Portrait Photograph of Anthony Cerulli

Anthony Cerulli

Associate Professor

College of Letters & Science l Department of Asian Languages & Cultures

Anthony Cerulli is an historian of religions, whose work looks at issues central to the study of religion, such as ritual, comparitivism, and the politics of religious rhetoric. His work also contributes to the fields of narrative medicine and medical humanities. Most of his work is in the field of South Asian Studies, where his research combines ethnographic and philological methods to probe associations between Indian religions and healing systems.

Talks:

Medicine in Classical India

This talk explores developments in India’s early medical traditions, with special attention given to the classical period, when the main Sanskrit collections were produced and the eight parts of classical Indian “life science” (āyurveda) crystallized. Representations of the human body, including ways that the body was understood to thrive and ail, as well as ideas about healing and the impact of a person’s positionality in society and the environment on psychological and somatic well-being, are also discussed.

Retelling the Ramayana: The Fluidity and Movement of an Epic in and beyond Asia

This talk presents a brief introduction to one of India’s two major Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana. It looks at some of the ways the story has been circulated, recast, and performed throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia, and beyond Asia over the past two millennia.