#  Miki Chase 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and South Asian Religions

WSRP Research Associate 2025–26

 

 

 



   ![Miki Chase](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-06/Chase%20WSRP.jpg?itok=P3aztZjz) 

 



 





 

## Home institution

University of Wisconsin-Madison

## Research project

**The Ambiguity of the Vow: Law, Kinship, and Gender in Pathologizing the Jain Fast Until Death**

In contemporary urban India, Jain laywomen comprise the majority of those who undertake *sallekhanā* or *santhāra*, the Jain fast until death. This project examines the everyday relational and ethical labor through which the fast is enacted within the domestic sphere, tracing how doctrinal ideals of asceticism are translated into embodied practice and how women’s ascetic agency is rendered both morally precarious and intelligible within kinship configurations and the evolving Indian legal and political landscape.

## Profile

Miki Chase is Assistant Professor in South Asian Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds the Śrī Anantnāth Endowed Chair in Jain Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on intersections of religion, law, and gender in questions of care around death and dying in India, with a specific focus on Jainism.

Dr. Chase’s research focuses on the contemporary practice of the legally contested Jain voluntary ritual fast until death known variably as sallekhanā, santhāra, or samādhi-maraṇa, examining how lay Jains reconcile ideals and concepts outlined in scripture with the interreligious pressures of urban life and modernization of death, foregrounding the centrality of women’s moral subjectivities in such negotiations.

Her work has addressed issues such as end-of-life and palliative care, feminist perspectives on gender and voice in the family, and communal politics in law and the digital sphere. She has lectured for courses in religious studies, anthropology of religion, medical anthropology, and public health, as well as the International School for Jain Studies (ISSJS).



 

 

 





 

 

- ## affiliation
    
     [Current WSRP Research Associates](/affiliation/current-wsrp-research-associates) [WSRP Research Associate](/affiliation/wsrp-research-associate)
- ## academic year
    
     [2025-26](/academic-year/2025-26)