Shana Sippy, PhD
Shana Sippy is an Associate Professor of Religion and Chair of Asian Studies at Centre College, where she has taught since 2017. Her book Diasporic Desires: Making Hindus and the Cultivation of Longing, which focuses on the political and affective dimensions of contemporary Hinduism in North America is forthcoming from New York University Press. Her current research project, Strange and Storied Alliances: Hindus and Jews, India and Israel, focuses on the politics of interfaith solidarities and geo-political alliances.
She is a founding member of the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (a.k.a. the Auntylectuals). She is co-chair of the North American Hinduisms Unit and is on the Steering Committee for the six-year Intersectional Hindu Studies Seminar of the American Academy of Religion. At Centre College, she co-founded the Underrepresented Faculty Council and Faculty for Justice with Dr. Dina Badie. She is also co-director with Michael McNally of ReligionsMN and a Research Associate in the Department of Religion at Carleton College, where she taught for eight years prior to coming to Centre College. Over the last dozen years, she has sought to develop public understanding of religion and explore issues of inequity and justice. In collaboration with Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) and the Minnesota Humanities Center, with the support of grants, McNally and Sippy developed a series of four documentary shorts, entitled Sacred Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, her Master’s degree from Harvard University and her Bachelor’s degree from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her first book Educating Ourselves: The College Women’s Handbook co-authored with Rachel Dobkin, was published by Workman Press.
She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her partner David Wirtschafter and enjoys spending as much time as she can with her children Zachariah and Emanuelle Sippy.
*The mirrorwork textiles and saris in the photographs on the website were my mother's and grandmother's.