Associate Professor, History of Art
About
To reconstruct moments in the history of South Asia, I like to think across geographical boundaries and other categories including nature and culture, art and time, materials and meaning systems, word and image, human and non-human animal, and local phenomena and global formations.
My first book Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains: Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas (2019, South Asian edition 2021) traces how the Himalayas emerged as a sacred landscape. My second book, The Amaruśhataka and the Lives of Indian Love Poems (2022) explores the vast transfers of knowledge that transpired in the second millenium CE. My third book, India's Composite Heritage: A Workbook for Children and Parents (2022, reprinted 2023) seeks to nurture visual literacy.
In addition to publishing articles in refereed journals including the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal of Asian Studies, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Archives of Asian Art, Ars Orientalis, Artibus Asiae, Arts Asiatiques, History of Photography, South Asian Studies, Art and Translation, I periodically write on cultural policy for the editorial and opinion pages of The Hindu and other newspapers.
Focusing on aesthetically, conceptually, and historically complex vessels crafted in the riverine region of Assam, my current book project investigates how communities form around, and by means of, metalware.
Southeast Asia is a growing area of interest. My exhibition, "Angkor Complex: Cultural Heritage and Post-Genocide Memory in Cambodia," supported by grants from the National Endownment for the Arts and other agencies, opened at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in 2024.
My courses examine the arts and architectures of South Asia, Himalayan aesthetics, yoga philosophy and practice, the integration of visual media in modern self-fashioning, law, development, and heritage preservation in India, and collecting and displaying art.
I have served on the editorial boards of Ars Orientalis and The Art Bulletin and am currently one of the principal investigators in a mult-year research and fellowship program studying the intersection of art, heritage, and the environment supported by The Getty Foundation's "Connecting Art Histories" initiative that I have collaboratively conceptualized with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Max Planck Institute), Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and the Department of Art History at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.
Since, July 2026 I have been serving as the director of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan.
Inquiries from prospective students are welcome.
