Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Aditya Bhattacharjee, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow from Asian Studies at Cornell University.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

About the Talk

My presentation shares ethnographic vignettes from an ongoing investigation of the religious lives of Thai-American restaurateurs in different locations across New York state. More specifically, I center this population’s interactions with the rising popularity and worship of Hindu gods in their predominantly Buddhist homeland. Drawing on interviews with Thai-American restaurant owners and observations of the artwork that decorates their businesses, I explore how new trends in popular Thai religion have influenced the beliefs and business practices of residents in the Empire State’s primary Thai enclaves.

By taking note of the frequency with which paintings and icons of Hindu figures like Ganesha, Brahma, and Lakshmi are grouped with Southeast Asian and Chinese deities like Nang Kwak, Thao Wetsuwan, Guan Yin Pu Sa, and charismatic Buddhist monks on the Thai restaurant altar setting, my talk uses a material analysis of such design-work to raise three related questions: (1) Are Thai-Americans performing Thai-ness by incorporating Indian deities within their religious repertoires?; (2) What kind of experience does the Thai-American restaurateur wish to convey to clients by creating a dining aesthetic inflected by Hindu iconography?; and (3) How might we re-think notions of cultural appropriation in contemporary times by engaging with case studies, like those considered in this talk, that are curated by Asian Americans following patterns of emerging religious syncretism in their homelands?