This course will focus on critically examining trajectories in artisanal and performative practices from the region of central India in post-Independence India. The states of Madhya Pradesh and the recently created state of Chhattisgarh will form the ambit of discussions. The course will acquaint students with case histories of practitioners, to trace trajectories of transformation. It will engage with questions of caste and community, agency and selfhood to understand the shaping of art forms and their contexts as well as well as interventions in these practices, including the role of anthropologists, scholars, museums, institutions, and the market. Students will critically engage with discourses surrounding the representation of these forms, including the binaries of art verses craft, or the categories of folk and tribal.
preeti.ramaswami@ashoka.edu.in