The Manuscriptistan Project: Aesthetics in India’s Archives
In this talk, Cerulli presents a photo-ethnography project called “Manuscriptistan.” He will discuss the work that’s gone into the project; share some images that will be exhibited in Philadelphia in the fall of 2019; and explore the project’s central question: What becomes of the archive, when the archive becomes art?
Anthony Cerulli is an Associate Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research combines ethnography and philology to explore the intersections of premodern and modern literary cultures at sites of ritual healing and institutions of medical education in India. He is the author of Somatic Lessons: Narrating Patienthood and Illness in Indian Medical Literature and co-editor of The Gift in India in Theory in Practice and Medical Texts and Manuscripts in Indian Cultural History.