Saleema Waraich

Associate Professor AND DEPARTMENT CHAIR of Art History

CONTACT INFORMATION

Office: Filene 111
Phone: 518-580-8415
Email: swaraich@skidmore.edu

Spring 2024 Office Hours: 
Wednesdays, 3:30 pm-4:30 pm
Thursdays, 3:40 pm-4:40 pm
And, by appointment.

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., Art History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2007
• M.A., South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1997
• B.A., Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1994

REGIONAL FOCUS

• Asia, particularly South Asia and West Asia

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

Saleema's research spans the early modern to the contemporary eras of South Asia, focusing on Mughal material and its political, social, and aesthetic reverberations through to the present. Her courses are animated by postcolonial theory, efforts to ‘decolonize’ a curriculum that emerges out of Euro-U.S. hegemonic practices, and attempts to address systemic racism and promote social and environmental justice. 

COURSES

• Survey of Asian Art (AH 104)
• The Arts of South Asia (AH 206)
• Islamic Art and Architecture (AH 209)
• The Costs of Things: Environmental, Human, Personal (AH 267)
• Asian Pop! (AH 318)
• Decolonizing the Museum: Addressing Systemic Racism and Promoting Social Justice (AH 325)
• Senior Seminar: Orientalism (AH 375)

PUBLICATIONS

Articles

• 2022 (in press) "The Decorative, the Feminine, the Disruptive: Neo-Miniatures and the Satirical Paintings of Saira Wasim," in Women in the Arts and Archaeology of Asia, eds. Ling-en Lu and Allysa B. Peyton, David A. Cofrin Asian Art Manuscript Series, University Press of Florida
• 2022 “Concealing and Revealing the Female Body in European Prints and Mughal Paintings,” in Prints as Agents of Global Exchange 1500-1800,” ed. Heather Madar, Amsterdam University Press
• 2020 “Circuits of Exchange: Muraqqas and Illustrated Gift Books in the Early 20th Century,” in Across the South of Asia: A Volume in Honor of Professor Robert L. Brown, eds. Robert DeCaroli and Paul Lavy, DK Printworld
• 2019 “From Lahore to New York: Postcolonial Paradoxes in the Work of Female Neo-Miniaturists,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2019): pp. 59-94
• 2019 “A City Besieged and a Love Lamented: Representations of Delhi’s Qila-i  Mualla (‘Exalted Fortress’) in the Eighteenth Century,” in Resituating Mughal Architecture in the Persianate World: New Investigations and Analyses, ed. Mehreen Chida-Razvi, a Special Issue of South Asian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2019)
• 2017  “ ‘Authenticity’ as Intermediary: Contested Memories of the Mughal Fort of Old Delhi,” International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 7.1
• 2016  “European Fantasies and Awadhi Dreams: Exoticism, Eroticism, and the Desire for Power,” in Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern Visuality in Global Cultures, eds. Joan DelPlato and Julie Codell, Ashgate
• 2012  “Competing and Complementary Visions of the Court of the Great Mogor,” in Seeing Across Cultures, eds. Dana Leibsohn and Jeanette Peterson, Ashgate
• 2011  “Locations of Longing: The Ruins of Old Lahore,” Ruins: Fabricating Histories of Time, Third Text (Special Issue), ed. Padma Kaimal and Janice Leoshko, 25:6 (November 2011): 699-713

Reviews

• 2012  Book Review. Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny. caa.reviews (2012).
• 2001  Book Review. The Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at the Taj Mahal, ed. Elizabeth Moynihan, Marg 53:2 (December 2001): 74.

Publications in Progress

• In review, The Politics of Wastefulness and ‘the Poetics of Waste’: Ruby Chishti’s Sartorial Interventions, in Gendered Threads of Globalization: Women, Textiles, and Fashion in Asia, ed. Melia Belli Bose, Manchester University Press
• In review, Images and/in International Relations, in Studying International Relations: A Companion Guide, ed. Russell Foster, eds. Hartmut Behr and Russell Foster, McGill-Queens University Press
• In process, Mughal Matters: Teaching Mughal Material, in Teaching South and Southeast Asian Art: Multiethnicity, Cross-Racial Interaction, and Nationalism, eds. Bokyung Kim and Kyunghee Pyun, Palgrave McMillian (Education Series)