recent keynotes, endowed lectures, and talks
“Empire and Ecology,” Art Histories in Dialogue, Radboud University, Nijmegen, November 9, 2023 (Roundtable with Claudia Swan)
The Next Monsoon: Climate Change and Contemporary Cultural Production in South Asia, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai, October 27–29, 2023. Talk: El Niños and the Architecture of Drought in the Eighteenth Century
Department of the History of Art, Yale University, September 27, 2023. Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
Global Asias and the Anthropocene, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, May 5, 2023 (Invited). Paper: “Dead as a Dodo:” Visualizing Anthropocene Extinction in the Early Modern World
Artefacts of Change: Visions of Environment and Disruption, Rutgers University-New Brunswick Art History Graduate Student Symposium, April 21, 2023 (Conference Keynote). Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
New Directions in Bangladesh Studies: Recent Scholarship and New Publications, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, April 6, 2023 (Respondent)
Nanjing University of the Arts, Nanjing, April 10, 2022. Talk: Art and Climate Change: A Global History
Global Connections: Asia and the Arts in the Second Millennium of the Common Era, Society for Asian Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, March 10, 2022. Talk: How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, India
Material Art Histories, Art Department, Boise State University, March 1, 2023. Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
Mass Extinction: Art, Ritual, Story and the Sacred, Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, February 17, 2023. Talk: Das Paradies: Visualizing Anthropocene Extinction in the Early Modern World
Environments and Sustainability in the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, November 18, 2022. Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
New Books in Hindu Studies, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Denver, November 19, 2022
Resilience to Climate Change, Past and Present, Georgetown University, October 12, 2022. Talk: How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, India
Reconstructing Art Histories in Contemporary Taiwan, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, September 4, 2022 (Conference Keynote). Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
Landscape, Water and the State: South Asian Perspectives, XIX World Economic History Congress, Paris, July 24, 2022. Talk: How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, Mathura, ca. 1614
Global Early Modern Art in Eight Objects, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, June 28, 2022
A Conversation with Amitav Ghosh, Society for Art & Cultural Heritage of India, San Francisco, April 23, 2022
Localizing Climate History, American Society for Environmental History Annual Conference, Eugene, March 23–27, 2022. Talk: How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, Mathura, ca. 1614
Towards Ecocritical Art History: Methods and Practices, Vienna Anthropocene Network (University of Vienna) and Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network (University of Edinburgh), December 3, 2021. Talk: Geoaesthetics at The Limits of Global Art History
Tomorrow’s Renaissance, Fordham University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The Renaissance Society of America, November 6, 2021. Roundtable on “The State of the Field: What needs to Change, How, and Why?”
Matters of Voice, Marta Sutton Weeks Research Workshop, Stanford Humanities Center, October 28, 2021. Talk: Art History and the Political Ecologies of Vital Breath
Treading Softly: Ecocritical Approaches to Cultural History, Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Study Session, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 7 2021 (with Peter Galison)
Humans, Animals, and Indian Ocean Art Histories in the Shadow of the Anthropocene, Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney, September 24, 2021 (Workshop with Danielle Celermajer, Rick De Vos, Ann Elias, and Jennifer Ferng)
Sydney Asian Art Series, Power Institute and China Studies Centre, University of Sydney in collaboration with VisAsia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, September 15, 2021. Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
Temple Cultures & Premodern Worlds Across South Asia and the Indian Ocean, The MacMillan Center, Yale University and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, September 1, 2021 (Roundtable with Daud Ali, Nachiket Chanchani, and Vidya Dehejia)
Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative, Delhi University, July 4, 2021. Talk: Contending with the Past in the Mughal Museum, Agra
Designing Water: Morphology, Ecology and Histories of Waterscapes in South Asia, 26th European Conference on South Asian Studies, Vienna, July 29, 2021. Talk: How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, Mathura
Aesthetics as Epistemic Practice in Premodern Cultures, Episteme in Motion Collaborative Research Center, Freie Universität Berlin, June 24, 2021. Talk: From New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with a Turkey, ca. 1612
The Little Ice Age, Summer Institute for K-12 Educators, Office of Resources for International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley, June 22, 2021 (Teaching Workshop)
Expertise, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 20, 2021. Talk: From New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with a Turkey, ca. 1612
KHI 2021+ Lecture Series, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, May 7, 2021. Talk: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
The Global Turn in Art History: Where Next? Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, April 22, 2021
Imagining the Atmospheric Invisible: Interdisciplinary Visualizations of Air, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art at the Clark Art Institute, April 10, 2021. Talk: Art History and the Political Ecologies of Air
Book Talk Series, Department of Sociology, Presidency University, Kolkata, March 12, 2021. Talk: Climate Change and the Art of Devotion (Discussant Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and Varuni Bhatia, Azim Premji University)
Klopsteg Lecture Series, Science in Human Culture Program, Northwestern University, February 15, 2021. Talk: A "Small" Story of the Jasmine Flower in the Era of Global Botany
Book Talk Series, Bangalore International Centre, Bangalore, December 20, 2020. Talk: Climate Change and the Art of Devotion
Faculty Sustainability Curriculum Workshop, Office of Sustainability, University of California, Berkeley, December 10, 2020 (Workshop)
Climate Change in Bangladesh, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, November 17, 2020 (Respondent)
South Asia Research Group, Department of Anthropology, Yale University, November 10, 2020 (Workshop)
Dissonant Matter, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, November 7, 2020. Talk: Vegetal Aesthetics in the Anthropocene
Society for Asian Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, October 22, 2020. Paper: Bowers of Love: Krishna Worship, Garden Design, and Climate Change in Eighteenth-century Braj
Society for Understanding Culture and History in India, Kolkata, September 27, 2020. Paper: সাম্রাজ্যবাদ বিরোধী স্বাদেশিকতা ও পুরুষত্বের পুনর্নির্মাণ : বিশ শতকের ভারতীয় কলাকৃতির ইতিহাস ফিরে দেখা [Anti-colonial Nationalism and the Remaking of Masculinity in Twentieth-century Art History]
Getty Scholars Program Lecture Series, Getty Center, Los Angeles, May 12, 2020. Paper: From New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with a Turkey, ca. 1612
Catastrophe and Storytelling: Climate Change and Sacred Groves, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, March 3, 2020
Lounge Lecture Series, Hearst Museum of Anthropology, February 20, 2020. Paper: From New Spain to the Dutch East Indies: The Global Histories of Indian Cotton
Environments & Societies Colloquium, University of California, Davis, February 13, 2020 (workshop)
Art History from the South, Center for Contemporary South Asia, Brown University, January 29, 2020
On Speculation, History of Art and Architecture Department, Brown University, January 28, 2020
Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, December 3, 2019 (Book Reading)
Townsend Center Book Chat, University of California, Berkeley, November 20, 2019 (with Whitney Davis, University of California, Berkeley)
Sacred Ecologies, Expressive Culture, and Environmental Crisis, Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University, November 15, 2019. Paper: Art and Ecology in the Age of Greenwashing
Para Site International Conference, Asia Society, Hong Kong, October 10–12, 2019. Paper: With the “Gobble” of a Turkey: Visualizing Human-Animal Relations in the Indian Ocean World
An Afternoon with Amitav Ghosh: A Conversation on Climate Change, Literature, and Art, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, September 16, 2019
A Country for Outliers, Cultural Economy Development Agency and University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, July 28–Aug 4, 2019 (Traveling Workshop)
The Little Ice Age and the Anthropocene, 3rd World Congress of Environmental History, Florianópolis, July 22–26, 2019. Paper: Water is a Limited Commodity: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, India, ca. 1614
Department of Art History, University of California, Los Angeles, April 18, 2019. Paper: How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, India
Early Modern [Global] Asia, Asia Center, Harvard University, March 8, 2019. Paper: Going Global with the North American Turkey
Reimagining Health, Empowerment, and Sovereignty in Bangladesh: Chowdhury Center-LSE Bangladesh Summit, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, February 22, 2019 (Invited Panel Chair)
Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, Dec 7–8, 2018. Paper: How to Live with Plants: Towards an Eco Art History of the Eighteenth Century
A Borderless Renaissance? Multiculturalism in an Expanding World, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, November 30, 2018 (Roundtable)
Hermeneutics and Semiotics of Textual, Visual, and Material Culture, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley November 10, 2018. Paper: Hydroaesthetics in the Little Ice Age: Architectural Cultures and Environmental Transformation in Early Modern Braj
Reckoning with the Past: A Forum, Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, May 12, 2018
Embedding Sustainability Concepts in Curriculum, The Green Initiative Fund, Office of Sustainability, UC Berkeley, May 4, 2018
Eco Art History: Genealogies, Methodologies, Practices, Horizons, University of California, Berkeley, May 4–5, 2018. Talk: How to Live with Plants: Towards an Eco Art History of the Eighteenth Century
Causality and the Work of Art, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, April 27–28, 2018. Talk: Causality at the Limits of Causality; Or the Story of a River that is Love in Liquid Form
Exploring Sites of Encounter through Artifacts: Calicut, Workshop for K-12 teachers, Hearst Museum of Anthropology and Office of Resources for International and Area Studies, UC Berkeley, April 14, 2018
Follies, Mosques, and Majolica Tiles: Imagining the Colonial Built Environment in the Indian Ocean, Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, March 24, 2018, Session sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Paper: (Mis)Translating James Gibbs: Neoclassical Mosques and the Architecture of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Indian Ocean World
The “Three Empires” Redux: Islamic Interregionality in the Age of Modernity, College Art Association Annual Conference; Washington DC, February 22, 2018, Session sponsored by the Historians of Islamic Art Association. Paper: Remembering Rūm: Worldly Milieus and the “Bastard” Architecture of Colonial Modernity in a Hindu Pilgrimage Site
Arts on the Move Across Asia and Beyond, Society for Asian Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, February 9, 2018. Talk: From New Spain to Mughal India: A Turkey in Jahangir's Court
Artisanal Praxis and State Power, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, December 1–2, 2017. Talk: Arboreal Aesthetics in a Hindu Pilgrimage Town: Towards an Eco Art History of the Eighteenth Century
Environmental Humanities in South Asia: Legacies and Potential, 46th Annual Conference on South Asia; Madison, October 27, 2017 (roundtable)
The Idea of “Global Modernism”: A Symposium, University of California, Berkeley, October 20, 2017. Talk: From München to Honolulu, via Agra: The Global Topologies of Early Twentieth-century Islamic Art History
Architecture and the Environment, 63rd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America; Chicago, March 30, 2017. Paper: Hydroaesthetics in the Little Ice Age: Architectural Cultures and Environmental Transformation in Early Modern North India, ca. 1560–70
Art Histories and Terminologies, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz; Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe,” Heidelberg University; Florence, December 12–13, 2016. Talk: The Jungle [jāṅgala], The Forest [vana], and The Bower [kuñja]: "Wilderness Debates" and Other Genealogies of an Eco Art History
Object Histories: Flotsam as Early Globalism, University of California, Berkeley, October 7–8, 2016. Paper: Towards a Planetary Art History: From Viceregal New Spain to Mughal India with Jahangir’s Turkey Cock, ca. 1612
The Natural Worlds of South Asia, Princeton South Asia Conference, Princeton University, April 29, 2016. Talk: From Viceregal New Spain to Mughal India: Doing Early Modern Animal Studies with Turkey Cock, ca. 1612 (conference keynote)
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, April 22, 2016. Lunchtime Talk on Ganesh Haloi
Difference/Distance: Picturing Race Across Oceans in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, University of California, Berkeley, April 15, 2016. Talk: (Mis)Translating James Gibbs in the Indian Ocean World: Neoclassical Mosques, Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms, and the Architecture of a Muslim Modernity
Merced Seminar in the Humanities, University of California, Merced. March 31, 2016. Talk: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age: Water as Limited Commodity in Early Modern North India
Ecoaesthetics - Water in an Expanded Field, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, March 3, 2016. (roundtable with Atul Bhalla, Lauren Kroiz, and Robert Goldman)
Mohile Parikh Center, Mumbai, January 15, 2016. Talk: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, Mathura, ca. 1614
Ecologies, Aesthetics, and Histories of Art, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute, December 14, 2015. Talk: From Viceregal New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with Jahangir’s Turkey Cock, ca. 1612 (conference organizer)
Conceptualizing Modernity: Technologies of Knowledge and Discourse in East Asia, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, November 7, 2015. (invited discussant)
Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, October 12, 2015. Talk: The “Effeminate” Buddha, the Yogic Male Body, and the Ecologies of Art History in Colonial India
Asian Art in the Contemporary World, Asian Contemporary Art Week, Asia Society Northern California, October 2, 2015. Talk: Silsila, Engagements in Art and Cinema
Conversation with Pushpamala N., San Jose Museum of Art, April 2, 2015. (roundtable)
Affective Bodies, Performative Cultures, Aesthetic Practices: A Roundtable with Pushpamala N., Institute of South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, April 3, 2015. (roundtable)
Body and Empire: A Conversation, Forum Transregionale Studien, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, March 24, 2015. Talk: Of the “Effeminate” Buddha and the Making of an Indian Art History
Legacies of Non-Violence in Art and Society, University of Texas at Austin, February 27, 2015. Talk: Before Ecoart: Hydroaesthetics in the Little Ice Age
Object Emotions, Revisited: An Interdisciplinary Conference, Yale University, February 20, 2015. (keynote respondent)