David L. Haberman

This project focuses on sacred trees and tree shrines in northern India. Though tree shrines and the wealth of activity that surrounds them are a prominent feature of the religious landscape of India, they have hardly been the subjects of scholarly investigation. This project will be informed by academic considerations of the cultural construction of nature and will contribute to the growing study of religion and ecology. The method followed is a combination of textual research and ethnographic fieldwork in northern India, observing the activities that take place at select tree shrines and interviewing people who worship at these sites to determine what they do and why they do it.