carolina Asheville's almost-sixty-year-old interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Its three volumes--Engaging Ancient Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 1), Engaging Premodern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 2), and Engaging Modern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 3)--offer accessible ways to explore facets of human subjectivity and interconnectedness across cultures, times, and places. In highlighting the struggles and resilient strategies for surviving and thriving from multiple perspectives and positionalities, and through diverse voices, these volumes course correct from humanities textbooks that remain Western-centric. One of the main features of the The Global Humanities Reader is a sustained and nuanced focus on cultivating the ability to ask questions--to inquire--while enhancing culturally aware, reflective, and interdisciplinary engagements with the materials. The editorial team created a thoroughly interactive text with the following unique features that work together to actualize student success: * Cross-cultural historical introductions to each volume * Comprehensive and source-specific timelines highlighting periods, events, and people around the world * An introduction for each source with bolded key terms and questions to facilitate active engagement * Primed and Ready questions (PARs)--questions just before and after a reading that activate students' own knowledge and skills * Inquiry Corner--questions consisting of four types: Content, Comparative, Critical, and Connection * Beyond the Classroom--explore how ideas discussed in sources can apply to broader social contexts, such as job, career, project teams or professional communities * Glossary of Tags--topical 'hubs' that point to exciting new connections across multiple sources These volumes reflect the central role of Humanities in deepening an empathic understanding of human experience and cultivating culturally appropriate and community-centered problem-solving skills that help us flourish as global and local citizens.

Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through both incorporating choreography on Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of participants. Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage. Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of Bharata Natyam innovatively demonstrate how the rasa of devotion (bhakti rasa), surprisingly absent from classic dance-related texts, serves as the pivotal framework for expanding on their own interreligious thematic and interpretive possibilities. In contemporary Bharata Natyam, bhakti rasa is not just about enhancing religious experience; instead, these dancers choreographically adapt various religious identities and ideas in order to emphasize pluralistic cultural and ethical dimensions in their work. Through the dancing body, multiple religious and secular interpretations fluidly co-exist.

Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through both incorporating choreography on Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of participants. Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage. Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of Bharata Natyam innovatively demonstrate how the rasa of devotion (bhakti rasa), surprisingly absent from classic dance-related texts, serves as the pivotal framework for expanding on their own interreligious thematic and interpretive possibilities. In contemporary Bharata Natyam, bhakti rasa is not just about enhancing religious experience; instead, these dancers choreographically adapt various religious identities and ideas in order to emphasize pluralistic cultural and ethical dimensions in their work. Through the dancing body, multiple religious and secular interpretations fluidly co-exist.

This practical guide identifies the ingredients that make up Indian culture and uniquely translates them into useful tools to help Western commercial initiatives succeed. There is enormous opportunity for companies that want to sell to India's one billion consumers or partner with Indian companies, but doing so isn't always easy. Inside the Indian Business Mind: A Tactical Guide for Managers offers a primer on the culture and its opportunities. This unique guide will help Western business people enter the Indian market, make the best use of Indian manufacturing facilities, and create and develop successful, long-term business relationships with Indian business partners and teams. The book is not a list of dos and don'ts. Rather, it approaches doing business in India from the perspective of in-depth cultural models, translating cultural knowledge into practical working strategies. The authors, an Indian who has worked in the United States and an American who has worked in India, arm readers with an understanding of 11 primary cultural ingredients that come into play in business relationships with South Asians—ingredients that can be mastered and adapted across many contexts to forge lucrative partnerships.