New Book | From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History
From Yale UP:
Chanchal Dadlani, From Stone to Paper: Architecture as History in the Late Mughal Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-0300233179, $65.
By the 18th century, the Mughal Empire was well beyond its so-called golden age. Its control of the Indian subcontinent was increasingly threatened by regional Indian states, as well as by the encroaching British Empire. In response to a rapidly changing sociopolitical landscape, the Mughal emperors used architecture to harness their illustrious past and stage cultural authority for contemporary audiences. Chanchal Dadlani provides the first in-depth look at this crucial period of architectural history. Discussing a rich array of built forms and urban spaces—from grand imperial mosques to Delhi’s bustling thoroughfares—the volume sheds light on long-overlooked buildings. It also explores representations of architectural monuments that circulated in the form of building plans, manuscript paintings, and postcards. Ultimately, the book reveals how Mughal architects, artists, and patrons built on the cultural legacy of their imperial predecessors to create the very concept of a historical style identifiable as Mughal.
Chanchal B. Dadlani is associate professor of art and architectural history at Wake Forest University.
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction: The Mughal Eighteenth Century
1 Between Experimentation and Regulation: The Foundation of an Eighteenth-Century Style
2 The Urban Culture of Mughal Delhi
3 ‘The Last Flicker in the Lamp of Mughal Architecture’: Transforming the Imperial Capital
4 Codifying Mughal Architecture on Paper
5 Mughal Architecture between Manuscript and Print Culture
Conclusion: From Historicization to Abstraction
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Illustration Credits
Call for Papers | Lithography in Asia
From The University of Chicago, Delhi:
Global Technology in Local Contexts: Lithography in Asia
The University of Chicago Center in Delhi, 16–17 March 2020
Proposals due by 15 August 2019
Organized by Ulrike Stark, Thibaut d’Hubert, and Abhijit Gupta
The year 2022 will mark the bicentenary of the arrival of lithography in India, a watershed moment in the history of printing in South Asia. In anticipation of this anniversary, the University of Chicago Center in Delhi will host a two-day workshop on 16–17 March 2020. We invite scholars working on various aspects of lithography in Asia to submit proposals for papers. We especially welcome proposals from scholars based in South Asia and from early career researchers.
The upcoming anniversary provides a timely moment to review the history of lithography in its technological, sociocultural, economic, and aesthetic dimensions, and from both local and transregional perspectives. Rather than focusing on India alone, the workshop aims to look at the rise of lithography across Asia, from Teheran to Shanghai, and to address the impact of a global technology that bridged traditional and modern practices of textual production from a variety of disciplinary lenses, languages, and local contexts. The workshop will bring together junior and senior scholars from the US, Europe, India and other Asian countries to discuss approaches to the study of lithography in light of recent interest in material cultures, entangled histories, and the circulation of knowledge and technologies. We will explore new lines of inquiry into the relationship between manuscript and print production and the competition between lithography and typography. Possible topics of discussion may include: the social history of lithography; lithography’s trajectory from the sphere of artistic book production to commercial mass printing, lithography as a religious technology, lithography as an art form, the democratizing effect of lithography, lithography and community formation, lithography and the rise of vernacular journalism, global flows of technology and expertise, missionary uses of lithography, lithography in graphic design and advertising.
The workshop will be free and open to invited guest participants. We are unable to cover travel costs for international presenting participants from outside South Asia, but will cover two nights of accommodation in Delhi as well as refreshments and meals for the duration of the workshop. For speakers based in South Asia, we will cover two nights of accommodation and travel expenses (domestic economy round-trip travel).
We invite proposals for papers of 30-minute duration. Proposals should be submitted no later than 15 August 2019 and must include:
1 An abstract of no more than 350 words outlining your research presentation
2 A current CV
3 A completed contact information form, available here.
Please email these materials to Shruti Brar at shrutibrar@uchicago.edu. Proposals may also be sent via mail to the following address:
University of Chicago Center
Attn: Shruti Brar
DLF Capitol Point
Baba Kharak Singh Marg
New Delhi, India 110001
Workshop Conveners
Professor Ulrike Stark, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Professor Thibaut d’Hubert, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Professor Abhijit Gupta, Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata
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