WSSU Will Host Lecture on “Performing an Indian epic:
the neighborhood Ramlila in modern India”
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Pamela Lothspeich, assistant professor of South Asian literature and
culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will lecture on “Performing an Indian
epic: the neighborhood Ramlila in modern India,” on Thursday, April 11, at 11:00 a.m. in Room
228 of the Hal- Patterson Building on the campus of Winston-Salem State University (WSSU).
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is based on Lothspeich’s long-term and
current research on how two major Indian literary texts, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, are
interpreted and performed in contemporary India. These are the two longest epic poems in
world literature and are valued for their literary merit and religious inspiration.
Lothspeich will be a visiting scholar at WSSU April 11 - 12 as part of a National Endowment for
the Humanities (NEH) funded project on integrating India into the liberal arts curriculum. In
addition to her public lecture, Lothspeich will also conduct a workshop for WSSU faculty on
“Teaching the Indian Epics.”
Lothspeich currently is a visiting Fulbright Scholar in India where she is working on a book
project related to the ‘Radheshyam Ramayana,’ an early twentieth-century retelling of the
Ramayana, and its performance in and around the author’s hometown of Bareilly.
Lothspeich’s teaching and research interests include the Indian epics in Hindi literature and
theater, particularly the Ramlila tradition, and Indian literature and nationalism. Her first book,
“Epic Nation: Reimagining the Mahabharata in the Age of Empire,” explores the relationship
between a vogue for Hindu classicism in Hindi letters and the rise of Hindu nationalism in north
India in the decades leading up to independence.
Before she joined UNC-Chapel Hill, Lothspeich taught at Michigan State University and the
University of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia
University, a M.A. in Hindi and Sanskrit literature at the University of Washington, and a B.A. at
The University of Iowa.