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Pika Ghosh

Associate Professor & Assistant Department Chair of Art

204 Hanes Art Center
Campus Box 3405
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3405
919-962-2015 (phone)
919-962-0722 (fax)
pghosh@email.unc.edu

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania

Research Interests

Pika Ghosh teaches courses on South Asian art, architecture, and culture, and her research focuses on material culture in eastern India from the seventeenth century to the present. Her book Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal (Indiana University Press, 2005) identifies the emergence of a new architectural formation in the religious and political environment of the seventeenth century. She is interested in ethnographic approaches and how current practices, such as ritual and oral lore can help inform us about the pre-modern period, and is currently working on the terra cotta ornamentation on Bengal temples and the role of visual imagery in a predominantly oral culture. A second project focuses on the narrative scrolls painted by itinerant painter-minstrels called patuas to entertain rural audiences. She is interested in the role of artistic production in the formation of the colonial capital at Calcutta in the nineteenth century, and in the ways in which colonial and nationalist dialogue both shaped categorization and collecting, and was also defined by these preoccupations.

Her courses involve close study of works of art in the Ackland Art Museum and her graduate students have created a catalogue of the South Asian sculptures in that collection.

Courses Offered (As Scheduled)

For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes.

  • Honors Seminar  Art of Tibet
  • Art 22/Asia 22  Introduction to Asian Art
  • Art 69/Asia 67  Empire and Expression: The Arts Under the Mughal Dynasty in South Asia
  • Art124/Asia  124 Sacred Space and Urban Centers in South Asia
  • Art 128/Asia  128 Art and Ritual in South Asia
  • Art 360  Graduate Seminar: South Asian Sculpture-Museum Studies

Publications

Books

__ ed. Fashioning the Divine: South Asian Sculpture at the Ackland Art Museum (Chapel Hill, NC: Ackland Art Museum, 2006).

Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal (Bloomington IN:Indiana University Press: 2005).

Awarded the Edward C. Dimock Prize in the Indian Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies.

__ and Michael W. Meister, Cooking for the Gods:  The Art of  Home Ritual in Bengal, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Under Preparation

___ ed. “Hitesh Ranjan Sanyal and the Brick Temples of Bengal,” Center for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

Articles

“Rags as Riches: Kanthas in the Lives of Bengali Women” in Nakshi Kantha. Edited by Darielle Mason (Philadelphia: Philadephia Museum of Art, 2009 forthcoming 43 pages text, 25 plates).

“Swayed by Love: Dance in the Vaishnava Temple Imagery of Bengal,” in Dance Matters. Proceedings of the Conference Dance Matters, Jadavpur University, Calcutta.  Edited by Pallabi Chakravoty and Nilanjana Gupta (Routledge: 2008 forthcoming, 25 pages text, 6 plates).

“Krishna’s Dance and Devotional Practice in the Temple Courtyards of Seventeenth-Century Bengal” in Performing Ecstasy. Edited by Pallabi Chakravorty and Scott Kugle (New Delhi: Manohar, 2008 forthcoming, pp. 50-85 text, and 24 plates)

“Fashioning Images in Search of the Divine,” in Fashioning the Divine: South Asian Sculpture at the Ackland Art Museum edited by Pika Ghosh (Chapel Hill, NC: Ackland Art Museum, 2006), 1-20.

“Problems and Approaches to Cataloguing the Collection” in Fashioning the Divine: South Asian Sculpture at the Ackland Art Museum edited by Pika Ghosh (Chapel Hill, NC: Ackland Art Museum, 2006), xi-xv.

“Female Attendant with Sword” in Fashioning the Divine: South Asian Sculpture at the Ackland Art Museum edited by Pika Ghosh (Chapel Hill, NC: Ackland Art Museum, 2006), 130-133.

“Stucco Head” in Fashioning the Divine: South Asian Sculpture at the Ackland Art Museum edited by Pika Ghosh (Chapel Hill, NC: Ackland Art Museum, 2006), 66-69.

“Problems of Reconstructing Bengali Architecture of the Sultanate Period,” Marg (2006): 92-103.

“Narrating Krishna’s Biography: Temple Imagery, Oral Performance and Vaishnava Mission in Seventeenth-Century Bengal,” Artibus Asiae 65.1 (2005): 39-65 (Refereed).

“A Bengali Ramayana Scroll in the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection: A Reappraisal of Content” South Asian Studies 19(2003): 157-167 (Refereed).

“Unrolling a Narrative Scroll: Artistic Practice and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Bengal” Journal of Asian Studies 62(August 2003): 835-871 (Refereed).

“Space and the New Temple Vernacular of Seventeenth-Century Bengal” in Traditional and Vernacular Architecture, Madras Craft Foundation, Chennai 2003: 16-30.

“Sojourns of a Peripatetic Deity” RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 41(2002): 104-126 (Refereed).

“Tales, Tanks and Temples: The Creation of a Sacred Center in Seventeenth-Century Bengal” Asian Folklore Studies LIX-2 (2002): 193-222 (Refereed).

“Story of A Storyteller’s Scroll” RES Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 37(2000): 166-185 (Refereed).

“Kalighat Paintings from Nineteenth-Century Calcutta in Maxwell Sommerville’s East Indian Ethnological Collection” Expedition 43.2 (2000) 11-21 (Refereed).

Encyclopedia Entries

“Premodern Bengal Architecture” in South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Peter J. Klaus and Margaret Mills, (Routledge, 2002) 5 pages.

Reviews

Janice Leoshko, Sacred Traces: British Explorations of Buddhism in South Asia, Ashgate, 2003. Reviewed in CAA online reviews.

“Live Like the Banyan Tree: Images of the Indian American Experience.” Museum Anthropology23: 3(1999): 104-110.