Swapna Sharma

Swapna Sharma is a Senior Hindi Lector at Yale University.  Before joining Yale in 2009 she was a Lecturer in Hindi at University of Chicago. Swapna started her career as Hindi lecturer at University of Leipzig in 2007. She had been engaged with dictionary project for several years at Katholieke University, Belgium.

Swapna Sharma received Ph.D. for her pioneer work on early Hindi devotional poet ‘Gadadhar Bhatt’ from Agra University.

Her research concerns Hindi language and literature with focus on Braj Bhasha, its role in temple rituals and performing arts, hagiography and lexicography of the devotional literature of the middle Indo- Aryan languages, twentieth century Hindi poetry and gender.

Publications

  1. The Power of Bhakti: Debating India’s Religion of the Heart edited with John S Hawely, Christian Novetzke, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2019
  2. Gadadhar Bhatt and His Family: Facilitators of Song of Bhakti in Vrindavan in Tyler Williams, Anshu Malhotra& John Stratton Hawley(ed.) Text and Tradition in Early Modern North. New Delhi, India, Oxford University Press, 2018
  3. Dictionary of Bhakti: North Indian Text into Khariboli Hindi and English (with Winand M. Callewaert), New Delhi: D.K. Print, 2009.
  4. Gadadhar Bhatt: Parampara aur Sahitya. Vrindaban: Vraja Gaurava Prakashana, 2008.
  5. “The Seat of Love: Yogapitha,” in Monika Horstman (ed.), Bhakti in Current Research, 2001–2003: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Early Devotional Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, Heidelberg, 23–26 July 2003. New Delhi: Manohar, 2006.
  6. “Introducing Gadadhar Bhatt,” in Winand M. Callewaert and Dieter Taillieu (eds.), Devotional Literature in South Asia, Current Research 1997–2000, Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, Leuven, 23–26 August 2000. New Delhi: Manohar, 2002.
  7. The Millennium Kabir Vani: A collection of Pad-s (with Winand M. Callewaert &Dieter Taillieu) New Delhi: Manohar, 2000
  8. The Hagiographies of Anantdas. The Bhakti Poets of North India (with Winand M. Callewaert). London: Curzon Press, 2000.