My dissertation titled, “Taming of the Mind: The Rhetoric of Instruction and the Cognitive Practices of Becoming Swaminarayan Devotees in Nineteenth Century Gujarat,” analyzes vernacular lyric literature of the internationally prominent Swaminarayan Hindu tradition to examine sectarian instructions for perfecting devotion. Through a study of language and practices of shaping devoutness, it comments on cultural categories of selfhood, religious identity, and everyday living as mediated by a modern religious movement.