John Stratton Hawley

Courses & Resources

Frequently Taught Courses

  • Bhakti Poets (Syllabus)
  • Bhakti Texts of North India: Mirabai and Ravidas (Syllabus)
  • Bhakti Texts of North India: The Sursagar (Syllabus)
  • Hinduism (Syllabus)
  • Hinduism Here (Syllabus)
  • Introduction to Asian Religions (with Angela Zito, Ryuichi Abe, and Wendy Adamek)
  • Issues in South Asian Religion (with Rachel McDermott and Davesh Soneji) (Syllabus)
  • Krishna (Syllabus)
  • Love, Translated: Hindu Bhakti (Syllabus)
  • Pilgrimage in Asian Practice (with Max Moerman)
  • Religion and Climate Crisis: India (Syllabus)
  • Religion vs. the Academy (Syllabus)
  • Religious Formations in Mughal Times
  • Religious Worlds of New York (with Judith Weisenfeld, then Courtney Bender) (Syllabus)
  • The Bhakti Movement (Syllabus)
  • World Religions Idea, Display, Institution (2018 Syllabus; 2023 Syllabus with Supplementary Bibliography)

Online Resources

Interviewed for and featured in Omkar Khandekar, “How Do You Keep
Monkeys from Making Mischief?” Goats and Soda, NPR, January 5,
2025. https://www.kuow.org/stories/how-do-you-keep-monkeys-from-making-mischief.

“Rethinking the Bhakti Movement” for Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative, chaired by Eshan Sharma, June 29, 2021.

New Books in Hindu Studies: Krishna’s Playground. With Raj Balkaran, June 8, 2020. https://newbooksnetwork.com/john-stratton-hawley-krishnas-playground-vrindavan-in-the-21st-century-oxford-up-2020.

“Bhakti and Bhakta—A Researcher’s Conflicts,” with Koral Dasgupta, Tell Me Your Story: TMYS Academy, June 12, 2010. https://tellmeyourstory.biz/tmys-academy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ums88TTG43c&feature=youtu.be.

“Who is Kabir, and Where Should We Look To Find Him?” Bangalore International Centre, July 24, 2020. https://bangaloreinternationalcentre.org/event/who-is-kabir-and-where-should-we-look-to-find-him/.

Master class, South Asian Studies at Columbia, moderated by Katherine Ewing, October 16, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3luhAP4XTMI.

“Braj Bhūm and Mughal Bhakti,” moderated by Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi, Ganga Jamuni Heritage in collaboration with the Aligarh Society of History and Archaeology, October 25, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujUjg_5XIw.

“Krishna Devotion in Painting, Performance, and Poetry: From the Gita to Almost Today,” moderated by Ruth Vanita, University of Montana,
October 26, 2020.

Krishna’s Playground reviewed in The Hindu, October 3, 2020.
https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/krishnas-playground-
vrindavan-in-the-21st-century-review-at-play-with-krishna-in-a-changing-vrindavan/article32750201.ece.

Delhi launch of Krishna’s Playground, with an introductory concert by
Shubha Mudgal, January 8, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-_K9bRGnI.

The Wire interview with Niharika Gupta of Sahapedia about Krishna’s Playground, posted January 26, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAKYAECFjjY.

Lecture on Krishna’s Playground at the South Asia Institute, Columbia University, February 10, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCpHips0-w.

Krishna and the Bhāgavata, interview with Kenneth Valpey, Chennai, posted September 17, 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXKMNXZjgis.

“Bhakti in Historical Perspective,” Lecture at the Vedanta Society, New York, April 22, 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB8US_S8zHI. Questions and answers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L9SwWVzFgQ.

“Vrindavan, 40 years later” in Vrindavan Today, April 5, 2017.

A Storm of Songs received the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies on March 17, 2017: https://barnard.edu/news/prof-john-hawley-awarded-2017-ananda-kentish-coomaraswamy-book-prize.

Lecture on A Storm of Songs, Sahapedia, Delhi, January 3, 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIOtIM7jZ48.

“Passages to India” in Barnard Magazine (Spring 2016).

Following a lecture at the CSDS in 2015, Hawley was interviewed by Anuradha Raman of The Hindu: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/%E2%80%98Bhakti-challenges-communal-religion%E2%80%99/article13990462.ece.

The Murty Classical Library of India in the New York Times (1/2/15).

Three Bhakti Voices is now available in paperback from Oxford University Press.

Invitation to World Literature: The Bhagavad Gita
Produced by the WGBH Educational Foundation
with Seftel Productions for Annenberg Media
Watch the episode here.

Songs of the Saints of India has gone into its twelfth printing (OUP).

Hinduism Here (2003 – 2019), a course website posted at: https://edblogs.columbia.edu/reliw4215-001-2013-3/ with more information: http://rsnonline.org/index0706.html?Itemid=579&id=505&option=com_content&view=article.