Rate My Professor Steven Vose

Steven M. Vose is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Colorado Denver, holding the Bhagwan Suparshvanatha Endowed Professorship in Jain Studies. A historian of South Asian religious traditions, he focuses on Jain communities in western India from the late medieval Islamicate period to the present. His research examines processes of community formation through discourses and practices of authority, sectarian polemics, mendicant-lay interactions, and intersections among gender, caste, class, sect, and polity. Vose studies public expressions of devotion such as pilgrimage and temple-building, the place of tantra and alchemy in South Asian social life, and material culture including inscriptions, images, iconography, architecture, and manuscripts. He also investigates the development of vernacular literary traditions and interactions between Sanskrit, Prakrit, Gujarati, and Persianate literary and courtly practices. His theoretical interests encompass cultural and social history of religion, literary theory, practical ethics, lived religions, religious identity politics, transnational religious publics, and religious-ethno-nationalist conflict and non-violence.

Vose earned a Ph.D. in South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013, with a dissertation on Jinaprabhasūri awarded with Distinction; an M.T.S. in World Religions from Harvard Divinity School in 2006; and a B.A. summa cum laude in Religious Studies from St. Lawrence University in 2001. His career includes Bhagwan Mahavir Assistant Professor of Jain Studies and Director of the Jain Studies Program at Florida International University (2014-2021), where he developed undergraduate curriculum, secured funding exceeding $250,000 in pledges, expanded fellowships, and hosted conferences. He served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Colorado College (2021-2022) and summer Lecturer at CU Denver (2021). Key publications feature his forthcoming book Reimagining Jainism in Islamic India: Jain Intellectual Culture in the Delhi Sultanate (Routledge), winner of the 2020 Edward C. Dimock, Jr. Book Prize in the Indian Humanities from the American Institute of Indian Studies; 'Jain Memory of the Tughluq Sultans' (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2022); and 'Jain Uses of Citra-Kāvya and Multiple-Language Hymns in Late Medieval India' (International Journal of Hindu Studies, 2016). Additional contributions include chapters, encyclopedia entries, and reviews. Honors comprise Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship (2010) and Benjamin Franklin Fellowship (2006-2012).