Temple Cultures & Premodern Worlds

Temple Cultures & Premodern Worlds
ACROSS SOUTH ASIA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN
ONLINE CONFERENCE
SEPTEMBER 1–3, 2021 | SEPTEMBER 15–17, 2021
Organizers: Subhashini Kaligotla (History of Art, Yale)
Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut)
An interdisciplinary conference presenting new research on Brahmanical, Buddhist, Islamic, and Jain built spaces as well as their intersections and interstices—in South and Southeast Asia. With a focus on the premodern period, papers conceive of “temple” in the broadest possible terms, to encompass basadi, chaitya, masjid, and prasada. The range of themes include: issues of temple spaces as material and cultural palimpsests, cross-fertilizations across architectural and cosmological models, problems of access to temple spaces, the role of esoteric religious practices in activating temple environments, the imaginative resources of temple sculptors, temple rituals, and ritual objects, access to food, shelter, and even alcohol in quotidian temple life, and the long-distance land and maritime networks that sustained temples. In addressing these dimensions, scholars reanalyze current categories for understanding temple cultures, reassess the state of the field, and indicate developing fields of inquiry.
The event is supported by the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and the Yale Macmillan Center South Asian Studies Council.