Dr. Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts
Professor, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures

“Haptic Visualities in Devotional Diasporas of Shirdi Sai Baba”

Visual images are integral to the transnational networks of a dynamic contemporary religious movement based upon the life and teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba, a South Asian saint who lived in the western Indian state of Maharashtra from the mid-1800s to 1918.  Shirdi Sai Baba defied religious nationalism, refused to self-identify as either Hindu or Muslim, and accepted the devotions of all castes and faiths, thus offering an alternative to communal ideologies. This presentation will explore how images actively shape devotion and impact this fast-growing movement’s expansion in communities of India, Mauritius, Germany, Ghana, and the US. In addition to documenting the history, production, and dispersal of images, it will focus upon the efficacy of the images through locally-defined understandings of indexicality that ensure the presence and proximity of the Saint despite diasporic dislocations and the digital reproduction of images. “Haptic visualities” and “corpothetics” will be discussed, as well as the role of new media and the blending with Eastern Orthodox icon traditions in the dissemination of Shirdi Sai Baba’s images around the world.

Miriam R. Levin
Professor of History and History of Art
Department of History, Case Western Reserve University

“City, Exposition, Museum in Modernity’s Perspective”

At the close of the nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization marked the end of the traditional understanding of society as rooted in agriculture. Paris was both the cultural capital of the 19th century and an international symbol of modernity.  This lecture will discuss the efforts of Paris-based urban elites under two different political regimes to construct an urban-centered, industrial-based culture—an entirely new social reality based on science and technology.  The synergy they created among expositions, urban rebuilding and museums provides the foundation for a new understanding of modernity’s history in which science and technology were constitutive.

Michelle Angela Ortíz
Visual Artist, Muralist, and Community Arts Educator

“Telling Their Stories: Engaging Communities through the Arts”

Michelle Angela Ortíz is a visual artist, skilled muralist, and community arts educator who has designed and created over thirty large-scale public murals in the United States and abroad. She uses her art as a vehicle to represent people and communities whose histories are often lost or co-opted. Through painting, printmaking, and public arts practices, she creates space for dialogue and action. Her work transforms “blighted” spaces into a visual affirmation that reveals the strength and spirit of the community.

For more information about Michelle Ortiz’s work, please see her website: www.michelleangela.com.

Made possible by the generous support of the Bryn Mawr College Center for Visual Culture, the departments of English, History of Art, Spanish, and Growth and Structure of Cities, the Dean of Graduate Studies, the Pensby Center, the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, the Center for Social Science, the Program in Latin American, Latino, and Iberian Peoples and Cultures, and the 1902  Lecture Fund.  Additional support provided by Enlace and the Intercultural Center, Swarthmore College.

David Cast
Professor, Department of History of Art
Bryn Mawr College

“Inside/Outside: Germany/London”

Shari Frilot
Senior Film and New Media Curator, Sundance Film Festival
2013 Tri-College Mellon Artist in Residence

“The Power of the Erotic: Curatorial Strategies at Sundance’s New Frontier”