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B.A.; M.A.; M.Phil.; (University of Delhi);

Ph.D. (Heidelberg University, Germany)

Dr. Saumya Agarwal

Assistant Professor

Email saumya.agarwal@jgu.edu.in
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Key Expertise Her areas of interest include concepts of time and temporality, place-making practices, popular visual culture, artistic practices, transcultural studies, heritage studies and film studies.

B.A.; M.A.; M.Phil.; (University of Delhi);

Ph.D. (Heidelberg University, Germany)

Biography

Dr. Saumya Agarwal is an art historian and a cultural studies scholar. Her primary area of research is wall paintings decorating 19th and 20th-century merchant houses in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan. She has a strong interest in approaching the visual in innovative ways as an important resource for socio-historical enquiry. She is currently conducting ethnohistoric research on the painters of Shekhawati, which was funded by a grant from the India Foundation for the Arts. She has previously been a research fellow at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris.

She has also been visiting faculty at Ashoka University and taught as an assistant professor at several Delhi University colleges. Her academic articles have been published in national and international journals including Economic and Political Weekly and Journal of Early Popular Visual Culture. She also regularly contributes to academic blogs, podcasts, and news websites.

 Place Making Through Decorative Murals in the Painted Buildings of Shekhawati. In Visual Ecologies of Place Making, edited by Leslie Atzmon and Pamela Stewart, Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming 2024.

 Travel, Love and Longing. Seminar: Storytelling, 767, July 2023. Print and online https://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.html.

 The Auspicious and the Mechanized: Exploring Transitions in Temporalities Through the Wall Paintings of Shekhawati (1750-1940). Early Popular Visual Culture, 20:2-3, (2022): 166-205, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2022.2065726.

 Paintings in Hindi Films. Talkies, 16 August 2022. https://soundcloud.com/user-115526344/paintings-in-hindi-films.

 My Dadi, Me and Shivani’s Bhairavi. Live Wire (The Wire), 05 January 2021, https://livewire.thewire.in/personal/hindi-author-shivani-book-bhairavi-grandmother/.

 Hanuman and the Indian Martial Art of Kushti. In Arts of Fighting in Asia: Mythology, Kung Fu and Samurai, edited by Julien Rousseau and Stephane du Mesnildot. Paris: Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, 2021: 46-51.

 Temporal Rhythms and Life in the Kumaon Hills. Live Wire (The Wire), 18 July 2021, https://livewire.thewire.in/out-and-about/temporal-rhythms-and-life-in-the-kumaon-hills/.

 Sardul Singh’s Chatri: Multiplicity and Intertextuality of Architectural Memory. Blog Art History and Transculturation, Celebrating the Scholarly Worlds and Works of Monica Juneja, 2021. https://arthistmj65.hypotheses.org/352.

 Dipped in Devotion, Pichwai Paintings Bring Alive Krishna’s Youth. Firstpost, 5 Apr. 2019: 14. Print.

 Shades of Shekhawati: Walls That Tell a Thousand Odd Tales. Firstpost, 2 Feb. 2019: 16. Print.

 Sacred Games and the Appeal of an Apocalyptic Telos. Economic and Political Weekly, LIV, no. 49 (2019): 61-62.

 Musings on Art, Caste and Rape in Churu, Rajasthan. Live Wire (The Wire), 30 July 2019, https://livewire.thewire.in/gender-and-sexuality/musings-on-art-caste-and-rape-in-churu-rajasthan/.

 Les vies simultanées de Krishna (Rajasthan)/The Many Lives of Krishna in a Rajasthani Painting. Le blog de la revue Terrain- Carnets de Terrain, 2018, https://blogterrain.hypotheses.org/13242.

 The Swan by Usha Yadav. In An Endless Winter’s Night: An Anthology of Mother-Daughter Stories in Indian Fiction, edited by Ira Raja and Kay Torney Souter, New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2010: 1-12.
Email saumya.agarwal@jgu.edu.in
Key Expertise Her areas of interest include concepts of time and temporality, place-making practices, popular visual culture, artistic practices, transcultural studies, heritage studies and film studies.
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