3:40-5:30pm, UCR, INTN 3043 Co-sponsored with UCR’s Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion (ISIR), UCHRI’s Religion in Diaspora and

Global Affairs (RIDAGA), CIS’s Alternative Transnationalisms Mellon, and the Religious Studies Department Colloquium

Book Launch: Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace

author Amanda Lucia in conversation with Edward Blum

Dr. Edward J. Blum, Associate Professor of History, San Diego State University is a historian of race and religion in the United States. Among other publications, he is the author of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012, with Paul Harvey), W. E. B. DuBois, American Prophet (2007), and Reforming the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005). Blum has been awarded the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities by the Council of Graduate Schools for the best first book by a historian published between 2002 and 2009 (2009), the Peter Seaborg Award for the best book in Civil War Studies (2006), and the C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in southern history (2004). Blum teaches courses on Antebellum America, the Civil War and Reconstruction, American religious history, and history through biography.

Thursday, April 17th

BOOK ABSTRACT Globally known as Amma, meaning “Mother,” Mata Amritanandamayi is the face of religion in a new global age. Born in 1953 to a low-caste family in a South Indian fishing village, she has catapulted to international prominence through her travels and humanitarian programs, and through the explosion of new centers devoted to her around the world. Known as the “hugging saint” – nearly every day ten thousand people are embraced by here one at a time – Amma is revered by millions as guru and goddess. Reflections of Amma focuses on communities of Amma’s devotees in the United States., showing how they endeavor to mirror their guru’s behaviors and transform themselves to emulate the ethos of the movement. In this insightful analysis, Lucia discovers how the politics of American multiculturalism reify cultural differences, despite the fact that Amma’s embrace attempts to erase communal boundaries in favor of global unity. Dr. Amanda Lucia is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at UCR.

“Reflections of Amma is a rich study of a unique global movement devoted to a female guru. Lucia adeptly examines the intersections between contemporary American spirituality and global religious movements.” – Smriti Srinivas, UC Davis, author of In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement.

“Lucia’s substantial fieldwork covers both institutional and personal aspects of groups of Ammachi devotees. This novel analysis is an important contribution to our understanding of the contemporary phenomenon of transnational gurus in the United States.” Karen Pechilis, Drew University, author of Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry and Legacy of a Female Bhakti Saint of India