Religious Studies

Ashlee Andrews Defends Disseration

Posted on April 10, 2018

On March 26^th, newly appointed Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Ashlee Norene Andrews, successfully defended her dissertation, The Home Shrine and The Transnational World, completing her PhD in Religious Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Andrews’ dissertation analyzes interviews she completed with Bengali Hindu women living in Kolkata, India and Chicago, Illinois about how and why they perform rituals of care and worship to the deities residing in the home shrine. Her dissertation broadly argues that women’s interpretations and transformations to this feminine religious duty constitute a form of agency that allows women to negotiate the normative roles, realms and labor they are expected to inhabit as women.