Art and Agency in India

Syllabus

Compulsory reading for the second week of the semester:     1/ The kick-off reading:

A comics by Kati Rickenbach from the 2009 Indo-Swiss comics anthology When Kulbhushan met Stöckli by Harper Collins, New Delhi, pp. 59-83 (file Kati Rickenbach).   2/ The heavy stuff:

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapters 1-2, pp. 1-27 (file: art and agency1).  

Compulsory reading for the fourth week of the semester:  

Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Chapter 3, pp. 28-50.    

Compulsory reading for the fifth week of the semester:

 Chris Pinney: Image in Indian Culture  

Compulsory reading for the seventh week of the semester:Geeta Kapur: Ravi Varma  

Compulsory reading for the eighth week of the semester:Bruckner: Performances

Compulsory reading for the ninth week of the semester:Brosius: Hindutva intervisuality  

Compulsory reading for the tenth week of the semester:Patricia Uberoi 'Unity in diversity?' Dilemmas of nationhood in Indian calendar Art

Compulsory reading for the eleventh week of the semester:Sandria B. Freitag: The Realm of the Visual

 Compulsory reading for the twelfth week of the semester:

Geeta Kapur: Body as Gesture

Note that you need to enrol in the course before you can download all the files from this page.  

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at   [e-mail]  

Annotation

A one-semester course "Art and Agency in India" will guide participants to explore diverse ways images are produced, enacted and seen in Indian cultural context. Drawing on Alfred Gell's "Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory" art-objects will not be analysed from a historical or aesthetic perspective, but rather as vehicles of social agency.

What do images do and on whose behalf? What conflicts does it involve? What are the politics of representation of the actors? A wide range of material from clay Hindu idols to contemporary video installations will invite you to contemplate how those objects are embedded in networks of social fabric.