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Jodi Shaw received her BFA in Acting from New York University’s Tish School of the Arts (1987). In the following years she worked in restaurants while performing in off-off broadway productions and later briefly worked in the art department for commercials. Eventually Jodi switched careers and taught yoga in Los Angeles for ten years during which time she received her M.A. in Theology from Loyola Marymount University (2011). Her MA thesis was titled, The Vibratory Expanse of Sound, The Width of Waves, and the Śrīyantra’s Bindu in the Heart: The Complex Directionality of Kuṇḍalinī in Šrīvidyā Practice. Jodi’s background in performance and embodied practices continues to inform her work. After concluding her coursework at UF Jodi conducted extensive fieldwork in the Sri Sabhānāyakar temple and the Tillai Kāḷi Ammaṉ temple in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu for her dissertation (in progress) entitled, The Goddess and Dancing Śiva in the Multiple Ritual Worlds of Cidambaram. Jodi takes a Goddess story approach to the home of Śiva Naṭarāja. By taking a Goddess story approach her work highlights the validity of the stories of women who clean the temples, of those told by devotees who visit the temple multiple times a day, of the stories told through actions performed by male and female devotees, along with those, written and verbal, told by the men in authority. Her publications include “Unfinished-ness: Ritual, Temple Structures & the Sacred as Visceral Conversations.” In Quotidian: A curated blog about everyday religion (2018) and as co-writer with Vasudha Narayanan of “Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva Poets in Common Landscape and Parallel Universes.” In Journal of Vaishnava Studies (2019).