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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260414T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260414T203000
DTSTAMP:20260514T110207
CREATED:20251111T163111Z
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SUMMARY:Susan Bean - Hidden in Plain Sight: Clay Sculpture in South Asia
DESCRIPTION:This talk is connected to Susan Bean’s recent publication Clay Works—Earthen Sculpture in South Asia (Bloomsbury Publishing\, 2026). The event is hosted in collaboration with the Indian Art Circle lecture series\, SOAS. \n  \nAbout the Talk\nThis presentation introduces Clay Works—Earthen Sculpture in South Asia\, recently released by Bloomsbury Publications\, London. Air-dried clay (a.k.a. terracruda)\, along with stone\, metal\, wood\, and fired clay\, stands among South Asia’s oldest and most widely used mediums for sculpture. Typically finished in vivid color\, the medium has been largely overlooked in studies of the region’s arts\, often misidentified as stucco or terracotta\, and sidelined as too fragile and exuberantly colored to be ‘art.’ The presentation brings together some of the most prominent practices across the region to consider why painted air-dried clay has been so valued as medium for figural sculpture\, and what its sidelining reveals about the study of art and visual culture. \n  \nAbout the Speaker\nSusan S. Bean is an Independent Scholar and Former Senior Curator of South Asian Art at Peabody Essex Museum. She is Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Center for Art & Archaeology\, American Institute of Indian Studies\, India and USA. \n  \nFree and open to all. In person and online via Zoom. \nTo attend online\, email emd@royalasiaticsociety.org for a link.
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/event/susan-bean-hidden-in-plain-sight-clay-sculpture-in-south-asia/
LOCATION:Royal Asiatic Society Lecture Theatre\, 14 Stephenson Way\, London\, NW1 2HD\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:RAS Lectures & Events
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260423T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260423T200000
DTSTAMP:20260514T110207
CREATED:20251111T163534Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260324T112352Z
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SUMMARY:(Japan Series) Peter Kornicki - Hidden knowledge: why Edo-period Japan was not a print society
DESCRIPTION:This event is part of the Japanese Studies series organised in collaboration with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC) and The Courtauld Institute of Art. \nAbout the Talk\nAlthough the Edo period has often been branded the age of print culture\, in fact manuscript production increased in the Edo period and huge numbers of literary\, historical\, philosophical and scientific works circulated only in the form of manuscript books. What is more many of these works survive today in hundreds of copies\, while many printed editions paradoxically survive in far fewer copies. However\, manuscript culture in the Edo period has largely been ignored in both Japanese and Western scholarship. In this paper I shall explore some of the reasons for the decision not to print but to circulate in the form of manuscript. For example\, one of Ogyū Sorai’s best-known writings is his Political Discussions (Seidan)\, which he completed in 1727: it was printed for the first time in 1859\, but in a limited private edition. Until that time\, for over 100 years it circulated solely in the form of manuscript copies and today more than 100 of these manuscript copies are extant. What is more\, within two years of Sorai’s completion of this work\, a village headman in Kurashiki already owned a manuscript copy. From this example\, we can see that even works that were not printed in the Edo period nevertheless managed to achieve a wide circulation and have an impact. What were the motives for the avoidance of print in this and other cases? There is\, of course\, no single explanation\, but in this paper I will explicate some of those motives and demonstrate that focusing on print culture inevitably leads to a major distortion in our understanding of cultural production in the Edo period. \nAbout the Author\nPeter Kornicki is Emeritus Professor of Japanese at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. His most recent publications are Languages\, scripts\, and Chinese texts in East Asia (2018)\, Eavesdropping on the Emperor: Interrogators and Codebreakers in Britain’s War with Japan (2021)\, Printing technologies and book production in 17th-century Japan (2025) and Soto kara mita Edo jidai no shoseki bunka: shahon\, hanpon\, zaigai shoseki (2025). \n  \nFree and open to all. In person and online via Zoom. \nTo attend online\, email emd@royalasiaticsociety.org for a link.
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/event/japan-series-peter-kornicki-hidden-knowledge-why-edo-period-japan-was-not-a-print-society/
LOCATION:Royal Asiatic Society Lecture Theatre\, 14 Stephenson Way\, London\, NW1 2HD\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:RAS Lectures & Events
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260430T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260430T200000
DTSTAMP:20260514T110207
CREATED:20251111T163713Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260416T130532Z
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SUMMARY:Dr Yashaswini Chandra - Domesticating the Margins: Bibis in the Mofussil
DESCRIPTION:About the Talk\nThis talk is based on case studies from an ongoing project\, A Multiracial History of Women’s Spaces of Colonial India. The research seeks to articulate the embodied experiences of diverse Indian and European women across the lines of caste and class to present an alternative history of colonialism. In the talk\, I focus on interracial relationships between British men and their Indian bibis or companions/concubines in parts of the mofussil as examples of the gendered nature of colonial enterprises to unpack the overlaps between these projects to domesticate the margins and the intimate lives of their agents. At the same time\, the talk discusses the means for uncovering the histories of such subaltern women by utilising a range of sources\, from reading archives against the grain to drawing on material culture – including the materiality of the landscapes and sites they occupied. \n\nAbout the Speaker\nYashaswini Chandra is Lecturer in South Asian Art History at the University of Edinburgh. She specialises in South Asian art and material culture\, working across premodern and colonial periods. My research includes the arts and cultures of the Himalayas\, Rajasthan\, Mughal India and colonial India\, combined with animal studies and women’s history. There are threads that connect her diverse interests. The foremost is a concern with locating art at the centre of interdisciplinary research and pedagogy. The second is an interest in marginalised places and groups of South Asia\, and approaching centres from the peripheries. She aims to establish a link between the past that survives in archives\, museums and historiography\, that which is reformulated in popular imagination\, and the past that exists as lived history in contemporary India. \nHer first book is The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback. It was published in South Asia by Pan Macmillan India under the Picador India imprint\, 2021 (paperback\, 2023) and in the UK by Holland House Books\, 2022\, also coming out as an e-book (Pan Macmillan India\, 2021) and an audiobook (Audible\, 2023). She is currently working on her next book\, based on her ongoing project\, a multiracial history of women’s spaces of colonial India. \nPrior to joining the University of Edinburgh\, she was based in India\, where she was an affiliated fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies\, New Delhi\, guest faculty at Jawaharlal Nehru University\, New Delhi\, as well as visiting faculty at Ashoka University\, Sonipat. She also spent many years working for Sahapedia\, an open online resource on the arts\, cultures and histories of India. On behalf of Sahapedia\, she managed the multi-volume documentation of the Rashtrapati Bhavan (President’s House) in New Delhi and other institutional collaborations. In connection with the work on the Rashtrapati Bhavan\, she co-edited two volumes\, Right of the Line: The President’s Bodyguard on the household cavalry of the Indian head of state\, and Life at Rashtrapati Bhavan tracing its transformation from a colonial stately home as the Viceroy’s House to its postcolonial afterlives. \n  \n*Note: This event will not be recorded or broadcast over Zoom
URL:https://royalasiaticsociety.org/event/dr-yashashwini-chandra-domesticating-the-margins-bibis-in-the-mofussil/
LOCATION:Royal Asiatic Society Lecture Theatre\, 14 Stephenson Way\, London\, NW1 2HD\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:RAS Lectures & Events
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