This spring, Professor Preeti Chopra will be teaching the cross-listed AH/ASIAN 428 and AH 779 “Visual Cultures of India,” Monday/Wednesday, 2:30–3:45pm, in Conrad A. Elvehjem, Room L150. Humanities Breadth and L&S Credit. This lecture course concentrates on the images (art, advertisements, photography, television, and cinema), material culture (such as, clothing), and environments (architecture, urban planning, and public rituals) of India. During the semester, we will examine Indian visual cultures from the ancient to the modern periods. This historical trajectory will be complemented by a critical focus on selected thematic issues. During these moments we will compare and contrast cases studies from across India, spatially and temporally. These historical ruptures, or time travels, will allow us to see the continuities and discontinuities between the past and present. Thematic issues and ideas that will be examined in this class include sexuality, the representation of women, patronage, cultural encounter and cultural synthesis, iconoclasm, the relationship between landscape and architecture, rethinking the canon, ways of seeing, art and craft, the sacred and secular, colonialism, modernism, nationalism, and the pleasures of Indian cinema. No prior knowledge of India is necessary. Enroll here.