Wendy Doniger (O'Flaherty) (born November 20, 1940) is an American
Indologist and
Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the
History of Religions at the
University of Chicago Divinity School, the
Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the
Committee on Social Thought. She has taught at the University of Chicago since 1978.
Much of her work is focused on translating, interpreting and comparing elements of
Hindu mythology through modern contexts of gender, sexuality and
identity. She describes herself as "a
Sanskritist, indeed a recovering
Orientalist"Doniger,
The Hindus, 35 and "an old-fashioned
philologist".Doniger,
The Bedtrick, p. xxii.
Biography
Doniger was born in New York City to immigrant non-observant Jewish parents, and raised in
Great Neck NY, where her father, Lester L Doniger (1909–1971), ran a publishing business. While in high school, she studied dance under
George Balanchine and
Martha Graham. She graduated
summa cum laude in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from
Radcliffe College in 1962, and received her
M.A. from
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in June 1963. She then studied in
India in 1963–1964 with a 12-month
Junior Fellowship from the
American Institute of Indian Studies. She gained her first
Ph.D. from
Harvard University in June 1968, with a dissertation on 'Asceticism and Sexuality in the Mythology of
Siva,'...
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