Global History of South Asian Architecture (part 1 of 2)

This course presents a series of 7 introductory lectures locating the pre-islamic architecture of sub-continental south Asia in its global context. The emphasis in this module is not on identifying the characteristics that supposedly make the architecture of South Asia distinctive ‘Indian’ or ‘Hindu’, but to understand a. what the characteristics and meanings of so-called Indian architecture are, and

b. to locate these in terms of their local and global contexts.

My goal will be to produce a series of introductory lectures that enable teachers of architecture and art history to present this material, which is often completely incomprehensible to Western teachers and students, in an introductory but conceptually rich and globally situated manner.

The lectures in this module discuss the conceptual meaning of architectural forms, the political and economic motivations for them and their global, mostly East Asian, references.