Assistant Professor of Religion
Phone: 269.337.7114
Office: Humphrey House, Room 105
Email: Sohini.Pillai@kzoo.edu
Education:
PhD: University of California, Berkeley
MA: Columbia University
BA: Wellesley College
Profile
Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College where she teaches courses on religious traditions in South Asia, religion and popular media, and religion and epic narratives. Her research focuses on literary, cinematic, and television retellings of South Asian religious narratives and representations of South Asian religions in mainstream media.
She is the author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative (published in 2024 in the American Academy of Religion’s Religion in Translation series at Oxford University Press) and Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema (under contract with New York University Press). She is also the co-editor with Nell Shapiro Hawley of Many Mahabharatas (published in 2021 in the SUNY series in Hindu Studies at State University of New York Press) and the co-author with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer D. Ortegren of Women in Hindu Traditions (forthcoming in the Women in Religions series at New York University Press).
She is currently the co-chair of the steering committee for the Hinduism Unit at the American Academy of Religion and has been the recipient of Fulbright and Sacred Writes fellowships.
Publications
- Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024
- The ‘Hindu’ Epics? Telling the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in Premodern South Asia.” In The Epic World, edited by Pamela Lothspeich, 230-44. New York: Routledge, 2024.
- “Remembering and Removing Aurangzeb: The Manuscript History of Sabalsingh Chauhan’s Mahabharat.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 42, no. 2 (2022) 356-61.
- Co-editor (with Nell Shapiro Hawley), Many Mahabharatas. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.
- “The Mahabharata as Krsnacarita: Draupadi’s Prayer in Two Regional Retellings.” The Journal of Hindu Studies 14, no. 2 (2021): 259–78.
- “Blessed Beginnings: Invoking Visnu, Krsna, and Rama in Two Regional Mahabharatas.” In Many Mahabharatas, edited by Nell Shapiro Hawley and Sohini Sarah Pillai, 257–75. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.
- Co-author (with Nell Shapiro Hawley), “An Introduction to the Literature of the Mahabharata.” In Many Mahabharatas, edited by Nell Shapiro Hawley and Sohini Sarah Pillai, 1–34. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021.
- “From Villainess to Victim: Contemporary Representations of Surpanakha.” In Oral-Written-Performed: The Ramayana Narratives in Indian Literature and Arts, edited by Danuta Stasik, 159–76. Heidelberg: CrossAsia eBooks, 2020.
Public Scholarship
- “Our Lady of the Upside Down: Kali in Stranger Things Harkens Back to the Goddess Herself,” Religion Dispatches, January 20, 2026.
- “Erasing Caste on American Television: ‘We Were Liars’ Shows That Representation Isn’t Enough,” Religion Dispatches, July 7, 2025.
- “Hindu Heroes and Muslim Demons: How Singham Again Retells the Ramayana in Troubling Ways,” The Polis Project, November 7, 2024.
- “How Hinduism Inspired Pop-Culture Avatars,” hosted and written by Andrew Henry for Religion for Breakfast, February 15, 2024 (episode consultant).
- “Kalamazoo College Now Offering a Star Wars Religion Class,” Kevin “Meatball” Kerr, The Rocker Morning Show with Meatball and Mark on 107.7 WRKR, November 29, 2023.
- “Epic,” High Theory podcast, hosted by Saronik Bosu, February 27, 2022.
- “The Multiplicity of the Mahabharata Tradition,” Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative, hosted by Eshan Sharma, December 12, 2021.
For more information about Dr. Pillai, visit her website.
Dr. Pillai is the Director of Film and Media Studies.
Please visit the Film and Media Studies website for more information about the concentration.