Letters from the Local Bazaar: Scraps and Scrolls of Mobility in the Global Eras of Art History
Lecture by Dipti Khera, Assistant Professor of Art History, New York University
Northern and western India’s well-traveled Jain merchants commissioned numerous letters between 1400 and 1900 to invite eminent monks to their towns. They sought to entice recipients with pictures of urban places and completed journeys. In a letter sent from the port of Diu, ca. 1666, painters and scribes juxtaposed the vignette of Jain monks and nuns who would walk long tracts of land on foot with the image of Portuguese merchants who had crossed the vast expanse of sea on ships. How do the projects of globalizing and decolonizing art history address these kinds of scrolls and scraps, and their marked wear and tear? What types of objects do we privilege in writing the history of peregrination? How do the perspectives of local bazaars and transregional journeys on inland frontiers feature in the discussions of early modern oceanic travels?
This event is co-sponsored by the Interwoven project at the Neubauer Collegium and the Art History Department at the University of Chicago.
Dates:
Friday, March 6, 2020 – 1:00pm
Neubauer Collegium