- Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Luke Whitmore
University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Geography, Development Studies, Sustainable Development, Uttarakhand, Kedarnath, Anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas, and 13 moreShaivism, Pilgrimage, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage and Tourism, Tourism, Hinduism, Space and Place, Phenomenology of Space and Place, Cultural Geography, Saivism, Tantric Studies, Kashmir Shaivism, and Śaivismedit
- Luke Whitmore is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He receive... moreLuke Whitmore is an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He received his M.T.S. from Harvard 10 Divinity School in 1999 and his Ph.D. in West and South Asian religions from the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University in 2010. He maintains interests in geography, phenomenology, place, pilgrimage, Shaivism, Himalayan studies, South Asian religions, Hinduism, Judaism, ecology, development, myth, and visual culture. His recent book Mountain, Water, Rock, God: Understanding Kedarnath in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018) examines how people have experienced Kedarnath before and after the disastrous flooding of 2013.edit
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT Kedarnath is a famous abode of the god Shiva. One of the distinctive features of this Himalayan Hindu pilgrimage place is the fluidity with which the connection of the rock-form of Shiva inside the temple and the broader physical... more
ABSTRACT Kedarnath is a famous abode of the god Shiva. One of the distinctive features of this Himalayan Hindu pilgrimage place is the fluidity with which the connection of the rock-form of Shiva inside the temple and the broader physical environment of the shrine is represented. Analysis of printed depictions of Kedarnath helps to understand this fluidity. Yet these images tell a complicated story. In doing justice to the numerous ways in which Shiva is understood to be present in Kedarnath, print images of Kedarnath navigate a complicated set of representational challenges. They solve these challenges through particular usages of photographic and painted montage, composite composition, and overpainting (painting over a photographic image). A careful examination of popular depictions of Kedarnath shows how the everyday, historic, and symbolic realities of the site are in a certain tension with the existing technical and aesthetic parameters available for creating what Martin Gaenszle and Jörg Gengnagel have called “cultural representation of space.” In addition to the formal characteristics of the images and their contingent receptions and functions, this tension can itself be read as an important ethnographic datum that illuminates the distinctive, and distinctively contingent, nature of the site.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Religion, Hinduism, History, Human Geography, Development Studies, and 15 moreDisaster Studies, Environmental Studies, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage, Phenomenology, Ecology, Anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas, Shaivism, Religious Studies, Pilgrimage and Tourism, Himalayas, Garhwal Himalayas, Critical Phenomenology, Anthropology of Religion, and Kedarnath
In Mountain, Water, Rock, God, Luke Whitmore situates the disastrous flooding that fell on the Hindu Himalayan shrine of Kedarnath in 2013 within a broader religious and ecological context. Whitmore explores the longer story of this... more
In Mountain, Water, Rock, God, Luke Whitmore situates the disastrous flooding that fell on the Hindu Himalayan shrine of Kedarnath in 2013 within a broader religious and ecological context. Whitmore explores the longer story of this powerful realm of the Hindu god Shiva through a holistic theoretical perspective that integrates phenomenological and systems-based approaches to the study of religion, pilgrimage, place, and ecology. He argues that close attention to places of religious significance offers a model for thinking through connections between ritual, narrative, climate destabilization, tourism, development, and disaster, and he shows how these critical components of human life in the twenty-first century intersect in the human experience of place.
Research Interests: Religion, Hinduism, Human Geography, Development Studies, Space and Place, and 15 moreDisaster Studies, Environmental Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, South Asian Studies, Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Phenomenology, Ecology, Anthropology of Tibet and the Himalayas, Shaivism, Religious Studies, Pilgrimage and Tourism, Himalayas, Garhwal Himalayas, Critical Phenomenology, and Kedarnath
Research Interests:
Kedarnath is a famous abode of the god Shiva. One of the distinctive features of this Himalayan Hindu pilgrimage place is the fluidity with which the connection of the rock-form of Shiva inside the temple and the broader physical... more
Kedarnath is a famous abode of the god Shiva. One of the distinctive features of this Himalayan Hindu pilgrimage place is the fluidity with which the connection of the rock-form of Shiva inside the temple and the broader physical environment of the shrine is represented. Analysis of printed depictions of Kedarnath helps to understand this fluidity. Yet these images tell a complicated story. In doing justice to the numerous ways in which Shiva is understood to be present in Kedarnath, print images of Kedarnath navigate a complicated set of representational challenges. They solve these challenges through particular usages of photographic and painted montage, composite composition, and overpainting (painting over a photographic image). A careful examination of popular depictions of Kedarnath shows how the everyday, historic, and symbolic realities of the site are in a certain tension with the existing technical and aesthetic parameters available for creating what Martin Gaenszle and Jörg Gengnagel have called “cultural representation of space.” In addition to the formal characteristics of the images and their contingent receptions and functions, this tension can itself be read as an important ethnographic datum that illuminates the distinctive, and distinctively contingent, nature of the site.