Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. She has been active in international religious studies since 1973 and much of her work is focused on translating, interpreting and comparing elements of Hinduism through modern contexts of gender, sexuality and identity. Doniger is the author, translator, and editor of almost thirty books, published in part under the name of Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, among them Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (1980), Siva: The Erotic Ascetic (1981), Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities (1986), The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (1988), Splitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (1999), The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (1998) and The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade (2000). She has translated many Sanskrit texts including the Rig Veda, Laws of Manu and Kamasutra. Her latest book, The Woman Who Pretended To Be Who She Was (2005), is about the mythology of self-imitation in ancient India, Shakespeare, medieval Celtic, German, and French romances, and Hollywood films. Her current works in progress include a novel, Horses for Lovers, Dogs for Husbands, and Hinduism: An Alternative History.