Phyllis Emily Granoff (born 1947) is a specialist in Indic religions. In July 2004, she joined Yale University as a Professor of World Religions. She also serves as the editor of the Journal of Indian Philosophy. Education After receiving a Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) in Far Eastern Languages from Radcliffe College, she earned her Ph.D. in Sanskrit, Indian Studies and Fine Arts from the Harvard University. She is fluent in numerous Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Prākrit, Pāli, Ardha Magadhi, Bengali, Hindi, Assamese, Gujarati and Oriya. In addition, she has some degree of skill in Japanese, Chinese, French and German. Career Granoff has taught at numerous institutions, including the Austrian-American Institute, McMaster University, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, Sorbonne, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Yale University. Professor Granoff's work has focused on Indian mythology, cults, image worship, art, literature, poetry, and medieval Indian law codes. With her husband, Professor Koichi Shinohara, she has written, translated and edited several books, and has published more than 70 journal articles on various topics. Over the years, Granoff has inspired and worked closely with scholars who have revolutionized the study of Indic religions, including Gregory Schopen. Anthologies Pilgrims, Patrons and Place: Localizing Sanctity in Asian Religions (2003) is a book which brings together essays by anthropologists, scholars of religion, and art historians on the subject of sacred place and sacred biography in Asia. The chapters span a broad geographical area that includes India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, and China, and explore issues from the classical and medieval period to the present. They show how sacred places have a plurality of meanings for all religious communities and how in their construction, secular politics, private religious experience, and sectarian rivalry can all intersect. The contributors explore some of the most fundamental challenges that religious groups face as they expand from their homeland or confront the demands of modernity. In every case the biography of a saint or founding figure proves to be central to the formation of religious identity. Sacred place becomes a means of concretizing the ever-expanding sphere of the saint's influence. [3] Images in Asian Religions (2004) is a work which work offers a challenge to any simple understanding of the role of images by looking at aspects of the reception of image worship that have only begun to be studied, including the many hesitations that Asian religious traditions