Public and Political Locations of South Asian Art History

Undergraduate / Graduate

This seminar will be addressing some of the new directions in South Asian art history over the turn of the 21st century, foregrounding the public and political inhabitations of the field. The background is set by two broad shifts in disciplinary focus and approach - from the ancient and medieval artistic pasts of the subcontinent to the modern and contemporary era; from the canonical genres of architecture, sculpture and painting to different visual media, image complexes, and spheres of popular production and consumption. The geo-political map of South Asia that frames the course is that of the dismantled empire and the dismembered subcontinent, born out of the twin occurrences of Independence and Partition, the making of multiple nation-states, and the ceaseless eruption of linguistic, ethnic and religious divisions. Placed within this historical context, South Asian history can be seen as an unquiet discipline: one that keeps interrogating the categories of art, nation and modernity, and recalibrating the registers of the secular and the religious, the national and the regional, the global and local in this sphere.