Associate Professor of Religion Kristin Bloomer has been awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), for her project “Kula Teyvam: Family Gods and Changing Places in Tamil Nadu.” The 9-month fellowship, granted to “superior Indologists in the humanities,” will allow Bloomer to conduct research on women in a patrilocal, patrilineal society in Tamil Nadu, South India. In particular, she will examine the adaptation of certain Hindu rituals that allow gender-bending possibilities as women and men seek answers to questions about their intimate relations to place and one another: identity, loyalty, family, love, belonging, and home.