Niall Atkinson
Niall Atkinson
Associate Professor of Art History, Romance Languages and Literature, and the College
University of Chicago
Research Project
Interwoven: Sonic and Visual Histories of the Indian Ocean World
Project Team:
2017 – 2021
Project Summary
| This project explored the historical significance of South Asian artistic practices and the complex ways they helped shape local and transregional cultures. |
Interwoven lays the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding movement, practice, materiality, and embodiment as constituting factors of social relations across long temporal arcs and geographic itineraries unbounded by national borders in the Indian Ocean region. The project builds upon and extends a strong base of interdisciplinary collaborations that the participants, together with colleagues from North America, Europe, and South Asia, have developed over the past three years in workshops at the University of Chicago and in South Asia. Those workshops, on sonic and visual culture in South Asia, have called for the integrated and multidisciplinary approach to an expanded field of practices and objects, which will provide the basis for a performance, exhibition, and multimedia publication that establish a new paradigm for understanding the arts in the Indian Ocean region. This expanded field will enable the participants to produce a robust understanding of the historical significance of the diverse artistic practices in the region, and the complex ways they helped shape local and transregional cultures.
Visit the Interwoven website to learn more.
Research Team
Philip V. Bohlman
Philip V. Bohlman
Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and the Humanities in the College; Associate Faculty, Divinity School
University of Chicago
James Nye
Laura Ring
Laura Ring
Metadata Librarian and Librarian for Southern Asia and Anthropology
The University of Chicago Library
Anna Schultz
Anna Seastrand
Project Narrative
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Interwoven Reading List
Interwoven Reading List
Reading list for the Interwoven research project at the Neubauer Collegium
Fields and Forms: Legacies of Collecting and the Forms of Knowledge in Ethnomusicology and Islamic Art
Discussion
Fields and Forms: Legacies of Collecting and the Forms of Knowledge in Ethnomusicology and Islamic Art
This keynote panel drew together two of the finest collections in the world...
Across the Bay of Bengal: Interwoven Voices, Lives, and Images
Discussion
Across the Bay of Bengal: Interwoven Voices, Lives, and Images
This panel explored performance, visual, and sonic traditions from southeastern India and Southeast Asia across and within their heterogeneous communities. Speakers on this panel addressed aspects of ...
Early Cinema: Scholars and Artists in Conversation
Discussion
Early Cinema: Scholars and Artists in Conversation
This roundtable conversation explored cinematography, music, dance, cinemas, and audience reception from the era of silent films through the first decades of talkies. Consideration of film as art and ...
The Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean: Labor, Caste, and Community
Discussion
The Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean: Labor, Caste, and Community
The scholars on this panel drew together the interwoven themes of architecture, music, photography, and literature. Their work on memory, caste, labor, worship, space, and community addressed ...
South Asian Music Ensemble Spring Concert
Performance
South Asian Music Ensemble Spring Concert
Join the University of Chicago’s South Asian Music Ensemble for their annual Spring Concert featuring devotional and classical numbers in various South Asian languages punctuated by collaborations ...
Interwoven Symposium: Introduction, Performance, and Panel Discussion
Symposium
Interwoven Symposium: Introduction, Performance, and Panel Discussion
The Interwoven project draws together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners in the arts to lay the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding movement, practice, materiality, ...
Letters from the Local Bazaar: Scraps and Scrolls of Mobility in the Global Eras of Art History
Lecture
Letters from the Local Bazaar: Scraps and Scrolls of Mobility in the Global Eras of Art History
At this lecture, Dipti Khera (NYU) considered the letters that Jain merchants sent to monks between 1400 and 1900.
From City to Text to Image: Pieter van den Broecke and Safi ibn Vali in Seventeenth-Century Mocha
Lecture
From City to Text to Image: Pieter van den Broecke and Safi ibn Vali in Seventeenth-Century Mocha
Nancy Um (Binghamton University) examined two seventeenth-century images of the Red Sea port of Mocha in Yemen.
Listening to the City
Lecture
Listening to the City
All of the complex interlacing of aural order and disorder, harmony and dissonance, noise and silence that characterized the late medieval and Renaissance city pervade the era’s most popular ...
Wedding Songs, Gender and Sensorial Memory in an Indian Jewish Community
Lecture
Wedding Songs, Gender and Sensorial Memory in an Indian Jewish Community
Of all the songs that Bene Israel people of western India sing, wedding songs are perhaps the most drenched in emotion and memory. This talk by Anna Christine Schultz (University of Chicago) was ...
Mollywood at the Borderlands: A Song of South Indian Solidarity with Latinidad
Lecture
Mollywood at the Borderlands: A Song of South Indian Solidarity with Latinidad
Kaley MasonAssistant Professor of Music, Lewis & Clark College
The people of Southwestern India have experienced widespread economic emigration since the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala was ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Interwoven Reading List
Interwoven Reading List
Reading list for the Interwoven research project at the Neubauer Collegium
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Fields and Forms: Legacies of Collecting and the Forms of Knowledge in Ethnomusicology and Islamic Art
Discussion
Fields and Forms: Legacies of Collecting and the Forms of Knowledge in Ethnomusicology and Islamic Art
This keynote panel drew together two of the finest collections in the world...
Across the Bay of Bengal: Interwoven Voices, Lives, and Images
Discussion
Across the Bay of Bengal: Interwoven Voices, Lives, and Images
This panel explored performance, visual, and sonic traditions from southeastern India and Southeast Asia across and within their heterogeneous communities. Speakers on this panel addressed aspects of ...
Early Cinema: Scholars and Artists in Conversation
Discussion
Early Cinema: Scholars and Artists in Conversation
This roundtable conversation explored cinematography, music, dance, cinemas, and audience reception from the era of silent films through the first decades of talkies. Consideration of film as art and ...
The Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean: Labor, Caste, and Community
Discussion
The Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean: Labor, Caste, and Community
The scholars on this panel drew together the interwoven themes of architecture, music, photography, and literature. Their work on memory, caste, labor, worship, space, and community addressed ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
South Asian Music Ensemble Spring Concert
Performance
South Asian Music Ensemble Spring Concert
Join the University of Chicago’s South Asian Music Ensemble for their annual Spring Concert featuring devotional and classical numbers in various South Asian languages punctuated by collaborations ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Interwoven Symposium: Introduction, Performance, and Panel Discussion
Symposium
Interwoven Symposium: Introduction, Performance, and Panel Discussion
The Interwoven project draws together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners in the arts to lay the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding movement, practice, materiality, ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Letters from the Local Bazaar: Scraps and Scrolls of Mobility in the Global Eras of Art History
Lecture
Letters from the Local Bazaar: Scraps and Scrolls of Mobility in the Global Eras of Art History
At this lecture, Dipti Khera (NYU) considered the letters that Jain merchants sent to monks between 1400 and 1900.
From City to Text to Image: Pieter van den Broecke and Safi ibn Vali in Seventeenth-Century Mocha
Lecture
From City to Text to Image: Pieter van den Broecke and Safi ibn Vali in Seventeenth-Century Mocha
Nancy Um (Binghamton University) examined two seventeenth-century images of the Red Sea port of Mocha in Yemen.
Listening to the City
Lecture
Listening to the City
All of the complex interlacing of aural order and disorder, harmony and dissonance, noise and silence that characterized the late medieval and Renaissance city pervade the era’s most popular ...
Wedding Songs, Gender and Sensorial Memory in an Indian Jewish Community
Lecture
Wedding Songs, Gender and Sensorial Memory in an Indian Jewish Community
Of all the songs that Bene Israel people of western India sing, wedding songs are perhaps the most drenched in emotion and memory. This talk by Anna Christine Schultz (University of Chicago) was ...
Mollywood at the Borderlands: A Song of South Indian Solidarity with Latinidad
Lecture
Mollywood at the Borderlands: A Song of South Indian Solidarity with Latinidad
Kaley MasonAssistant Professor of Music, Lewis & Clark College
The people of Southwestern India have experienced widespread economic emigration since the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala was ...
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