Cathleen Cummings
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY
cathleen@uab.edu Office // AEIVA 231 205.934.7909
M.A., Ph.D., The Ohio State University
Areas of Specialization: South Asian art history, especially Hindu temple architecture. Cummings teaches art history from all regions of Asia, from the Neolithic through contemporary periods.
While my research specialty is South Asia, I teach comprehensively across all areas of Asia, regularly offering courses in South Asian, Chinese, and Japanese art, with special topics courses on the Himalayan Islamic, and Modern Asian art and architecture. I teach extremely broadly in terms of time periods – from Neolithic South and East Asia through to the contemporary period.
I have overseen MA theses in a range of topics in Asian art – from Japan’s Superflat movement, to Indonesian kris holders, to Thai Buddhist tattooing, to representations of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara at the Mogao caves, China. My work is deeply contextualized within the study of religion, and Indic culture, history, and society more broadly. In my teaching I encourage this approach as a way to understand the context, style, function, and role of a monument or object.