Amy L. Allocco, an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies, delivered an invited lecture titled “Gender in Naga Do?am’s Ritual Repertoire” at Stella Maris College in Chennai, India on July 25, 2011.
In Hindu traditions naga do?am (snake blemish) is a malignant condition that is believed to result from inauspicious planetary configurations in an individual’s horoscope. This astrological flaw is most often linked to having killed or harmed a snake, whether in this or a previous life, and is faulted for delaying marriage and causing infertility.
The lecture was delivered to a group of 60 graduate students in the Women and Development course that forms part of the Value Education curriculum at this all-female college of nearly 4,000 students.
Allocco is in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu this summer following up on ethnographic research she carried out between 2005 and 2008 on naga do?am and beginning fieldwork on her new project, which focuses on a class of Hindu rituals performed to propitiate the spirits of deceased relatives and install them as household deities.