Miki Chase

Credentials: Assistant Professor | Śrī Anantnāth Chair in Jain Studies

Position title: Department of Asian Languages and Cultures

Address:
1246 Van Hise Hall

Fall 2023 Office Hours: Tuesday/Thursday 1-2pm or by appointment

Śrī Anantnāth Chair in Jain Studies and Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures

After receiving her PhD in Anthropology from the Johns Hopkins University in 2022, Miki Chase was the inaugural Bhagwan Munisuvrata Swami Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research explores the intersections of anthropology of law and religion in South Asia, Jain studies, and the ethics of death and dying using ethnographic methods.

Her current book project explores social negotiations of the Jain ascetic ethical disposition in the voluntary ritual fast of sallekhana or santhara. Based on fieldwork in Delhi, Jaipur, and Mumbai, this work traces the gendered norms through which Jain laywomen (re)shape ideals and concepts of death outlined in scripture, attending to the complexities of urban domestic life, the medicalization of death, and the shifting political and legal terrain following public interest litigation contesting the legality of the fast. Her research has been funded by the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) (2019-20) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (2018-19).

Research Interests:

Contemporary Jainism, Indian and South Asian religions, asceticism, anthropology of ethics and bioethics, law and jurisprudence, secularism, death and dying, suicide, gender and agency, ethnography

Courses Offered:

Jainism: Religion & Ethics of Nonviolence, Fall 2023

Contemporary Indian Society, Spring 2024

Debating Life and Death in India, Spring 2024