Seeing Ghosts: Traditions of Death in South Asia

Subhashini Kaligotla is a poet and art historian of early and medieval South Asia. She is interested in approaching artworks from the point of view of the creative resources of architects, sculptors, painters, and other visual artists. Her first book, Shiva’s Waterfront Temples: Architects and Their Audiences in Medieval India (Yale University Press, 2022), places the ingenuity of medieval Deccan Indian makers at its heart. Her current book project, called Seeing Ghosts, charts the life story of the premodern dead from the moment of death to their journey into afterworlds through material objects and visual culture. It draws on religious perspectives – Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina – as well as courtly views and non-elite thought on death, dying, and the afterlife. Kaligotla is Barbara Stoler Miller Associate Professor of Indian and South Asian Art History at Columbia University.

Deepali Dewan is the Dan Mishra Senior Curator of Global South Asia at ROM, where her work is key to supporting and enhancing ROM’s commitment to South Asian Visual Culture through exhibitions, public engagement, research, and learning activities. Dr. Dewan is also an associate professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto and affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies. Her research interests span the history and theory of photography, colonial and nationalist visuality, and contemporary art in South Asia and its diaspora.