When: Tuesday, April 30, 2024, 3:00 PM - 4:15 PMWhere: ArtsTwo 3.20, Mile End
How did early modern South Asians think about and engage with plants? What value did plants bring to their lives? Dr Neha Vermani addresses these questions by focusing on the domestic gardens that were situated within the mansions of the elites associated with the South Asia Islamic Mughal empire.
How did early modern South Asians think about and engage with plants? What value did plants bring to their lives? This talk addresses these questions by focusing on the domestic gardens that were situated within the mansions of the elites associated with the South Asia Islamic Mughal empire (16th to the 18th century).
Dr Neha Vermani brings these built green spaces into a conversation with the natural history encyclopedias, plants related manuals, chronicles, and paintings composed during the period. In doing so, she demonstrates how horticultural activities and the ability to curate gardens with familiar and rare varieties of vegetables, fruit, and flowers, not only translated into gustatory delights, medicinal cure, and olfactory regimens but also allowed the Mughal elite to lead an ethical life of temporal and spiritual refinement.
This lecture will be followed by a social event, sign up to get more information!
Neha Vermani is a British Academy Newton International Fellow at the University of Sheffield. She specializes in material-cultural and intellectual history of early modern South Asia with a particular focus on food and bodily practices, plant-animal-human interactions, and the themes of senses and affect.
This event is part of the Environmental Futures series, a two-year research and public engagement programme about the roles of plants in imagining the future, funded by the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences and led by Dr Giulia Carabelli.