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Historiography of Indian Art (compulsory)

Historiography of Indian Art (compulsory)

-  Prof Kavita Singh

This seminar on the historiography of Indian art will study approaches to Indian art in a historical perspective. It will begin with a discussion of the conditions under which the discipline of art history was established in India under the aegis of colonialism and subsequently developed within the cultural politics of nationalism. Post-Independence trends in art history will be also traced. These include the attempt to discover a sastric vocabulary for Indic arts: tensions between the claims of nation and region; discussions of the unstable category of the ‘Indian artist’ anonymous or named; role of patronage; debates on folk-classical relationship as well as the definition of an ‘Indian’ modernity. Finally, the course will move towards a discussion of the directions and approaches for a New Art History for Indian art.

 

Short Bibliography:

• Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, OUP, Delhi, 1997

• Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1977

• Pramod Chandra, On the Study of Indian Art, Asia Society, New York, 1983

• Compilation: Course Reader (available in SAA Library)

 

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Initially, established as a Centre for Chinese and Japanese Studies, it subsequently grew to include Korean Studies as well. At present there are eight faculty members in the Centre. Several distinguished faculty who have now retired include the late Prof. Gargi Dutt, Prof. P.A.N. Murthy, Prof. G.P. Deshpande, Dr. Nranarayan Das, Prof. R.R. Krishnan and Prof. K.V. Kesavan. Besides, Dr. Madhu Bhalla served at the Centre in Chinese Studies Programme during 1994-2006. In addition, Ms. Kamlesh Jain and Dr. M. M. Kunju served the Centre as the Documentation Officers in Chinese and Japanese Studies respectively.

The academic curriculum covers both modern and contemporary facets of East Asia as each scholar specializes in an area of his/her interest in the region. The integrated course involves two semesters of classes at the M. Phil programme and a dissertation for the M. Phil and a thesis for Ph. D programme respectively. The central objective is to impart an interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of history, foreign policy, government and politics, society and culture and political economy of the respective areas. Students can explore new and emerging themes such as East Asian regionalism, the evolving East Asian Community, the rise of China, resurgence of Japan and the prospects for reunification of the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the Centre lays great emphasis on the building of language skills. The background of scholars includes mostly from the social science disciplines; History, Political Science, Economics, Sociology, International Relations and language.

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