linda hesshas worked on Hindi bhaktipoetry since 1970 and has studied it through
text, performance, and reception. She has published a number of articles on the Ramlila
and Tulsi Ramayana based on four years of fieldwork in the annual thirty-day Ramlila
of Ramnagar, Varanasi. Her main work has focused on Kabir and includes The Bijak of
Kabir,a book of translations (co-translated with Shukdeo Singh) and interpretive essays
(2002 [1983]). Since 2002 she has been studying Kabir oral traditions in North India, folk
and classical music, oral texts, performance, and social contexts. She has taught in the
Department of Religious Studies, Stanford University, since 1996.
stephen p. huyleris an art historian, cultural anthropologist, photographer, and au-
thor. He has spent a large part of the last thirty-two years traveling in Indian villages
documenting craftsmanship and traditional and contemporary cultures. He has worked
extensively on the sacred arts of the Hindu tradition. He has also curated many museum
exhibitions devoted to informing the public about the cultures and peoples of India, in-
cluding Puja: Expressions of Hindu Devotion at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery (1996–2000) and Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York (2001–2002). He is the author of several
books, including Village India(1985), Gifts of Earth: Terracottas and Clay Sculptures of
India(1996), Painted Prayers: Women’s Art in Village India(1994), and Meeting God: El-
ements of Hindu Devotion(1999).
doranne jacobsonis an anthropologist, writer, photographer, and lecturer whose
work has taken her to more than seventy countries. She is director of International Im-
ages, an educational consulting and photographic resource firm in Springfield, Illinois.
She received her doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University, where she is a
seminar associate at the Southern Asian Institute. She has conducted extensive research
in India on gender roles and social change and has also worked in the American South-
west and Latin America. She is the author of five books and over fifty articles and is also
a widely published photographer whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications
and exhibits. Her photographic volume India: Land of Dreams and Fantasywon a Writer
of the Year award and was cited in an Asia Society publication as one of the six “Most
Useful Books” on India. A frequent lecturer on South Asian society and culture, she has
led many study tours to South and Southeast Asia.
sudhir kakaris a psychoanalyst and writer. He has served as professor of organiza-
tional behavior at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and head of the De-
partment of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology,
Delhi, and has been professor at research universities on several continents, including
Harvard, Chicago, McGill, Melbourne, Hawaii, and Vienna. His fourteen books of non-
fiction include The Inner World; Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors; The Analyst and the Mys-