Shiva Sai Ram Urella

Shiva Sai Ram Urella is a Lector in Telugu in the South Asia Studies Council at Yale University. He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Emory University and an Integrated Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Hyderabad, India. He has conducted ethnographic research focusing on contemporary Hindu traditions of South India and extensive archival research on 19th and early-20th century colonial Telugu country.

 

His current book monograph is based on his ethnographic fieldwork among ritual specialists called Ogguvandlu and argues how they perform and sustain Bahujan religious worlds. An exploration of their ritual repertoires and Telugu oral narratives of sibling deities Mallanna and Yellamma the book focuses on the relationships between the Telugu language, ritual repertoires, oral narratives, divine embodiment, caste identities, and state-led interventions in contemporary South Indian Hindu traditions.

 

Dr. Urella is also translating Telugu archival sources of the American Baptist Telugu Mission between 1830-1947, focusing on life history testimonials, devotional hymns, confessional letters of graphically literate Dalits in colonial Telugu country. He is a recipient of the Taraknath Das Memorial Junior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, Lynn E. May, Jr. Study Grant from the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, and The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund from Yale’s MacMillan Center.

 

He presented his research at the Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, the AIIS Junior Fellows conference, Emory South Asia Seminar Series, Telugu Studies Symposiums and has delivered invited lectures for the Indian Sociological Society and the Telugu Association of North America. He currently serves as a steering committee member for the Hinduism Unit of the American Academy of Religion. He founded and curated The Bandari Project, an audio-visual documentation focusing on Mallanna-Yellamma festivals of Telangana, India.