Department of Religious Studies
Department of Religious Studies
Matthew

Matthew Leveille

Matthew
PhD (2025)
Email: ml2rj@virginia.edu

Education

  • University of Virginia - PhD, Religious Studies (2025)
  • University of Kansas - MA, Religious Studies (2017)
  • University of Wisconsin Stevens Point - BS (2011)

Research Interests

Dissertation: “Poetry and Praise, Prayer and Aesthetics: Illuminating Hindu Stotras Through a Sympathetic Reading of Appayya Dīkṣita’s Varadarājastava”

My dissertation illustrates how the Sanskrit stotras (praise-poems) and commentaries of Appayya Dīkṣita are a distinctive part of a popular, public-facing body of literature which gives voice to South Asian religious imaginations and cultures and reflects upon significant philosophical and theological questions through the medium of poetry. Further work will examine the intertextuality and networks of influence between major Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu stotra and commentarial traditions, the relationships between Sanskrit stotras and Tamil literature and religious culture, and the development, conception, construction and use of Hindu Temple complexes as religious space in South India.

Courses Taught

  • RELH 3140 – Jainism (Spring 2025)
  • RELH 2090 – Hinduism (Fall 2025)
  • RELH 2090 – Hinduism (Spring 2026)

Publications

“Receptiveness, Assertion, and Subversion in Sectarian Spaces: Appayya Dīkṣita, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, and Engagement Across Traditions.” In Sanskrit Hymns Across Traditions: Studying Stotras. Edited by Hamsa Stainton and Anna Lee White, 195-211. New York: Routledge, 2026.

Fellowships

American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Ludo and Rosane Rocher Research Fellowship in Sanskrit Studies (2022-2023).

Languages

Sanskrit, Tamil, French, German