Broadens the parameters of religious studies by accounting for material acts that help shape religious worlds.In Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger analyzes the agency of materialitythe ability of materials to have an effect on both humans and deitiesbeyond human intentions. Using materials from three regions where Flueckiger conducted extensive fieldwork she begins with Indian understandings of the agency of ornaments that have the desired effects of protecting women and making them more auspicious. Subsequent chapters bring in examples of materiality that are agentive beyond human intentions from a south Indian goddess tradition where female guising transforms the aggressive masculinity of men who wear saris braids and breasts to the presence of cement images of Ravana in Chhattisgarh which perform alternative theologies and ideologies to those of dominant textual traditions of the Ramayana epic.