Biography
Professor Bachrach’s ethnographic research focuses on how people’s interpretations of religious texts inform and are informed by intimate negotiations of the family and the self, and by changing class, regional, and gender identities in contemporary western India. She is currently completing a monograph on this subject, titled Religious Reading and Everyday Lives in Pushtimargi Hinduism.
Professor Bachrach’s developing projects include a study of how Hindu masculinities are negotiated through social media, and an examination of Hindu women’s cultivation of piety through ascetic practices in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. She also works with oral and written texts in early modern and modern languages, including Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, Gujarati, and Hindi.
Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Hindu Studies and the Journal of Vaishnava Studies, among others. Her recently published book, In the Service of Krishna: Illustrating the Lives of Eighty-Four Vaishnavas from a 1702 Manuscript in the Amit Ambalal Collection (Mapin, 2019), includes original English translations of 17th-century Braj Bhasha hagiographies.
