Academic blog celebrates Monica Juneja´s work

Prof. Monica Juneja, the professor of
Global Art History at the HCTS, has celebrated her 65th birthday on December 30, 2020. On this auspicious occasion, four members of the Global Art History team have launched the open-access blog “Art History and Transculturation” to celebrate her academic career and make her research on Transculturality available to a wider public. The blog, which is hosted by the academic blog provider hypotheses.org, intends to offer a multi-vocal academic portrait of Monica Juneja’s pioneering work in the field of art history and neighboring disciplines by emphasizing her achievements in transcultural methodologies, her far-reaching inter- and trans- disciplinary engagement, and her collaborative ethos. Ultimately, it will show how Prof. Juneja’s critical thinking and mindful research, as well as her caring and sharing personality, have constituted a source of inspiration for colleagues, comrades, students, and friends with different expertise and roles all around the world.

You can access the blog
here.

In contrast to the common Festschrift, the open access, electronic format of the blog allows to embed and integrate a number of hybrid contributions over time, while giving easy access to closely (hyper-)linked contents. Hence, the platform is expected to dynamically grow throughout the year to include a range of contributions encompassing the fields of history, art history, regional studies, and transcultural studies. Given its broad thematic scope, international appeal (with English as its main language), and interactive format, the blog is aimed not only at enhancing scholarly exchange among the contributors – approximately 60 so far – but also at educating a broader, scientifically minded public on the potential of transcultural perspectives and methods.

The editorial team of the blog – Jennifer Bürk, Hajra Haider, and Jo Ziebritzki headed by Franziska Koch – warmly welcomes contributions from students, colleagues, comrades, and friends until mid-2021. Please send your contributions to
mjuneja.blog@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de.

About Monica Juneja:

Prof. Dr. Monica Juneja was appointed professor of
Global Art History at Heidelberg University in January 2009, in the institutional frame of the former
Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context.” Before her assignment in Heidelberg, she was visiting professor at
Emory University, Atlanta, USA, and professor at
Delhi University, India. Her research focuses on practices of visual representation across Europe and South Asia, the disciplinary trajectories of art history in South Asia, gender and political iconography in modern France, and the intersection between Christianization, religious identities, and cultural practices in early modern South Asia. In 2020, she has been awarded a
one-year Opus Magnum by the Volkswagen Foundation to work on the completion of her upcoming monograph titled “Can Art History be made Global? Mediations from the Periphery.” The volume addresses the challenges of the “global turn” in the humanities from the perspective of art history.