Tag: Southeast Asia
Two New Titles from Professor Sugata Ray
Two new books are available from History of Art Professor Sugata Ray.
Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence
Edited by Sugata Ray, Venugopal Maddipati
From the Routledge website:
“This book surveys the intersections between water systems and the phenomenology of visual cultures in early modern, colonial and contemporary South Asia. Bringing together contributions by eminent artists, architects, curators and scholars who explore the connections between the environmental and the cultural, the volume situates water in an expansive relational domain. It covers disciplines as diverse as literary studies, environmental humanities, sustainable design, urban planning and media studies. The chapters explore the ways in which material cultures of water generate technological and aesthetic acts of envisioning geographies, and make an intervention within political, social and cultural discourses. A critical interjection in the sociologies of water in the subcontinent, the book brings art history into conversation with current debates on climate change by examining water’s artistic, architectural, engineering, religious, scientific and environmental facets from the 16th century to the present.
This is one of the first books on South Asia’s art, architecture and visual history to interweave the ecological with the aesthetic under the emerging field of eco art history. The volume will be of interest to scholars and general readers of art history, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, urban studies, architecture, geography, history and environmental studies. It will also appeal to activists, curators, art critics and those interested in water management.”
Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550-1850
By Sugata Ray
From the University of Washington Press website:
“In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray shows how this place-centered theology emerged in the wake of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), an epoch marked by climatic catastrophes across the globe. Using the frame of geoaesthetics, he compares early modern conceptions of the environment and current assumptions about nature and culture.
A groundbreaking contribution to the emerging field of eco–art history, the book examines architecture, paintings, photography, and prints created in Braj alongside theological treatises and devotional poetry to foreground seepages between the natural ecosystem and cultural production. The paintings of deified rivers, temples that emulate fragrant groves, and talismanic bleeding rocks that Ray discusses will captivate readers interested in environmental humanities and South Asian art history.”
Resource: ASEAN Digital Library
ASEAN Digital Library serves as a portal to the digitized resources of National Libraries in the ASEAN region. It includes books, papers and manuscripts, maps, photographs, artworks, audio and video recordings, ephemera, and newspapers that focus on the ASEAN region. Currently, the participants are the National Libraries of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Keyword searches in the resource can be filtered by country, type, and language. It is also possible to browse the content by country.
Primary Sources: East India Company Archives
The Library has acquired from Adam Matthew Digital their collection of East India Company records, which will be published in three modules. The module available now, “Trade, Government and Empire, 1600-1947” includes 932 volumes of the British Government’s India Office Records (IOR):
IOR/A: The East India Company’s charters, statutes and treaties
IOR/B: The minutes of the meetings of the Courts of Directors and Proprietors
IOR/C: The minutes and memoranda of the Council of India
IOR/D: The minutes and memoranda of the general committees and offices of the East India Company
IOR/Z: Indexes to selected documents in classes B and D
These records include minutes of council meetings, memoranda and papers laid before the councils, council resolutions, charters, text of legislation, correspondence, personnel lists, and printed monographs. The Nature and Scope section of the resource provides more details.
Exhibit: Thinking Comparatively: Celebrating Benedict Anderson’s Scholarship
Thinking Comparatively: Celebrating Benedict Anderson’s Scholarship
An Exhibition
February 19 through April 29, 2016
120 Doe Library
Benedict Anderson (1936-2015) was born to Anglo-Irish parents in Kunming, Yunnan, China. He was raised in China, California, and Ireland. He received his bachelor’s degree in classics from Cambridge University in 1957 and his doctorate in government from Cornell University in 1967. He was the Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies Emeritus and taught at Cornell from 1967 until his retirement in 2002.
Throughout his life, Anderson was an accomplished scholar who produced a few dozen major scholarly works on language and politics. Among these, his most influential publication, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, has been translated into two dozen languages. He was the editor of the seminal journal Indonesiapublished by the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. His linguistic skills were extraordinary. Anderson was fluent in Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Javanese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Thai.
Professor Anderson was recognized as a giant in Southeast Asian studies. He inspired and trained several generations of students and shared his intellectual originality and innovation with the world.
A small collection of his most insightful and enduring works has been assembled for this exhibit in honor of his widely admired scholarship.
A library guide to Anderson’s works is available at:
Primary Sources: ProQuest History Vault: Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975
Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960-1975 contains documents generated and collected by the media, the military, the CIA, the U.S. State Department, the National Security Council, Presidents, and selected Cabinet members. The resource is focused on the Vietnam War, but the collections in the module address all of the most important foreign policy issues facing the United States between 1960 and 1975.
The documents can be browsed and searched (Advanced Search is recommended). ProQuest’s brochure includes a list of all the collections.
Event: Exhibit Reception
Hidden Treasures: UC Berkeley’s South Asian & Southeast Asian Special Collections opened in the Doe Library’s first floor Bernice Layne Brown Gallery on April 9 and will remain until August 30. You are welcome to attend a reception celebrating the opening, which will include a dance performance and light refreshments.
EXHIBIT RECEPTION
Tuesday, April 16, 5 PM – 7 PM
Morrison Library (first floor of Doe Library)
The exhibit retraces over a century of special collections acquisitions in arts, humanities and social sciences that represent a rich cultural and intellectual legacy for the South Asian and Southeast Asian community at Berkeley and beyond.
Co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia Studies, the Center for Southeast Asia Studies, and the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies. Curated by the staff of the South/Southeast Asia Library.