Trained in both history (Presidency College; Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta) and art history (Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda; University of Minnesota), Sugata Ray’s research is on post-1400s art and architecture in South Asia with a focus on climate change and the environment, postcolonial geophilosophy, and posthumanist thought before colonial modernity. His first book Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850examined the interrelationship between matter and life—both human and nonhuman—in shaping creative practices in the renowned Hindu pilgrimage site of Braj during the ecocatastrophes of the Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850). The book was awarded the 2021 Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, the 2020 Religion and the Arts Book Award by the American Academy of Religion, the College Art Association’s Millard Meiss Publication Fund, and was a finalist for the PROSE Award in Art History and Criticism. Climate Change and the Art of Devotion was also selected for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Art History Publication Initiative. As an extension of his interest in the field of eco art history, Ray coeditedWater Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence(2020; with Venugopal Maddipati, Ambedkar University, New Delhi), an interdisciplinary volume that focused on the intersections between water systems and the phenomenology of visual cultures from the sixteenth century to the present.
Sugata Ray is currently working on two book projects. The first, Living with the Animal in Mughal India, focuses on human-animal intimacies to offer a posthumanist art history of the early modern world that centralizes intellectual and visual practices beyond the European political sphere. Animals that appear in the book include the celebrated—but now extinct—dodo who resided in the Mughal emperor Jahangir’s menagerie and the antelope for whom the emperor built a magnificent memorial near Lahore. The second book project focuses on the art historical implications of the Columbian Exchange in South Asia. Titled Alam-i Nau/New World: Envisaging the Americas in South Asia, ca. 1492–1750, the book examines early modern painting, architecture, natural histories, and horticulture that were shaped by American plants, animals, and materials transported to South Asia from the 1500s onwards.
Ray has published essays on theories of collecting and archiving, postcolonial theory, climate change and the arts, and methodologies for a global art history in journals such as October, Journal of Early Modern History, Art History, TDR: The Drama Review, South Asia, Afterimage, and The Art Bulletin and guest edited a special issue of Ars Orientalis(2018) on translations and terminologies. Researched during his tenure as the Scholar-in-Residence at the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Ray’s essay on the collecting of Islamic art in the United States was awarded the Historians of Islamic Art Association’s Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize. Ray has spoken internationally on climate change and the arts and delivered keynotes at conferences, museums, and nonprofit organizations.
Sugata Ray’s research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies, Social Science Research Council, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut, Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Hellman Family Fund, College Art Association’s Meiss Publication Fund, the UC Berkeley Humanities Research Fellowship, and the Getty Research Institute.
At UC Berkeley, Ray is a founding member and Faculty Director of the UC Berkeley South Asia Art Initiative. He also served as the Interim Director of the Institute for South Asia Studies. He has advised on UC Berkeley’s strategic plan on climate change, diversity, and sustainability as the Co-Chair of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability and as a member of the Senate Task Force on Research and Instruction related to Climate Change, the Arts and Humanities for the Future Task Force, and the Signature Initiatives Working Group for Environmental Change, Sustainability and Justice, among other initiatives. Beyond UC Berkeley, he serves on a number of editorial boards including Brill’s Studies in Art & Materiality Series and Edinburgh University Press’ Refractions Series and as an Advisor to the Society for Asian Art, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
Affiliated with the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies (0% appointment), the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, the Institute for South Asia Studies, the Group in Asian Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Center on Contemporary India, and the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, Ray teaches courses on South Asian art and architecture, as well as thematic seminars on global early modern art, Indian Ocean art histories, eco art history, theories of collecting and archiving, postcolonial theory, and methodologies for a global art history. Ray’s curatorial engagements on campus have included co-curating Crisis & Creativity: Virtual Artists in Residence in 2020 (a live-streamed virtual project with New Delhi-based Mithu Sen and Chicago-based Brendan Fernandes) and teaching courses that include student-curated exhibitions at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. His doctoral students are currently working on a range of topics including medieval ivory, hydrocultures in the early modern period, and Indian Ocean trade networks.
Select Publications
Professor Ray’s publications can be downloaded from academia.edu (here)
BOOKS AND EDITED JOURNAL ISSUES
Climate Change and the Art of Devotion: Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850, Global South Asia Series and the Art History Publication Initiative (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019).
Awards: Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2021; Religion and the Arts Book Award, American Academy of Religion 2020; Finalist, PROSE Award in Art History and Criticism, 2020; Millard Meiss Publication Fund, College Art Association, 2018
Reviews: David Curley, H-Asia, March 2020; Purnima Dhavan, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 3 (2020): 335–37; David Haberman, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88, no. 4 (2020): 1–4; Charlotte Schmid, Arts Asiatiques 75 (2020): 182–84; Molly E. Aitken, The Art Bulletin 103, no. 2 (2021), 156–58; Melanie Barbato, CrossCurrents 7, no. 2 (2021), 222–25; Yuthika Sharma, Oxford Art Journal, 44, no. 1 (2022): 467–72; John E. Cort, The Journal of Religion 102, no. 2 (2022): 262–74; Ann Grodzins Gold, The Middle Ground Journal 23 (2022): 30–32.
Sugata Ray and Venugopal Maddipati, eds. Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence, Visual and Media Histories Series (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020; South Asia edition, 2020; Paperback 2021).
Reviews: CHOICE 57, no. 5 (January 2020).
Guest Editor, “The Language of Art History,” Special issue, Ars Orientalis 48 (2018).
ESSAYS AND BOOK CHAPTERS
“Questionnaire on Diaspora and the Modern,” October 186 (Fall 2023): 76–89.
“What is Still Needed in the Ecological Discourse?” in Anthropozän? Die Ökologische Frage und der Mensch, der die stellt, edited by Jésus Muñoz Morcillo, 176. (Baden Baden: Tectum Verlag, 2023).
“‘Dead as a Dodo:’ Anthropocene Extinction in the Early Modern World,” TDR: The Drama Review 67, no 1 (2023): 126–35.
“From New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with a Turkey, ca. 1612,” in Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective, edited by Karl Kusserow, 94–113. Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum and the Princeton University Press, 2021. Translated as Sugata Ray, “從新西班牙到印度蒙兀兒帝國 : 以火雞重新思考早期現代動物研究,” Horizontal Art History: Perspectives from Taiwan (Taichung: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, 2024), 66–90.
“Geoaesthetics and Embodied Devotion in Braj,” MARG 73, no 1 (September-December 2021): 47–55.
“A ‘Small’ Story of the Jasmine Flower in the Era of Global Botany,” in Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, edited by Jennifer Ferng and Lauren Cannady, 247–72. Liverpool: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment and Liverpool University Press, 2021.
“Art History and the Political Ecologies of Air,” Venti Journal 1, no. 1 (Fall 2020): 40–7.
“For the Love of Land: Permaculture as Resistance at the Hakoritna Farm, West Bank,” Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism 47, no. 2 (June 2020): 53–58.
“Water is a Limited Commodity: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, Mathura, ca. 1614,” in Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence, edited by Sugata Ray and Venugopal Maddipati, 37–59. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020.
“Introduction: The Materiality of Liquescence,” in Water Histories of South Asia: The Materiality of Liquescence, edited by Sugata Ray and Venugopal Maddipati, 1–16. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2020 (with Venugopal Maddipati).
“Introduction: Translation as Art History,” in “The Language of Art History,” ed. Sugata Ray, special issue, Ars Orientalis 48 (2018): 1–19.
“Hydroaesthetics in the Little Ice Age: Theology, Artistic Cultures, and Environmental Transformation in Early Modern Braj, ca. 1560–70,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40, no. 1 (March 2017): 1–23.
“Ecomoral Aesthetics at the Vishram Ghat, Mathura: Three Ways of Seeing a River,” in Water Design: Environment and Histories, edited by Jutta Jain-Neubauer, 58–69. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2016.
“Shangri La: The Archive-Museum and the Spatial Topologies of Islamic Art History,” in Rethinking Place in South Asian and Islamic Art, 1500–Present, edited by Deborah S. Hutton and Rebecca M. Brown, 163–83. New York: Routledge, 2016. Essay awarded the Historians of Islamic Art Association’s Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize, 2014.
“The ‘Effeminate’ Buddha, the Yogic Male Body, and the Ecologies of Art History in Colonial India,” Art History 38, no. 5 (November 2015): 916–39.
“Colonial Frames, ‘Native’ Claims: The Jaipur Economic and Industrial Museum,” The Art Bulletin 96, no. 2 (July 2014): 196–212.
“Is Art History Global? Responding from the Margins,” in Is Art History Global? edited by James Elkins, 348–57. New York: Routledge, 2007 (with Atreyee Gupta).
SELECT CURATING, PUBLIC WRITING, AND INTERVIEWS
Five Tables of Art and Climate Change, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, December 2023 (Curated by students in Fall 2023 College of Letters & Science First-Year Pathways course Art and Climate Change) https://bampfa.org/event/five-tables-art-climate-change
Read Berkeley News report:https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/15/first-year-pathways-letters-and-science-program
“The Art World Must Grapple with Climate Change,” Prism Reports, June 16, 2023 (Interview with Ray Uyeda) https://prismreports.org/2023/06/16/art-world-must-grapple-climate-change/
“In Focus,” California Magazine, Summer 2023 (Interview with Jennifer Monahan) https://artshumanities.berkeley.edu/news/sugata-ray’s-book-climate-change-and-art-devotion-explores-impacts-climate-change
“From New Spain to Mughal India: Rethinking Early Modern Animal Studies with a Turkey, ca. 1612,” The Indian Ocean World Podcast, October 26, 2022 (Interview with Philip Gooding) https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-qw94z-12f9bcf
The World Awaits You Like A Garden, Latitude 28, New Delhi, April 26–June 30, 2022 (Curatorial Advisor) https://www.latitude28.com/exhibition/the-world-awaits-you-like-a-garden/
“Why a Berkeley Scholar Thinks Climate Change Has an Impact on Religion,” Interfaith Youth Core, September 27, 2021 (Interview with Silma Suba) https://www.interfaithamerica.org/why-a-berkeley-scholar-thinks-climate-change-has-an-impact-on-religion/
“Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of an Art Historian, 2020−21,” The Quarantine Question, Art Journal Open, December 21, 2021. http://artjournal.collegeart.org/?p=16055&page=20
“The Little Ice Age and Devotional Practices in the Transforming Landscape of Northern India,” Religious Studies News, American Academy of Religion, May 20, 2021 (Interview with Kristian Petersen) https://rsn.aarweb.org/little-ice-age-and-devotional-practices-transforming-landscape-northern-india
“The Asian American Community at UC Berkeley Takes a Stand,” Hyperallergic, March 30, 2021. https://hyperallergic.com/632544/the-asian-american-community-at-uc-berkeley-takes-a-stand/
Crisis & Creativity: Virtual Artists in Residence, UC Berkeley South Asia Art Initiative, October 25–28, 2020 (A 72-hour live-streamed project with Mithu Sen and Brendan Fernandes co-curated with Allan deSouza, Asma Kazmi, and Atreyee Gupta) https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/355380/crisis-and-creativity-virtual-artists-in-residence-at-the-south-asia-art-initiative/
Five Tables of the Indian Ocean, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, December 2019 (Curated by students in Fall 2019 course Introduction to the Art and Architecture of South and Southeast Asia) https://bampfa.org/event/five-tables-indian-ocean
Let’s Talk with Sharaad Kuttan, Talk Show Episode 265. Astro Awani TV Channel, Malaysia, August 3, 2019 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x892f4z
Love across the Global South: Popular Cinema Cultures of India and Senegal, Bernice Layne Brown Gallery, University of California, Berkeley, September 2017–February 2018 (Co-curator) https://stories.lib.berkeley.edu/bollywood/
“From Landscape to Land: Eco Aesthetics as Decolonial Imaginaire in Tulkarm,” 28 Magazine 12 (2018): 40–51. [Published in Arabic]
