Gerrit Lange
Lange completed his B.A. in Comparative Studies of Culture and Religion, with minor subjects in Indology (Hindi) and Philosophy, at Philipps-Universität Marburg from 2008 to 2011. He continued his academic pursuits at the same university, earning an M.A. in Comparative Studies of Religion, specialising in Indology (Sanskrit) and Cultural Studies.
From 2017 to 2023, he served as a research assistant at Marburg University, where he organised and coordinated study programmes, taught classes, and authored several articles on Hindu deities, mythology, religion, emotion, and religious metaphors. Since 2020, he has been involved in the steering committees of the Aesthetics of Religion network as well as the Indian and Chinese Religions in Dialogue unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).
He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center “Metaphors of Religion” at Bochum University, focusing on metaphors for the body and the self from a comparative perspective.
Doctoral Research
Lange did extensive fieldwork on the festivals and stories of Naini Devi, a ninefold and serpent-shaped Himalayan Hindu Goddess, about whose feeling he wrote and defended a PhD dissertation under the supervision of Edith Franke (Study of Religions, Marburg) and William
Sax (Ethnology, Heidelberg).
Teaching
Classes taught in English and German
- Summer Semester 2023: Baked in the Fever of Passion, Drowning in the Color of Love: Religious and Divine Emotions in South Asia
- Winter Semester 2021-22 Deities in the Flesh: Embodiment of and Sensual Interaction with Hindu Goddesses and Gods
- Summer Semester 2020: Religion and Emotion
- 2015, 2016, 2017 : Teaching assignments for the International Undergraduate Students Program (IUSP), accompanying classes in German
- Winter Semester 2023-24: “Oh My God!” Hindu-Praktiken und Gottheiten in Filmen und materieller Kultur
- Winter Semester 2022-23: Schlangen, Leiber, Unterwelten: Streifzüge durch die Mythologie
- Summer Semester 2022 : Hindu-Religionen, Landschaft und Geographie
- Summer Semester 2021: Schöpfungsmythen, Mythen schaffen
- Winter Semester 2020-21: Tiere in asiatischen Religionen
- Summer Semester 2019: Besessenheit in Film, Feld und Forschung
- Summer Semester 2018: Hindu-Gottheiten, Menschen und andere Wesen in Mythen und Riten Winter 2017-18, 2018-19 & 2019-2020 Kultur- und Religionstheorien
- Summer Semester 2017: Menschliche und göttliche Körper, geschlechtertheoretisch betrachtet
Publication
Monograph
(2017) Säfte und Kräfte. K.rperflüssigkeiten als Metapher in altindischen Mythen
Articles of the past five years
(forthcoming) The Colors of Music and the Taste of Emotions: Rāga and rasa as synaesthetic Schools of Feeling in South Asian Religions. In Esther-Maria Guggenmos & Gerrit
Lange (eds.): Numen 2024 (3/4), Special issue ‘Doing Emotions’ across Asia. The Practice and Performance of Emotions from Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian Perspectives.
(forthcoming) co-authored with Esther-Maria Guggenmos: Introduction to ibid. (in print) Creating a Landscape through Myths. The Journey of Naiṇī or Nāginā Devī, a Ninefold Western Himalayan Hindu Goddess. In Julia Hegewald & Marion Gymnich (eds.): Images and Stories of the Origin(s) of the World and Humankind. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
(2023) Divine Śakti and Human Power Relations: Studying the Embodied and Enacted Feelings of a Himalayan Hindu Goddess. In Material Religion 19 (1), 85-86. This article is part of a conversation with Lina Aschenbrenner, Donovan Schaefer and Micaela Terk.
(2022) Hindu Deities in the Flesh: Hot Emotions, Sensual Interactions, and (Syn)aesthetic Blends. In Religions 13(11), 1045. URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/11/1045
(2020) Götterblut: Jesu Wein und Dichtermet. Eine religionsmetaphorologische Verköstigung. In Hessische Blätter für Volks- und Kulturforschung 55: Wein-Kultur. Ilmtal: Jonas-Verlag, 77-95.
(2019) The Mythical Cow as Everyone’s Mother. Breastfeeding as a main theme in Hindureligious imaginings of loved and feared mothers. In Guignard, Florence P. & Pedrucci, Giulia (eds.): Breastfeeding(s) and Religion. Rome: Scienze e Lettere, 149-166.
(2018) Western Himalayan Nāgs as Guardians of Water Resources. In Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 11.3, 361-378.