Bodies and Body Cultures

Sumptuous attire, aromatics, heady intoxicants, pleasure gardens, water sports, and the games of love and sex. Medieval South Asians marshaled these and other aesthetic practices to fashion the spaces they moved in, show themselves to one another, and make sense of their social worlds. In this seminar, we approach the Indian subcontinent’s extensive body cultures in three related ways. Considering a range of visual media, we explore how bodies were imagined and constituted alongside image theories from early South Asia, portraiture, and the construction of personhood through epigraphs. What physical features characterized the bodies of ascetics, divinities, human beings, demi-gods, spirit deities, and even the body of the cosmos? How did certain visual markers communicate emotional states and moral attributes, such as defeat, grief, piety, and purity? Diving into the spaces period bodies occupied, we investigate how somatic cultures forged the accessories and accouterments of material existence. In tandem, we unpack the aesthetic values and theories central to medieval India’s court cultures, from kāma, līla, and alamkāra to rasa theory. Students will be encouraged to research and write on body cultures specific to their own regional or cultural interests.