Jinah Kim

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Jinah Kim (PhD 2006) is Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University. Her first book, Receptacle of the Sacred: Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia (UC Press, 2013) earned AAS Bernard Cohen Prize honorable mention in 2015. She is currently finishing her second book, "Garlands of Visions: Color, Tantra, and a Material History of Indian painting,” which demonstrates how “pothi” manuscripts transformed Indian painting into a portable media that can transfer a vast amount of visual knowledge in color. Her research and publications explore a wide range of topics, from issues of female representation and patronage of art to re-appropriation of religious sites and objects in post-colonial contexts of South and Southeast Asia. In addition to her academic research, she is developing a digital humanities project on color, which will serve as a searchable, open database for research on pigments. 

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