Michael Linderman, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Asian Studies
Department of Languages Literatures and Cultures

I started at Seton Hall University in the Fall of 2008 as Assistant Professor of South Asian Civilizations and Religions, with a dual appointment to both the Departments of Asian Studies and Religious Studies. I teach survey courses on world religions and the history of Asia through the colonial period, as well as seminar courses on the religions and cultures of south Asia, especially India.

My research is interdisciplinary, incorporating religious history, the ethno-history of early colonial south India, and the study of material culture, particularly architecture, in seventeenth and eighteenth-century south India. My dissertation research dealt with the construction and patronage of pilgrim resthouses, called “chattrams”, in Tamil Nadu, in the colonial period. My next project will focus on the Hindu pilgrimage site of Rameshwaram, in south India, during the pre-modern period. More locally, I am continuing to develop a research project with the support of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University on the Hindu Temples of New Jersey.