William Elison
William Elison is Associate Professor in Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. An ethnographer and historian of religions, his field of study is the religions of South Asia, specializing in Hinduism and related traditions as practiced in the present day, primarily in vernacular languages, primarily by non-elite people. Much of his work has focused on the problem of mediation, specifically the mediation of subject positions — religious and otherwise — by visual forms such as sacred icons and popular cinema.
