Sumathi Ramaswamy

Bare and Spare: The Charisma of the Skeletal. - 30th Annual Daine Weiss’80 Memorial Lecture · April 2018 Keynote/Named Lecture Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

A Mahatma on the March: Towards an Aesthetic of the Ambulatory - 9th Annual International Conference of the Asian Dynamics Initiative · June 2017 Keynote/Named Lecture University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen

Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art and Aesthetics of Disobedience - Anneliese Maeir Award Lecture · September 2016 Invited Talk Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Berlin

"India is Indira, Indira is India": M. F. Husain and the Aesthetics of India’s Emergency, June 1975 - First Anniversary Lecture, Centre for South Asian Studies, London School of Economics · May 2016 Invited Talk London School of Economics, London

Laughing at Empire Properly: M. F. Husain’s Images of the Raj - Inaugural Lecture, Tri-College Mellon Series on the Futures of South Asian Studies · February 2015 Keynote/Named Lecture Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, Swarthmore, PA

Art on the Line: Cartography & Creativity in a Divided World - Dan and Carole Burack President’s Distinguished Lecture · October 2014 Invited Talk University of Vermont, Burlington

An Historian Among the Goddesses of Modern India - Oslo International Graduate Students Conference: Space, Culture, and Religion: Considering Implications of the Spatial Turn · May 2014 Keynote/Named Lecture University of Oslo, Oslo

An Historian Among the Goddesses of Modern India - Sawyer Seminar titled “Crossroads: Culture, Politics and Belief in the Balkans and South Asia.” · April 2014 Keynote/Named Lecture Ohio State University, Columbus

Global Encounters, Terrestrial Lessons, Worldly Selves. - Graduate Students Workshop, Department of History · March 2014 Keynote/Named Lecture North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

Image and Affect in the Reign of English the Dalit Goddess - Conference titled “India: A Veneration Nation?” · June 2012 Keynote/Named Lecture University College, London

The Raj Paints Back: Maqbool Fida Husain’s Reflections on Indian History - Dr. (Sr.) Edith Tomey Endowment Lecture · July 2011 Invited Talk Stella Maris College, Chennai, India

An Historian among the Goddesses of Modern India - South Asian Religions Distinguished Lectureship · March 2011 Invited Talk McGill University, Montréal, Montréal

Lines of Power, Contours of Desire: The Partitioning of Lands and Lives in Our Times - The Seventeenth Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography · November 2010 Invited Talk Newberry Library, Chicago, Chicago

A Historian among the Goddesses of India: The Panic of the Visual? - The Rudelfson Memorial Lecture · May 2010 Invited Talk Dartmouth College, Hanover, Hanover

Martyrdom in the Age of the National Picture - Conference on the Sacred and the Secular · September 2008 Keynote/Named Lecture Southampton University, Southampton

Maps, Mother Goddesses, and Martyrdom in Modern India - The B. N. Pandey Memorial Lecture · September 2007 Invited Talk Center for South Asian Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto

Service to the Profession

President · July 2018 - June 2022 Event/Organization Administration American Institution of Indian Studies, Chicago, New Delhi

Member, Board of Trustees · 2015 - 2018 Event/Organization Administration American Institute of Indian Studies

Advisory Board Member - Cluster of Excellence: Asia and Europe in a Global Context · 2013 - 2017 Committee Service University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, Heidelberg, Germany