Material Encounters: South Asia through Yale’s Collections - Jane Lynch

For Jane Lynch, a Senior Lecturer and Associate Research Scientist in Anthropology and faculty affiliate of the South Asian Studies Council, Yale’s collections are an invaluable educational resource. 

“What excited me about anthropology as an undergraduate student was the opportunity to learn across difference and to unsettle my expectations of how I understand the world,” said Lynch. “I loved being constantly surprised by the different ways in which other people move through the world.”

Lynch soon found that a primary means of understanding how people do just that is the material objects they produce, exchange, and hold dear. An economic anthropologist who focuses on South Asia, corporate social responsibility, and artisanal manufacture, Lynch’s own work has pulled her “closer and closer to textiles,” and she hopes sociocultural anthropology continues to turn towards materialism. 

Lynch’s mother is also an artisan, contributing to her long-standing interest in how craft is defined in popular discourse and how it has been differentiated from other forms of art. Last semester, Lynch explored that concept with the second iteration of In Ordinary Fashion, a course focused on the histories, politics, and social realities associated with the sartorial realm. In this class and others, Lynch uses objects from Yale’s collections to guide her teaching.

“There are so many ways in which clothing is taken for granted, but it has a very crucial role in shaping the ways in which we try to fashion individual and social lives for ourselves in the world,” Lynch explained, noting its connections to personal experiences of memory and intimacy along with powerful projects of nationalism and anticolonialism.

Pictured: A khadi saree made from yarn spun by Mahatma Gandhi and his wife Kasturba Gandhi, along with a tulsi necklace, gifted by Vijayaben M. Pancholi to the Yale University Library in 1988 as part of a larger collection including 50 letters exchanged between Gandhi and Mrs. Pancholi.

Lynch has noticed that studying tangible objects helps students develop visual literacy skills, engaging in “close looking” without jumping to analysis. She has observed that reticent students often feel more confident contributing to open discussions about materials, wherein observation and open questions are useful lines of thought. She often brings students to the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG).

“Students aren’t always aware of the rich resources that exist on campus,” Lynch reflected. “I think it’s a great opportunity for them to encounter primary materials.”

In collaboration with James Vanderberg at the YCBA this semester, she showed students colonial representations of South Asia in the form of portraits, landscapes, and guidebooks. She has also brought students to the Beinecke to see objects from the Pancholi Collection, which includes a khadi saree sewn from yarn made by Gandhi and his wife.

At the YUAG, Lynch often brings students to see Society Woman’s Cloth by Ghanaian artist El Anatsui. Made to look like a textile, the piece is actually “woven” from aluminum bottle caps and copper wire that reflect golden hues. She also shows them another contemporary work at the YUAG, APB’s (Afro-Parisian Brothers) by Barkley L. Hendricks, as an opportunity to think about self-fashioning. Lynch intentionally taught  In Ordinary Fashion last semester so she could bring students to Nusantara, an exhibit at the YUAG focused on Indonesian textiles from the 14th-20th centuries.

Lynch usually looks for opportunities to take advantage of Yale’s collections after developing a syllabus. But sometimes an opportunity so compelling—like the Nusantara exhibition—emerges, in turn influencing Lynch’s own course plans. As she learns more about Yale’s collections, Lynch has a growing foundation from which she envisions her teaching.