PhD, University of Minnesota, 2012
M.Phil, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 2003
MA, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, 2002
BA, Presidency College, 2000
Sugata Ray is Associate Professor of South and Southeast Asian art and architecture in the History of Art Department and the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Trained in both history (Presidency College; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta) and art history (Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda; University of Minnesota), Ray’s research and writing focus on climate change and the visual arts from the 1500s onwards.
Taking the aesthetics of seeing the natural environment as a locus of inquiry, his recent award-winning book, Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850 (Global South Asia Series and the Art History Publication Initiative, University of Washington Press, 2019), examines the interrelationship between matter and life in shaping creative practices and aesthetic philosophies during the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), a climatic epoch marked by droughts of unprecedented intensity across the world. Examining architecture and paintings, alongside theological texts, sacramental hymns, and poetry, the book focuses on the Hindu pilgrimage center of Braj, the primary site of Krishna worship in India where a place-oriented theology based on venerating the natural environment found articulation in the sixteenth century in a time of massive ecocatastrophes. The book was awarded the 2021 Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, the 2020 Religion and the Arts Book Award by the American Academy of Religion, the College Art Association’s Millard Meiss Publication Fund, and was a finalist for the PROSE Award in Art History and Criticism. Publications from this project have appeared in journals such as South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and in volumes on critical eco art histories.
As an extension of his interest in the field of eco art history, Ray has coedited Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence, Visual and Media Histories Series (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020; with Venugopal Maddipati, Ambedkar University, Delhi). The volume focuses on the relationship between water systems and the phenomenology of spatial cultures in South Asia from the sixteenth century to the present.
Sugata Ray’s current book project Anthropocene Extinction in the Early Modern World focuses on colonialism, climate change, and Anthropocene extinction in the early modern period (ca. 1450–1750). Forthcoming publications from this new project includes an essay on the extinction of the dodo in TDR: The Drama Review and on the global history of the coco de mer (Lodoicea maldivica)—a monotypic genus in the palm family endemic to the islands of Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles and now on the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. He has guest edited a special issue of the Ars Orientalis (2018), a journal on the art of the Middle East and Asia published by the Freer|Sackler, on translations, terminologies, and global art history.
In the past, Ray has published essays on theories of collecting and archiving, postcolonial theory, and methodologies for a global art history in journals such as Art History and The Art Bulletin. Researched during his tenure as the Scholar-in-Residence at Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Ray's essay on the collecting of Islamic art in the United States was awarded the Historians of Islamic Art Association’s Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize. Other publications have focused on the politics of "inauthenticity” in global art history (James Elkins, ed., Is Art History Global? 2006) and postcolonial theory as aesthetic praxis (The Encyclopedia of Empire, 2016), among other themes.
Sugata Ray’s research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Social Science Research Council, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Hellman Family Fund, the College Art Association’s Meiss Publication Fund, and the Getty Research Institute. He has spoken internationally on climate change and the visual arts and delivered keynotes at conferences, museums, and nonprofit organizations on eco art history.
Ray’s leadership experience includes serving as the Director of the UC Berkeley South Asia Art Initiative (2023–) and the Interim Director of the Institute for South Asia Studies (2021–22), advising on UC Berkeley’s strategic planning on climate change, diversity, and sustainability as the Co-Chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability (2021–24) and as a member of the Senate Task Force on Research and Instruction related to Climate Change (2022–24), the Arts and Humanities for the Future Task Force (2020), and the Signature Initiatives Working Group for Environmental Change, Sustainability and Justice (2018–19), among others. Along with colleagues in History of Art and the Department of Art Practice, Ray has established a new campus-level South Asia Art Initiative at UC Berkeley and, more recently, a Climate Change Initiative at the Institute for South Asia Studies. He serves on the Executive Committee of the UC Berkeley Tagore Program on Literature, Philosophy & Culture (2019–) and on a number of editorial boards including Brill’s Studies in Art & Materiality Series and Edinburgh University Press’ Refractions Series.
Affiliated with the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies (0% appointment), the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, the Institute for South Asia Studies, the Group in Asian Studies, the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Ray teaches courses on South Asian art and architecture, as well as thematic seminars on global early modern art, eco art history, theories of collecting and archiving, postcolonial theory, and methodologies for a global art history. His doctoral students are currently working on a range of topics including medieval ivory, hydro-cultures in the early modern period, and networks of Indian Ocean trade. In the past, Sugata Ray has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Michigan.