“Subterranean portion of a giant leafcutter ant nest in Brazil.’ O’Brien, Michael & Bentley, R. Alexander. (2015). The role of food storage in human niche construction: An example from Neolithic Europe. Environmental Archaeology. 20. 150713230644004. 10.1179/1749631414Y.0000000053.
“That's all well and good in practice, but how does it work in theory?”
- University of Chicago saying
I don’t imagine myself as much of a ‘theory-head’, but most of my work attempts to make theoretical advances. I thought then that this page would be a receptacle for my work that is expressly intending to push boundaries of our existing understandings of ideas often deemed theoretical: race, class, gender, sexuality, space, beauty, morality, wonder, presence, materiality, consent, free will, etc. This page intends to highlight spaces wherein there is more room for thinking and furthering ideas about how things work in the world. In all cases my research is also grounded down in time and place - and in the lived human experiences of people. My writing also aims to challenge fundamentally who the academy imagines to be the designated producers of ‘theory’ by redistributing power to the culture creators and paradigm shifters of the global South.
Some pieces that are intentionally theoretical …..
Lucia, Amanda. “Waging War in Wild Wild Country: Regulating Sex and Nation in Osho’s Rajneeshpuram.” In Mythologizing in South Asian Traditions: Myth, Gender, Power, and Politics, edited by Diana Dimitrova, in press.
Lucia, Amanda. “Aligning the Good and the Beautiful: Yogic Aesthetics in a Globalized World,” In Embodied Reception, edited by Henriette Hanky, Istvan Keul and Knut A. Jacobsen, in press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “Marking Sacred Space: Altars and Yoga Mats in Transformative Events.”Journal of Festive Studies, Vol. 5: 110—130. https://doi.org/10.33823/jfs.2023.5.1.114
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “Economies of Wonder: The Production of Spectacle at the Kumbh Melā,” pp. 197-222. In Wonder in South Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, and Ethics, edited by Tulasi Srinivas. New York: SUNY Press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “Flooding the Web: Absence-Presence and the Media Strategies of Nithyananda’s Digital Empire,” pp. 271-297. In Gurus and Media: Sound, Image, Machine, Text and the Digital, edited by Jacob Copeman, Arkotong Longkumer, and Koonal Duggal. London: KCL Press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “Persistent Fictions: Race and the Global Gurus of the Long Twentieth Century,” pp. 375-395. In Hindu Diasporas, edited by Knut Axel Jacobsen. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lucia, Amanda. 2023. “The Kumbh Melā as Hyperobject: Sound, Scale, Nation, Environment.” pp. 386-399. In The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, edited by S. Brent Plate, Pooyan Arab, and Jennifer Scheper Hughes. New York: Routledge.
Lucia, Amanda. 2021. “Manufacturing Consent: Creating Hierarchies in the Guru-Disciple Relationship.” Sacred Matters: Religious Currents in Culture. April 4.
Lucia, Amanda. 2021. “‘White Utopias’: Investigating Spiritual Festivals’ Religious Exoticism with Professor Amanda J. Lucia” Citta Vritti blog,
Lucia, Amanda. 2020. “The Hindu Guru-Disciple Relationship and the Complications of Consent.” The Revealer, March, Special Issue: Religion and Sexual Abuse.
Lucia, Amanda. 2020. “Why are Yogic and Transformational Festivals – from Wanderlust to Burning Man – So White?” UC Press Blog. November 25.
Lucia, Amanda. 2018. “Guru Sex: Charisma, Proxemic Desire, and the Haptic Logics of the Guru Disciple Relationship.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 86. No. 4: 953-988.
Lucia, Amanda. 2018. “On the Global Guru Circuit: From India to the West and Back Again.” The RLST Project. November 15.
Lucia, Amanda. 2015. “Toward a Theory of Festival.” October 24. http://religiousfestivals.ucr.edu
Lucia, Amanda. 2014. “‘Give Me Sevā Overtime:’ Selfless Service and Humanitarianism in Mata Amritanandamayi’s Transnational Guru Movement.” History of Religions. 53: 4: 188-207.
Lucia, Amanda. 2013. “Religious Genius Project – Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma) Discourses” Elijah Interfaith Institute
