Maharana Ari Singh with His Courtiers Being Entertained at the Jagniwas Water Palace in Udaipur. By Bhima, 1767.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accn. No. 1994.116
Session 15: Neuroplasticity and sensory training
In this session we will explore how individuals and communities have shaped their senses to specific ends and ask whether it is possible to ‘replace’ one sense with another. We will also see how sensory training and refinement have been part of cultural and political projects, including the project of modernity.
Readings:
Mehta, Ved. “Surmas and School,” in Face to Face. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. 15-27.
Vatsyayana, Mallanaga. Kāmasūtra. Translated and annotated by Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Books One and Two, pp 3-74.
Session 16: Fashioning a sensible world
In this session we will see how some communities have attempted to create deliberately crafted sensory worlds through manipulation of the natural, built, and social environments.
Readings:
Adamjee, Qamar. “Seeing in a Sacred Manner the Shape of Things in the Spirit: Power and Wonder in Devotional Art.” In Qamar Adamjee, Jeffrey Durham, and Karin G. Oen, Divine Bodies: Sacred Imagery in Asian Art. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2018. pp. 1-9.
Husain, Ali Akbar. Perfume and Pleasure in 17th-Century Deccan. In Kavita Singh (ed.) Scent Upon a Southern Breeze: the Synaesthetic Arts of the Deccan. Mumbai: Marg, 2018.