Yael Rice (Amherst College), “Tactile Histories of the Mughal Album”

Tactile Histories of the Mughal Album

Lecture by Yael Rice, Associate Professor, Amherst College

Wednesday, April 23, 2024, 4:30 pm, Loria 351

Object Session, with Yael Rice, at Yale University Art Gallery, Apr.23, 1:30-3pm

For registration, send a request to julia.wang.qw256@yale.edu

With generous support from:

History of Art and Program in Early Modern Studies, Yale University 

As compilations of discrete, fragmentary images and texts in codex format, Mughal albums lend themselves to ocularcentric analysis. How else, if not by sight, would one read a book? Yet the Mughals’ word for album, muraqqa’—Arabic for “patched” or “mended”—, foregrounds other modes of sensory engagement, namely touch. While the term clearly evokes the tactile processes of trimming and pasting together employed in the production of such albums, it also suggests the frequent episodes of repair that any excessively handled book would demand. Following this linguistic cue, this talk situates the Mughal album at the center of a complex matrix of both visual and tactile practices. It examines how physical touch and haptic perception factored in the organization, construction, and use of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century albums both within and beyond the Mughal court. It furthermore places these materials within a broader constellation of stitched textiles and gardens with and in which albums were used.

Yael Rice is Associate Professor of History of Art and Asian Languages and Civilizations at Amherst College