The Lounge Lecture series, hosted alongside the current exhibit Cloth That Stretches: Weaving Community Across Time and Space, provides an opportunity to explore topics related to cloth and textiles with leading experts. This February, join Sugata Ray on a journey exploring the complex histories of cotton.

Renowned for its vibrant fast colors that did not fade easily, cotton textiles from India were ubiquitous in the early modern period. Although cotton from India was being exported to the ports of the Red Sea and North Africa from as early as the first century CE, the establishment of a maritime trade route connecting Philippines and Spanish America in the 1560s and a concurrent increase of the presence of European traders in the India Ocean littoral led to Indian cotton textiles becoming one of the most valuable commodities of global trade by the seventeenth century. Taking a longue durée approach, the talk will bring together art history, environmental humanities, and maritime studies to narrate a global history of Indian cotton.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Institute for South Asia Studies and the The South Asia Art Initiative.

Find out more at hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/events.