Dr. Sugata Ray, Associate Professor of Art History and South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley, will deliver the FSU Department of Religion's 2025 Bartholomeusz Lecture. Dr. Ray will present “How to See Water in an Age of Unusual Droughts: Ecological Aesthetics in the Little Ice Age, ca. 1550–1850,” Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 p.m. in the Common Room (ground floor) of the Williams Building. 

Abstract: The Little Ice Age (ca. 1550–1850), a climatic period marked by glacial expansion in Europe, brought droughts of unprecedented intensity to South Asia. In drought-ravaged north India, the beginnings of the Little Ice Age not only corresponded with the emergence of new techniques of landscape painting and riparian architecture that emphasized the materiality of flowing water but also saw the enunciation of a new theology of Krishna worship that centralized the veneration of the natural environment. Tracing the intersections among artistic practices, theological economies, and the ecocatastrophes of the Little Ice Age, my talk aims to generate an ideation of an eco art history that brings together the environmental and the aesthetic.

The Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture in Religion was established by the faculty of the Department of Religion at Florida State University in memory of our late colleague, Tessa Bartholomeusz (1958-2001).