Her field of specialty is Maharashtra, India, combining philological and ethnographic approaches to study religious traditions of Maharashtra, the Marathi-language region of western India.
[1][2] and in 2020 was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences[5] She first went to India as an undergraduate in 1970, lived with a Brahman family, and later recalled that her "knowledge of Indian culture was confined to translations of the Bhagavad Gita (which I found immoral) and some Upanishads (which I found incomprehensible)."
She also recalled, however, that her "Roman Catholic childhood and Sacred Heart education had prepared me quite well to appreciate an all-encompassing ritualization of life."
[6] After graduating from Manhattanville College in 1971, she earned her Doctor's degree in Religious Thought at University of Pennsylvania in 1976.
She joined the faculty of Arizona State University in 1981, and became full professor there in 1988.