The following is a special email correspondence between The Echo and Dr. Deonnie Moodie, professor of Religious Studies at University of Oklahoma. In it, we ask about her education and professional interests, as well as any advice she would give to students in finding a passion and turning it into a career path.
When we asked you about how you developed an interest in Hinduism, you said the short story was in your travel abroad trip to India. What's the long story?
My travel abroad trip to India definitely got me interested in Hinduism, but I think the context from which I was traveling was just as important. I went to a Christian college in Michigan where I was exposed to a very different form of Christianity than the one I was raised in. I had been completely unaware that there were such vast differences within my religious tradition, and it really got me to question a great deal. I was an International Studies and German double major - mainly because I liked to travel - and so I was studying abroad in Austria and Germany as well. There, I was encountering a view of religion among my peers that was entirely different and somewhat derogatory. With all of those different ideas about the importance of religion and ways of practicing religions, I then traveled to India. There, I encountered many religious traditions which people took to be very important, but in completely different ways than anything I'd experienced in either the United States or Europe. I decided after that trip that I would focus my attention on the academic study of religion. I wanted to know more about how and why people all over the world have such varied views regarding the fundamental nature of human existence. I haven't looked back since.
What drew you to the Kalighat temple specifically, and what exactly are you researching there?
What drew me to the temple is the fact that this is thought to be a very powerful temple that sits at the center of what was the capital of the British empire in India, and what is now a modern urban metropolis. When I began visiting the temple and talking to people who worshiped there, I became fascinated by the very different ideas they each brought to the temple. Some felt it was a site of immense power. Others felt it was a very dirty place. Others still were grateful to be able to make a living by selling their wares or begging at the temple. The differences between people's ideas made me think about my own experiences of differences within Christianity. I wanted to study those differences and to bring them to the fore of scholarship. I'm particularly interested in how certain Hindus living in Kolkata and abroad look at Kalighat as a symbol of their identity. They want to modernize its institutional structure and its physical space so that it is a grand, clean, monumental site that shows the world India's unique culture, but also its modernity. I became fascinated by how and why temples all over India are taken up in this project of modernizing the nation.
What do you believe is the most important reason for studying eastern religion or divinity in general, specifically in how it applies to the modern age?
The study of Hinduism is absolutely critical to the study of religion. Hinduism falls outside so many Euro-American definitions of religion - it doesn't have a founder or even a founding date; it doesn't have just one scripture; it has so many different sects, some of which, for example, worship in temples and some of which completely reject temple worship. Hinduism basically challenges everything we think we know about religion even though it is a religion that is practiced by 1/6 of the world's population. It really points to the fact that we need to completely revise our notions of what human religiosity is all about.
Like all religions, Hinduism has undergone major transformations in the modern age. I think it's especially vital to study those transformations (which is what I'm trying to do in my study of Kalighat) so that we are not stuck with a primordial vision of what Hinduism is - or what any religion is. Religions are not stable entities but are constantly changing and evolving. Once again, this really points to the fact that we need to completely revise our understandings of religion.
What career paths did you consider, and what made you choose divinity?
When I graduated from high school, I knew that I liked to travel and was interested in just generally exploring the world. I thought I might go into some kind of diplomatic work where I would be involved in international affairs and partnerships and negotiations between my country and others'. When I got to college, I found through my courses in Political Science that world of politics was not for me. There's a lot of great work going on in that world, but I became really disillusioned by my exposure to political discourse that wasn't really discourse - where both sides had already made up their minds and were trying to push their opinions on others. I decided that something more along the lines of cultural studies would be a better fit for me and, for reasons stated above, religious studies was especially enticing. After my master's program at Harvard Divinity School, I worked full time for a year at the Pluralism Project which studies religious diversity in the United States and which is engaged in a lot of interfaith dialogue. Ultimately, I decided that I wanted to keep reading, writing, and thinking about India, and that I wanted to direct the course of my own research. The idea of getting a PhD and becoming a professor sounded fantastic to me in this regard. I got into Harvard's PhD program and felt that was really a good sign that I could make this career path work.
What advice do you have for students in finding a passion and turning it into a career path?
My advice is to listen deeply to the parts of your education - and to your life more broadly - that are pulling you in their direction. I know many people who were business majors or went to medical school because they were smart and because those careers were expected of them, but were not happy and changed courses mid-career. Having a degree in something that is "practical" but that you hate is not ultimately going to provide you happiness. This, of course, also requires that you think very deeply about what really matters to you. Is it a huge salary? Is it helping people in need? Is it having a work/life balance? Is it living in one particular place? All of those are good aims, but it is not always possible to have them all. It might be the case that one takes precedence over another. You may not know your passion or what is important to you when you graduate high school, or even when you graduate college, but I would encourage you to keep thinking about those things and reassessing so that you can make the changes to your education and career that put you on the path to lead your best and fullest life.