Sohini Sarah Pillai

Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College where she teaches courses on religious traditions in South Asia, religion and popular media, and religion and epic narratives. Her research focuses on literary, cinematic, and television retellings of South Asian religious narratives and representations of South Asian religions in mainstream media.

She is the author of Krishna’s Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative (published in 2024 in the American Academy of Religion’s Religion in Translation series at Oxford University Press), the co-author with Emilia Bachrach and Jennifer D. Ortegren of Women in Hindu Traditions (forthcoming in March 2027 in the Women in Religions series at New York University Press), and the co-editor with Nell Shapiro Hawley of Many Mahabharatas (published in 2021 in the SUNY series in Hindu Studies at State University of New York Press). Her current book project Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema is under contract with New York University Press.