Frederick's primary interest lies at the intersection of text and practice, in what gives cultural and religious traditions their dynamism. As a scholar of Sanskrit and South Asia, his work includes studies of texts and performances of Vedic sacrificial ritual from antiquity to the present; studies of religious experience in India, with a primary focus on the history and phenomenology of deity and spirit possession; the writings of Vallabhācārya, the founder of the sect of Krishna devotion called Puṣṭi Mārga (Path of Grace) in the early sixteenth century, and his successors; and finally, but by no means least of all, India’s great epic, the Mahābhārata, a text with which every scholar of Indian antiquity must eventually come to grips. Numerous other interests also rise up occasionally, particularly in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, and in the history and practice of Ayurveda, the indigenous medical system of India. He is currently completing a book length translation of part of the Mahābhārata (the Āśvamedhika parvan, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press), is under contract to write a general book on the Vedas (with George Thompson, to be published by Cambridge University Press), and is engaged in a major, book-length study of significant sections of a Buddhist Tantric text, the Mañjuśrimūlakalpa (with Ronald Davidson).

As a Sanskritist he teaches all levels of the language, and as a teacher in Religious Studies he teaches Indian (and other South Asian) religion, comparative religion, and ritual studies.

Frederick tries to bring his experience of living and studying in India for fifteen years into his work. That period includes seven years in Pune, three years in Madras (before it was Chennai) and elsewhere in South India, and several years in north India, principally in Braj and the Himalayas, where he presently maintains a house. He has also traveled widely in Tibet and China.

Selected Publications

Books

• The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006 (pp. xxxiv + 701).
• The Vedic Sacrifice in Transition: A Translation and Study of the Trikāṇḍamaṇḍana of Bhsāskara Miśra. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1987 (pp. xxxii + 520).
• Modern and Global Ayurveda: Pluralism and Paradigms. (With Dagmar Wujastyk). Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2008 (pp. 349).
• The Mahābhārata: 14. The Book of the Sacrifice of the Horse. Introduction, translation, and annotations. University of Chicago Press, 2011 (forthcoming).

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Historical Symmetry and Ritual Asymmetry: The interrelations Between Vedic Ritual and Temple Construction in Modern India.” Chapter in Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, ed. by Axel Michaels. Stuttgart: Otto Harrassowitz, 2010. [In Press]
• “Possession, Embodiment, and Ritual in Mental Health Care in India.” Journal of Ritual Studies 2010 [In Press]
• “Dark Matter in Vārtāland: On the Enterprise of History in Early Puṣṭimārga Discourse.” Journal of Hindu Studies 2.1 (2009): 27-47.
• “Narrativity and Empiricism in Classical Indian Accounts of Birth and Death: The Mahābhārata and the Saṃhitās of Caraka and Suśruta.” Asian Medicine, Tradition and Modernity 3 (2007): 85-102.
• “Vedic and Devotional Waters: The Jalabheda of Vallabhācārya.” International Journal of Hindu Studies 10.1 (2005): 107-136.
• “The Hierarchy of Philosophical Systems According to Vallabhācārya.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 33.4 (2005): 421-453.
• “The Recent History of Vedic Ritual in Maharashtra.” In Vidyārṇavavadanam. Essays in Honour of Asko Parpola. Ed. by Klaus Karttunen and Petteri Koskikallio. Studia Orientalia 94 (2001): 443-63.
• “The Current State of Possession Studies as a Cross Disciplinary Project.” Religious Studies Review 27.3 (2001): 203-212.
• “Indra Goes West: Report on a Vedic Soma Sacrifice in London in July 1996.” History of Religions 39.3 (2000): 247-267.
• “Nirodha and the Nirodhalakṣaṇa of Vallabhācārya.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 26.6 (1998): 589-651.
• “Purāṇaveda.” In Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation, ed. by Laurie Patton, pp. 97-139. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
• “The Identity and Significance of the valmīkavapā in the Vedic Sacrificial Ritual” (with Dr. S. J. Carri, S. J.). Indo-Iranian Journal 38.1 (1994): 30-61.
• “Śaṅkara, Vedānta, and the Transmission of the Veda in the Ṡaṅkara Tradition.” In Festschrift for Prof. C. G. Kashikar, ed. by Dr. S. S. Bahulkar, pp. 132-146. Pune: Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, 1994.
• “The Saṃnyāsanirṇaya, a Śuddhādvaita Text on Renunciation by Vallabhācārya.” Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies 1.4 (1993): 135-156.
• “Indra’s Curse, Varuṇa’s Noose, and the Suppression of the Woman in the Vedic Śrauta Ritual." In Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, ed. by I. Julia Leslie, , pp. 17-45. London: Pinter Press, 1991.