James W. Laine

Jim Laine, Arnold H. Lowe Professor, specializes in the religions of Asia and Islam and also teaches a course on Catholicism that features local ethnographic fieldwork assignments. He has studied Sanskrit and Marathi languages intensively and has authored three books about India: Visions of God: Theophany Narratives in the Mahabharata (1989), The Epic of Shivaji (2001), Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, (2003). The last stirred considerable controversy in India, resulting in a ban and indictment, both later overturned by the Indian Supreme Court. Because of the tense situation in India, he turned to a broader subject in 2004, and after ten years of research, published MetaReligion: Religion and Power in World History (2014), which explores questions of the relationship of religion to political power. He is now free to return to India, where he is pursuing a personal and scholarly interest in yoga.

BA: Texas Tech University, 1974
MTS: Harvard University, 1977
PhD: Harvard University, 1984

Please see a list of Professor Laine’s publications in Selected Works