Dr. Pravina Shukla specializes in analyzing body art, conceptions of beauty, adornment, and folk art in India and Brazil. Bodily adornment is one of the oldest, commonest, and even universal form of material expressions of culture and identity. Pravina was born to South Asian parents in Oslo, Norway and grew up in São Paulo, Brazil. She completed her undergraduate degree in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, and earned her Masters and Ph.D. in Folklore and Mythology at UCLA. Her Ph.D. dissertation (1998) was based on research she conducted on women’s adornment in the northeast region of India. Her new book, The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India, will be published by IU Press in January 2008. In her work she focuses on issues of gender, age, caste, religion and ethnicity in exploring the way people adorn themselves with dress and jewelry in everyday life in India. She also has spoken and published on bodily adornment and beauty in Brazil.
Co-sponsored by Anthropology, Center for Asian Studies, Art, and the College of Arts and Letters
Light reception to follow, 6:30-7:30 pm