A List
4/23/01

PUBLICATION OF SLU PROF'S BOOK TO BE CELEBRATED

CANTON -- The Friends of the Owen D. Young and Launders Libraries at 
St. Lawrence University will hold a reception to celebrate the 
publication of the book Singing to the Jinas: Jain Laywomen, Mandal 
Singing and the Negotiations of Jain Devotion, by Visiting Assistant 
Professor of Religious Studies M. Whitney Kelting, on Friday, May 4, 
at 4 p.m. in Owen D. Young Library. Kelting will speak about the book 
at the event, which is open to the public, free of charge.
	Kelting's book is being published in May by Oxford University 
Press. According to the publishers, "While Western Jain scholarship has 
focused on those texts and practices favoring male participation, the 
Jain community itself relies heavily on lay women's participation for 
religious education, the performance of key rituals, and the locus of 
religious knowledge. In this fieldwork-based study, Kelting attempts to 
reconcile these women's understanding of Jainism with the religion as 
presented in the existing scholarship. Jain women, she shows, both 
attempt to accept and rewrite the idealized roles received from religious 
texts, practices, and social expectation, according to which female 
religiosity is a symbol of Jain perfection. Jain women's worship shows 
us a Jainism focused more on devotion than on philosophy."
	Jainism is a South Asian religious tradition. Followers believe 
in nonviolence, truthfulness, taking only what is properly given, chastity 
and detachment from people, places, and material things. 
	A graduate of Colby College, with a master's degree and Ph.D. from 
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Kelting has been a member of the 
St. Lawrence faculty since 1997. She has been awarded a senior fellowship 
by the American Institute of Indian Studies, to support seven to eight 
months of study in India during 2001-2002; Kelting plans to continue her 
study of Jain women during that period.

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