Amanda Lucia is Professor of Religion at the University of California, Riverside. She is author of White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals (2020), Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (2014), and numerous book chapters and articles. She was also the Principal Investigator for the Religion & Sexual Abuse Project (2019-2025),  www.religionandsexualabuseproject.org. 

See publications at: https://ucriverside.academia.edu/AmandaLucia

Photo: Author, age 19, circa 1996, Varanasi, India, on a boat on the Ganga. Dressed by my friend Sima, Sitaram, the boatman’s wife, who took me in during Ganesh Chaturthi and taught me everything.