Caleb Simmons

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Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Simmons, C. (2017). The King's Devotion: The Negotiation of Kingship through Devotion, Genealogy, and Patronage in Early Modern Mysore.
• Simmons, C. (2019). Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India, 1782-1868. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Simmons, C. (2019). Instructor Resource Manual (to accompany Sayre: Humanities The: Culture, Continuity, and Change 4th Edition) Volumes 1 and 2. New York: Pearson Publishing.
• Simmons, C. (2020). Instructor Resource Manual (to accompany Sayre: Discovering the Humanities 4th Edition). New York: Pearson Publishing.
• Simmons, C. (2017). The Nine Nights of the Goddess: Navarātri in South Asia and Beyond. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
  More info

  Coedited collection.

Chapters

• Simmons, C. (2018). Domains of Dasara: Reflections on the struggle for significance in contemporary Mysore. In The Navaratri Festival: Devi, Dolls and Darbars.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Tales of Cāmuṇḍā and Uttanahaḷḷi, fierce goddesses of Southern Karnataka. In Garland of Forgotten Goddesses: A Sourcebook of Fierce Goddesses of South Asia.
  More info

  In the classical Sanskrit tradition, the goddess Cāmuṇḍā is a fierce hag goddess associated with the ghastly gang of mothers (saptamātṛkās), the gruesome deeds of the goddess Kālī in the Devīmāhātmya, and the blood-thristy medieval goddess of the periphery. For those that visit her temple atop Cāmuṇḍi hill outside the city of Mysore, however, the goddess Cāmuṇḍēśvari bears little resemblance to these characterizations. Instead, in her iconography she has been transformed in the regal Durgā or—in the case of her processional image—a sweet-faced infant goddess. The fierce and ghoulish goddess, however, is not forgotten from the collective religious memory of the city. At the bottom of the hill in a much smaller temple dwells Cāmuṇḍēśvari’s younger sister Uttanahaḷḷi, who exhibits all of the characteristics normally attributed to Cāmuṇḍā. Local oral sacred histories (sthalapurāṇas) relate another vision of the narratives contained in the Sanskrit tradition in which Cāmuṇḍēśvari is a young, married royal goddess, who battles demon kings, and her sister Uttanahaḷḷi is the fierce goddess, who drinks the blood of her sister’s enemies. These tales reframe well-known narratives, such as the story of Cāmuṇḍā and Raktabīja, within the local devotional and pilgrimage networks in which Uttanahaḷḷi is the fierce goddess. The source for my entry in the edited sourcebook would be Kannada folk ballad “Nālage myāle nintu kāḷaga māḍakkayya” (“Sister, Stand on my Tongue and Fight!”). This song tells of the goddess Cāmuṇḍēśvari’s battle with buffalo demon king Aisāsura. In this battle, whenever the mighty demon king is struck by the goddess every drop of his blood that hits the ground gives birth to another manifestation of the mighty demon. The goddess, in her exasperation, slings her perspiration to the ground from which her sister Uttanahaḷḷi is born. After a brief negotiation of their familial relationship and obligations, Uttanahaḷḷi invites her sister Cāmuṇḍēśvari to fight the demon upon her tongue so that she can drink his blood before it hits the earth. At the culmination of the battle, Cāmuṇḍēśvari establishes a temple and annual festival for Uttanahaḷḷi that continues as part of the local ritual calendar.
• Simmons, C. (2019). A Prince among Patrons: Krishnarāja Wodeyar III and Patronage of the Arts in the Colonial Context. In Mysore Bhagavata Purana. San Diego, CA: San Diego Museum of Art.
• Simmons, C. (2019). “(Divine) Election and the Yaduvaṃśa: Reconsidering Traditional Sovereignty and Lineage in Democratic India. In The Conundrum of Worldly Power: Sovereignty in South Asian. London: Routledge.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Devīmāhātmya. In Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Hinduism and Tribal Religions. New Delhi: Springer.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Durgā. In Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Hinduism and Tribal Religions. New Delhi: Springer.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Family, God, and Kingdom: Vaṃśāvaḷi as Royalist Literature. In Festschrift for Professor Kesavan Veluthat. Primus.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Genealogy and Political Change in Imperial Mysore 1645-1704 CE. In Peninsular Musings(pp 128-153). Kottayam, India: Sahitya Pravarthaka Sahakarana Samghom.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Introduction: Movements of Navarātri. In Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navarātri Festival in South Asia(pp 1-19). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Prakṛti. In Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Hinduism and Tribal Religions. New Delhi: Springer.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Pārvatī. In Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Hinduism and Tribal Religions. New Delhi: Springer.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Response to Thesis 4. In “Religion” in Theory and Practice Demystifying the Field for Burgeoning Academics(pp 173-176). Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
• Simmons, C. (2018). The King and the Yadu Line: Performing Lineage through Dasara in Nineteenth-Century Mysore. In Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navarātri Festival in South Asia(pp 63-82). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
• Simmons, C. (2016). Creating Royalty: Identity-Making and Devotional Images of the Woḍeyars of Mysore. In The Archaeology of Bhakti II Royal Bhakti, Local Bhakti(pp 209-236). Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DE PONDICHÉRY ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE D’EXTRÊME-ORIENT.
• Simmons, C. (2015). Greening the Goddess: Sacred Landscape, History and Legislation on the Cāmuṇḍī Hills of Mysore. In The Changing World Religion Map(pp 545-556). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.
• Simmons, C. (2014). The Goddess on the Hill: The (re)Invention of a Local Hill Goddess as Chamundeshvari. In Inventing and Reinventing the Goddess: Contemporary Iterations of Hindu Deities on the Move(p. 28). Lanham: Lexington Books.

Journals/Publications

• Simmons, C. (2021). Devotional Foundations of Earthly Sovereignty: Conceptualizing Sovereignty and the Role of Devotion in Narrative Political Theology in Premodern India. Religions, 12(11, 911). doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12110911
• Simmons, C. (2019). Thematic Issue on Subtle Subversions of Colonialism. Religion.
• Simmons, C. (2020). Subversive Cartography: Mapping as an Articulation of Sovereignty in Colonial Mysore. Religion: Thematic Issue on Subtle Subversion.
• Simmons, C. (2018). History, Heritage, and Myth: Local Historical Imagination in the Fight to Preserve Chamundi Hill in Mysore City. Worldviews, 22(3), 216-237.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Narrative Pedagogy and Transmedia Balancing. Religious Studies News.
• Simmons, C. (2018). Women, ritual, agency, and recovery. International Journal of Hindu Studies.
  More info

  A review essay on recent publications on Hindu women's rituals
• Simmons, C. (2016). The Hunt for Noses: Contextualizing Mysore's predilection for nose-cutting. Studies in History, 32(2), 162-185.
• Simmons, C. (2016). The Secret and the Revealed: Mantra and Meaning within Bhāskararāya’s Guptavatī. Prabuddha Bharata.
• Simmons, C., & S., P. (2016). Dēvate Vaiṣṇavadharma mata Prādēśika Oḍetana: Maisūru Oḍeyar Bhakti Parampareya Svarupa-Rāja Oḍeyar (1583-1617) Kālāvadhiyalli Āda Badalāvaṇe. Itihāsa Darpaṇa, 27.
  More info

  This is a translation (into Kannada) and reworking of my 2014 article from Indian History for Itihāsa Darpaṇa, a Kannada journal of history.
• Simmons, C. (2015). Erotic Grotesque Redemption: Transgressive Sexuality and the Search for Salvation in Katsuya Terada's The Monkey King Volume 1. ImageTexT, 8(1).
• Simmons, C. (2015). Theses on Professionalization Series: Caleb Simmons. Bulletin for the Study of Religion.
• Simmons, C. (2014). The Goddess and Vaiṣṇavism in Search for Regional Supremacy: Woḍeyar Devotional Traditions During the Reign of Rāja Woḍeyar (1578-1617 CE). Indian History.

Presentations

• Simmons, C. (2017, November). Jihad and Carl Schmitt's Concept of the Political: Tipu Sultan and the Negotiation of Friend and Foe. Holy War. Bochum, Germany: CERES- Ruhr Universität Bochum.
• Simmons, C. (2018, April). SUBVERSIVE CARTOGRAPHY: Mapping as an Articulation of Sovereignty in Colonial Mysore. MAPPING THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE OF SOUTH ASIA. Tucson, AZ: Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture.
• Simmons, C. (2018, December). Navārṇa Mantra and Meaning: Bhāskararāya’s Interpretation of a Śrīvidyā Mantra. Dharma/Dhamma: Focus on Shaktantra. Sanchi, India: Sanchi University of Indic and Buddhist Studies.
  More info

  Plenary Panelist
• Simmons, C. (2018, March). Dynastic Continuity and Biological Succession: Debating Political Theology in the Mummadi Krsnarāja Iii’s Fight for an Heir. 2018 Annual Conference of the Association of Asian Studies. Washington, DC: Association of Asian Studies.
• Simmons, C. (2018, November). Positioning Vīraśaivism: Inclusion and Exclusion and the Construction of Religious Identity in Early Modern Mysore. 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Denver, CO: American Academy of Religion.
• Simmons, C. (2018, November). Response to “Caribbean Hinduism” Panel. 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Denver, CO: American Academy of Religion.
• Simmons, C. (2018, October). Mysore’s Madhuvana: Royal Śrīvaiṣṇava Burial Practices, Vīraśaiva Caretakers, and the Creation of Big Tent Hindu Practice. 2018 Annual Conference on South Asia. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Simmons, C. (2018, October). Subverting Colonialism: Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe. Tucson Humanities Festival. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona, College of Humanities.
• Simmons, C., & McComb Sanchez, A. M. (2018, October). Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe: Subverting Colonialism through Religion. Tucson Humanities Festival. Tucson, AZ: COH.
• Simmons, C. (2017, February). "Rascally Infidels:" Politico-religious transgression in international correspondences of Ṭipū Sultān. Morgenstierne Lecture: Invited. Oslo, Norway: University of Oslo: Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages.
• Simmons, C. (2017, January). Materiality, Mediation, and the Ascent up Cāmuṇḍi Hills. Materiality Focus. Ruhr Universität- Bochum: CERES — Centrum für Religionswissenschaftliche Studien.
• Simmons, C. (2017, July). The King’s Devotion: Rethinking Traditional Forms of Sovereignty in India through Devotional Practice. Abteilungskolloquium. Heidelberg, Germany: Südasien Institut Universität Heidelberg.
• Simmons, C. (2017, July). Time, History, and Descent: Creating Early Modern Genealogy in Colonial Mysore. Fourth Annual Eurasian Religions in Contact (ERiC) Summer School for Junior Researchers. Bochum, Germany: Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
• Simmons, C. (2017, July). “The Sweetest Thing He’d Ever Tasted:” Cultural Translation and the Barlaam and Josaphat Narrative in King of the Hill. The Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat as a Paradigm for Cultural and Religious East-West Entanglement. Bochum, Germany: Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
• Simmons, C. (2017, June). Subversive Cartography: Mapping as an Articulation of Sovereignty in Colonial Mysore. Subtle Subversions Conference. Bochum, Germany: Käte Hamburger Kollege, Ruhr Universität-Bochum & German Ministry of Education and Research.
• Simmons, C. (2017, June). Three-Part Lecture Series on Historiographical Methods in the Study of South Indian History. Invited Lectures Series. Calicut, India: Department of History, University of Calicut.
• Simmons, C. (2017, May 15). Gods and Kings, or the Stone Matters Too: Devotion, worship, and the materiality of transcendence in Indian temples. KHK: Materiality Focus Group. Bochum, Germany: Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Ruhr Universität-Bochum.
• Simmons, C. (2017, May 24). Mapping New Sovereignty: Pilgrimage, Kingship, and the Surplus of Power in Early Modern Mysore. Invited Lecture. School of Oriental and African Studies: Department of the History of Art and Archeology, School of Art.
• Simmons, C. (2017, September). Stones Matter Too: Stone Images and the TID in South Indian Hindu Traditions. The Transcendence/Immanence-Distinction (TID) in the Study of Religious Contacts between Asia and Europe. Bochum, Germany: Käte Hamburger Kolleg, Ruhr Universität-Bochum.
• Simmons, C. (2016, April). "Ritual and Social Action in Jain, Sikh, and Tantric Buddhist Traditions" Panel Response. American Academy of Religion (AAR) Western Regional Conference. Tucson, AZ.
• Simmons, C. (2016, April). Patronage as succession: The Woḍeyars' rise as a Vijayanagara successor state. Nāyaka Conference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
• Simmons, C. (2016, Fall). Domains of Dasara: Reflections on the struggle for significance in contemporary Mysore. Navarātri Workshop and Conference. University of Texas-Austin, Austin, TX: University of Austin Center for South Asian Studies and University of Oslo.
• Simmons, C. (2016, November). Dasara and the Performance of Dynastic Continuity. American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting. San Antonio, TX: AAR and Navaratri Research Group.
  More info

  This paper is part of a panel proposal that I submitted to AAR.
• Simmons, C. (2016, November). “High” and “Low” Traditions in the Tales of Cāmuṇḍā and Uttanahaḷḷi, goddesses of Southern Karnataka. American Academy of Religion (AAR) Annual Meeting. San Antonio, TX.
• Simmons, C. (2016, Winter). 3D Visualizations. CERES Computer Cafe Digital Humanities Lecture Series. Bochum, Germany: CERES — Centrum für Religionswissenschaftliche Studien.
  More info

  Caleb Simmons will present his experimental application of 3D modelling to visualize the aesthetic and spatial dimension of historical religious sites.
• Simmons, C. (2015, August). Divine Rites of Kings: The Constitution of Kingship through the Celebration of Dasara in Mysore. Navarātrī Workshop. Paris, France: University of Oslo.
• Simmons, C. (2015, August). The Goddess and the Yadu Line. International Association of History of Religions Annual Meeting. Erfurt, Germany: International Association of History of Religions.
• Simmons, C. (2015, August). To the Guru be the Glory. Archaeology of Bhakti III. Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient Pondicherry.
• Simmons, C. (2015, March). Singing Urban History: Devotional Folk Constructions of Mysore's Past. Association of Asian Studies. Chicago.
• Simmons, C. (2015, October 6). Romancing the Divine: Love, Sex, and Religion in a South Indian Tradition. University of Arizona Humanities Week. UA Poetry Center: College of Humanities.
  More info

  In this talk, Caleb Simmons will introduce us to the myths of the goddess Cāmuṇḍēṡvari and the god Nañjuṇḍēṡvara that are contained in folk ballads in the South Indian language of Kannada. He will show how the details of these songs reflect human desire and the complicated nature of human relationships. Finally, we will discuss the implications of such tales on concepts of the divine and divine love.
• Simmons, C. (2014, Nov 22). Curious Pen Pals: An Examination of the Role of Maṭhas in Tīpu Sultān's Letters to the Jagadguru of Śṛṅgeri. American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA: American Academy of Religion.
• Simmons, C. (2014, Oct 14). Mama is a Man: Gender and the Goddess Śrī Nārāyaṇī of Śrī Puram. University of Arizona Humanities Week. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona College of Humanities.
• Simmons, C. (2014, October 10). Rāma Reloaded: Processes of Translation and production in Virgin Comics' "Ramayan 3392 AD". Receptions of the Ramayana in Diaspora- Invited Keynote Lecture. University of Houston, Houston, TX: India Studies Program and the Shri Sita Ram Foundation.
• Simmons, C. (2014, Sept 24). The Goddess's Tiger: Tīpu Sultān and Transcommunal Kingship in Early Modern Mysore. ASU Religious Studies Forum Invited Speaker. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ: ASU School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies' Religious Studies Forum.

Reviews

• Simmons, C. (2019. HEROIC SHĀKTISM: THE CULT OF DURGĀ IN ANCIENT INDIAN KINGSHIP by Bihani Sarkar. NewBooks.asia.
• Simmons, C. (2016. Cities, towns, and urbanization in medieval India.
• Simmons, C. (2019. DISPLAYING TIME: THE MANY TEMPORALITIES OF THE FESTIVAL OF INDIA by Rebecca M. Brown.
• Simmons, C. (2019. POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN ANCIENT INDIA by Upinder Singh.
• Simmons, C. (2018. Review of Truschke's Courtly Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. International Institute for Asian Studies: The Newsletter (also available at newbooks.asia).
• Simmons, C. (2017. Positivist History and the Memory/Construction of Genealogy in Medieval India.
• Simmons, C. (2017. Review of Conceiving the Goddess: Transformation and Appropriation in Indic Religions Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat and Ian Mabbett (eds). 2017..
• Simmons, C. (2017. Review of Fee and Leeming's The Goddess: Myths of the Great Mother(p. 7).
• Simmons, C. (2015. Studying a Sanskrit classic through its reception: a review of Deven Patel's Text to Tradition.
• Simmons, C. (2016. Review of Alexander Henn's Hindu-Christian Encounters.
• Simmons, C. (2016. Review of Don Handelman's One God, Two Goddesses, Three Studies in Indian Cosmology(pp 21-24).
• Simmons, C. (2017. Review of Penkower and Pitchman's Hindu Ritual at the Margins.
  More info

  Review of Linda Penkower and Tracy Pitchman's Hindu Ritual at the Margins
• Simmons, C. (2015. Review of When the World Becomes Female.
• Simmons, C. (2015. South Asian Festivals a Review of South Asian Festivals on the Move. Leiden.

Others

• Simmons, C. (2017, June). Examination of recently discovered manuscripts in Malabar. Department of History: University of Calicut (India).
  More info

  I was invited to University of Calicut to examine a store of recently discovered manuscripts, some of which are believed to have originated in Mysore during the early modern period. I was also asked to deliver three lectures to the faculty and postgraduate research students on research methodologies in the study of south Indian history and religion.
• Simmons, C. (2017, November). Response to Navarātri Panel. American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting.
• Simmons, C. (2017, NA). Dasara Festival in Mysore. Database of Religious History. http://religiondatabase.org
  More info

  This is an interactive entry within the religious history database project housed at the University of British Columbia. Not a typical encyclopedia entry, it is comprised of a series of questions (278 questions) about the tradition and short explanatory responses. The goal of the project is to collect information about correlating concepts from religious traditions from around the world in a fully searchable database.