The Bhagavad Gita: Ancient Poem, Modern Readers

FAIN: FS-256932-17

Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-9800)
Richard H. Davis (Project Director: March 2017 to April 2021)

A three-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty on the Bhagavad Gita in its historical context, as well as what it has meant to modern readers, to be held at Yale University.

In this three-week seminar, sixteen college and university teachers will study intensively the Bhagavad Gita, an Indian religious classic from the early centuries C.E. The seminar will focus on the work in its original historical context and on how it has continued to live for modern readers. What is it that enables some of the works of the past to break across the boundaries of their own times? A religious work of undoubted longevity, the Bhagavad Gita and its history of readings will provide an excellent vantage point to consider this question. The seminar will be directed towards teachers in the various disciplines of the humanities, including religious studies , world literature, global history, and classics. Participants will examine how the Bhagavad Gita addresses perennial religious and humanistic concerns, and how modern readers have interpreted the work. Together we will consider how this ancient Indian work may be integrated into modern humanities undergraduate courses.