Sumathi Ramaswamy

James B. Duke Professor of History and International Comparative Studies

Duke University

Mohandas K. Gandhi has been described as “an artist of non-violence” crafting a set of practices of the self and politics that earned him the mantle of Mahātma, “the great soul.”  There is an enormous body of scholarship that has explored and critiqued Gandhi’s philosophy and praxis of satyāgraha, non-violent civil disobedience.  Yet what does it mean to think of satyāgraha as an aesthetic regime, and its principal exponent as the paradigmatic artist of disobedience? In this presentation, Ramaswamy sets out to answer these questions with the help of India’s modern artists who have turned to the Mahātma as their muse over the past century, but especially in recent decades.

Co-sponsors: Syracuse University College of Arts & Sciences; Syracuse University Humanities Center; Syracuse University Libraries; Department of Art and Music Histories; Department of History; Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies Department of Magazine, News and Digital Journalism; Goldring Arts Journalism Program; Visual Communications Department, Newhouse; Light Work; Lender Center for Social Justice; Democratizing Knowledge Project, and Renée Crown University Honors Program.

For more information or to request an accommodation, please contact: Emera Bridger Wilson (elbridge@syr.edu).