Sundari Johansen Hurwitt
Assistant Professor
Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion
Women's Spirituality
School of Consciousness and Transformation
Pronouns: she/her
Email: sjohansen@ciis.edu
Research Interests
gender, the body, ritual, girl children and religion, women and religion, South Asian religious traditions, Hinduism, Tantra, Shaktism, goddess traditions, historiography of religion, feminist philosophy
Biography
Sundari Johansen Hurwitt, PhD, specializes in gender, the body, ritual, power, and secrecy in religion. While her interest in these themes encompasses a variety of religious traditions, her research work currently focuses on ritual studies in South Asia, especially Hinduism, Śāktism (goddess-focused Hindu traditions) and Tantra in India. A practitioner and scholar, Dr. Johansen comparatively explores representations of the young female in the Tantric literature of Bengal and the Northeast as well as in the living Tantric traditions of Northeast India, using extensive textual research and in-depth ethnographic fieldwork. Her dissertation, “The Voracious Virgin: The Concept and Worship of the Kumārī in Kaula Tantrism” (CIIS, 2019) is the first comprehensive study of the kumārī (pre-menarche virgin girls worshipped as goddesses) in India. She is particularly interested in representations of gender and the body in late medieval and early modern Tantric texts, the development of Tantrism in Bengal and the northeast, and in continuities and differences between textual and modern living traditions. Her work is deeply rooted in post-colonial and decolonial, transnational, feminist, and integrative philosophies, as well as exploration of non-Western philosophical and theoretical traditions. Dr. Johansen is a strong proponent of integral feminist pedagogies and research methods and interested in furthering the development of immersive, cooperative, and collaborative educational models in online education.
During her dissertation fieldwork in Assam, Dr. Johansen assisted in the development of a library and digital archive with the Foundation for History and Heritage Studies at Kāmākhyā Dhām in Guwahati, which was established to preserve endangered manuscripts and other documentation from the local community at the Kāmākhyā temple complex. Part of this work included video and audio documentation of local women’s devotional music, as well as assistance with digital restoration of archival materials.
Dr. Johansen received an MA and PhD in Philosophy and Religion with a concentration in Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her research has received support from the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Education
PhD, California Institute of Integral Studies. MA, California Institute of Integral Studies.
Awards and Distinctions
2015-2019 Michael and Gityjoon Hebel Award for Asian Studies, CIIS; 2013-2014 Annual Institute Award, CIIS
2011 Language Fellowship Tuition Grant, AIIS (American Institute for Indian Studies)
2009 Louis Gainsborough Award for Asian Studies, CIIS
Courses
Core Curriculum
PARW 6548 Women and World Religions
PARW 7006 Women Philosophers, Mystics, and Wisdom Teachers
PARW 8012 Women's Spirituality Research Methodologies
Electives
PARW 6145/EACTS 6145 Hindu Tantra
PARW 6778 Shakti: Hindu Goddesses and Female Power
PARW 6750 Dark "Celtic" Goddesses of Love, Death, and Magic
Publications
Articles
Sundari Johansen Hurwitt. “Good Queen, Bad Queen: Gender, Devotion, and Mythmaking in Women’s Histories.” Religions. Forthcoming 2023.
Book Chapters
Sundari Johansen Hurwitt. “(In-)Conspicuous Consumption: Food, the Child Body, and Inversion of Hardcore Rituals in Hindu Tantras” In The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body, edited by Yudit Greenberg and George Pati. New York: Routledge, 2023.
Annotated Bibliographies
Sundari Johansen Hurwitt. “Kumārī/Kumārī Pūjā.” Oxford Bibliographies. Forthcoming 2023.
Encyclopedia Entries
Sundari Johansen. “Hinduism.” SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture. Edited by Janet Sturman. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2019.