Vicissitudes of the Goddess

Sree Padma is the executive director of the Inter-Collegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program, a study abroad program in Sri Lanka. She also teaches at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, offering courses on the cultural history of south Asia. She has been a research associate in the Department of History and Archaeology at Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, where she completed her Ph.D. She has taught at Harvard University as a lecturer and research associate in women's studies and history of religions and at Bowdoin College as assistant professor of history. She is the author of Costume, Coiffure, and Ornament in the Temple Sculpture of Northern Andhra (Agama Kala Prakasan, 1991) and the co-editor of Buddhism in the Krishna River Valley of Andhra (State University of New York Press, 2008).

Table of Contents ; Acknowledgements ; Introduction ; 1. Goddess Explained - Perspectives From the West ; 2. Contextualizing the Fertility Goddess and the Gramadevata ; 3. Fertility Symbols of the Goddesses: ; Historical Renderings and Contemporary Practices ; 4. Profiles of Anthropomorphic Goddesses in Myth, Ritual, and History ; 5. Bala Perantalu: ; Auspicious Virgin Mothers ; 6. Perantalu: ; Auspicious Wives ; 7. Deifying Victimized Women: ; Sacrifices and Murders ; Conclusion ; Bibliography