Talk:Prof. Mary Hancock

By Sachi Anjunkar

Mary Hancock is a Professor Emerita University of California, Santa Barbara as of April 2024. According to her university profile, her research interests include the politics of heritage in urban South Asia, Proselytic media and evangelical Christian missionary activity, Religion, gender and nationalism in modern South Asia.

In 2016, she signed a letter addressed to the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, dated May 17, 2016. The letter stated the following:

1. "There is no established connection between Hinduism and the Indus Civilization. The Rg Veda contains numerous mentions of horses and chariots but there is no conclusive material or fossil evidence for either at any Indus valley archeological site."
2. "It is inappropriate to remove mention of the connection of caste to Hinduism."

Publications related to India

Books

1. Hancock, M. The Politics of Heritage from Madras to Chennai. Indiana University Press, 2008.
2. Hancock, M. Womanhood in the Making: Domestic Ritual and Public Culture in Urban South India. Westview, 1999.

Journal Articles

1. Hancock, M. and S. Srinivas. "Spaces of Modernity: Religion and the Urban in Asia and Africa." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 32, no. 3, 2008, pp. 617-630.
2. Hancock, M. and T. Gordon. "‘The Crusade is the Vision’: Branding Charisma in a Global Pentecostal Ministry." Material Religion, vol. 1, no. 3, 2005, pp. 386-403.
3. Hancock, M. "Subjects of Heritage in Urban South India." Environment and Planning, D: Space and Society, vol. 20, no. 6, 2002, pp. 693-718.
4. Hancock, M. "Modernities Remade: Hindu Temples and Their Publics in Southern India." City and Society, vol. 14, 2002, pp. 1-35.
5. Hancock, M. "Home Science and the Nationalization of Domesticity in Colonial India." Modern Asian Studies, vol. 35, part 4, 2001, pp. 871-904.
6. Hancock, M. "Festivity and Popular Memory in South India." South Asia Research, vol. 21, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1-21.
7. Hancock, M. "Unmaking the ‘Great Tradition’: Ethnography, National Culture, and Area Studies." Identities, vol. 4, nos. 3-4, 1998, pp. 343-388.
8. Hancock, M. "The Uncertain Subject(s) of Femininity: Ethnographic Approaches to Hindu Practice and Feminine Agency." Nivedini, vol. 5, no. 2, 1997, pp. 5-27.
9. Hancock, M. "Hindu Culture for an Indian Nation: Gender and Elite Identity in Urban South India." American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. 4, 1995, pp. 907-926.

Book Chapter

1. Hancock, M. "Gendering the Modern: Women and Home Science in British India." Gender, Sexuality, and Colonial Modernities, edited by Antoinette Burton, Routledge, 1999.
2. Hancock, M. "Hindu Culture for an Indian Nation: Gender and Elite Identity in Urban South India." Religion in Culture and Society, edited by John Bowen, Allyn and Bacon, 1998, pp. 226-247. Reprinted with permission from American Ethnologist.