Gender and Sexuality in Mughal Arts

Catalog description

Early critical theory in art history addressed questions of gender and sexuality to the European tradition, and that shaped how the discipline, even today, conceptualizes the male gaze and the formative role of images in the formation of sexual subjectivities. This class turns to the visual arts of South Asia during the Mughal period (1556-1858) to consider a different regime of gender, sexuality and the image. What does it mean to theorize gender and sexuality outside European traditions? We revisit canonic readings on these topics, as well as examples of critical thinking about gender and sexuality from other areas of art history. We consider how historians of Mughal art have begun to find a way forward to deal with Mughal works of art that put sexuality front and center of political and social discourse, and together we consider possible avenues for the future.