Arathi Menon
Assistant Professor of Art History
Arathi Menon is a specialist in the histories of South Asian art. Her research focuses on the material culture of the premodern Indian Ocean World, from the ancient through to the early modern periods.
Her current book project, Building Cosmopolitanism: Hipped & Gabled Malabar, examines the art histories of the Malabar coast of southwestern India, where a particular convergence of sociocultural, economic, and political factors shaped the development of the region’s distinctive hipped and gabled architectural style. The book offers a new framework for understanding the medieval art and architectural history of Malabar’s churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples.
Menon teaches a range of courses in the department of Art History and in the Asian Studies and Middle East/Islamicate Worlds Studies programs. These include courses on the visual portrayal of stories, epics, and oral traditions, histories of architecture and sculpture, and archives of collecting, circulation, and exchange.
Recent Courses Taught
Artifact, Testament, & Monument: Asian Art Histories
Collecting India
Divine Body: Sculpture in South and Southeast Asian Art
Epic Tales: Storytelling in South Asian Art
Image, Spire, Dome: Art in South Asia
Distinctions
Edgardo Yordán Humanities Faculty Research Grant (2025)
Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art (2023–2024)
Class of 1963 Excellence in Teaching Award, Hamilton College (2023)
Innovations in Digital Pedagogy Fellowship 2022-23
Class of 1966 Career Development Award (2022)
The Class of 1963 Faculty Fellowship (2022)
Public Scholarship
- A brief history of the art of South Asia: Prehistory – c. 500 C.E.
- A Buddha from Mathura
- A page from the Mewar Ramayana
- An Indian ivory statuette in Pompeii
- An Indus Seal
- Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai
- Durga Slays the Buffalo Demon at Mamallapuram
- Rajarajesvara temple, Tanjavur
- The Cave of Shiva at Elephanta
- The Gupta Period
- The Qutb complex and early Sultanate architecture
Select Publications
“Cloaked Pagods: Portuguese and Heathen Churches in Sixteenth-Century Kerala,” in Religions, Special Issue: Scattering and Destroying: On the Unforeseen Consequences of Collecting and Reuse in South Asian Art, edited by Catherine Asher, Padma Kaimal, and Janice Leoshko (2023)
“Thomas in the East: the Early Kerala Church,” in The Long Arc of South Asian Art: A Reader in Honor of Vidya Dehejia, edited by Annapurna Garimella, pp. 229-239 (New Delhi: Kali; Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2022)
Professional Affiliations
- American Council of Southern Asian Art
- Association of Asian Studies
- College Art Association
Appointed to the Faculty
2020Educational Background
Ph.D., Columbia University
M.Phil., Columbia University
M.A., Columbia University
B.A., University of California, San Diego
