Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions

Anway Mukhopadhyay is Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India.

• Chapter 1: Introduction: What the Goddess Said: What Her Speech Means to Us Today.- Chapter 2: Authoritative Female Speech and Indic Goddess Traditions: An Overview.- Chapter 3: Divine and Divine-Human Speeches of the Devi: The Speech Contexts and the Dynamics of Authority in the Devi Gitas.- Chapter 4: The Authority of Female Speech in Tantric Contexts.- Chapter 5: Two “Devis”, Two “ Gurus” Speaking with Authority: Sarada Devi and Anandamayi Ma.- Chapter 6: Modifying Masculinity: Tantric Culture, Female Speech and Reframed Masculinities.- Chapter 7 (Concluding Chapter): The Beauty of Womansplaining: The Authoritative Speech of Devi in India, in the World.

“The author writes in a lucid and yet sophisticated style and while the book is a must-read for scholars of Religious Studies (especially Hindu Studies) and Gender Studies, it will also benefit students/scholars of Women Studies, Comparative Religion and Postcolonial Studies. I would further insist that the book can be enjoyed even by ‘lay’ readers since it is a repository of beautiful mythological stories.” (Madhurima Nayak, Journal of Dharma Studies, April 12, 2022)