In summer 2019, Kristin Bloomer, Associate Professor of Religion, completed a major phase of her current research project. With the support of a grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Prof. Bloomer worked from August 2018 through June 2019 in Tamil Nadu, India. She conducted fieldwork that entailed interviewing residents of the region about their “kula teyvankaḷ” or “family gods,” aiming to understand more deeply the social and ritual relations of villagers to one another and to their kula teyvankaḷ. This fieldwork complemented archival work at the French Institute of Pondicherry and advanced Prof. Bloomer’s overall project, an analysis of how practices and beliefs related to these family/clan deities are taking on new importance in determining who belongs to a family, lineage, or clan, and how caste- and gender-based violence are also implicated in this construction. Based on this research, Prof. Bloomer published one article with the religious-studies journal “The Immanent Frame” and presented two papers – one at the French Institute of Pondicherry, the other at the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Asia at Bangkok.