Karin Zitzewitz
Associate Professor, South Asian Art
Art History and Visual Culture
research
Karin Zitzewitz is a specialist in the modern and contemporary art of India and Pakistan. An art historian, anthropologist, and curator, her latest research is collected in Infrastructure and Form: Globalization, Contemporary Art, India, which is forthcoming from the University of California Press. Her earlier books are The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India (Hurst/Oxford, 2014) and The Perfect Frame: Presenting Indian Art: Stories and Photographs from the Kekoo Gandhy Collection (Chemould, 2003). Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the Paul Mellon Centre, and the Fulbright program.
Her guest curatorial projects for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University include solo presentations for Pakistani artist Naiza Khan (2013) and Indian artist Mithu Sen (2014). Naiza Khan’s “Karachi Elegies” was supported by a publication on the artist’s work issued jointly by the Broad Art Museum and Art AsiaPacific. Mithu Sen’s “Border Unseen” was featured in Sculpture magazine, ArtForum, and BOMB Magazine, among other outlets.
Zitzewitz has co-edited special issues of Art Journal (Winter 2019), with Nora A. Taylor, and the Journal of Material Culture (forthcoming 2021), with Manuela Ciotti. Her writings have been published in British Art Studies, ARTMargins Journal, Third Text, Visual Anthropology Review, Art History, and Journal of Asian Studies, among others. She is currently Chair of the Editorial Board of Art Journal and Art Journal OPEN (2020–22), which she joined as an at-large member in 2018.
At Michigan State, Zitzewitz is core faculty in the Global Studies in Arts and Humanities Program and Muslim Studies Program, and is affiliated faculty with the Asian Studies Center.
Karin Zitzewitz received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2006. Before coming to MSU she served as a Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago.
teaching
Zitzewitz teaches in the field of modern and contemporary art of Asia. Her courses include:
HA 261 “Modern Asian Art,” which surveys the history of painting in China, Japan, and the Indian Subcontinent from the sixteenth century to the present
HA 461 “Selected Topics in Modern Asian Art,” with topics including “Visual Culture of South Asia,” which focuses on popular art, craft, and contemporary art, and “Contemporary Art of Asia and the Middle East.”
HA802 “Research Methods for Artists and Designers,” which serves the MFA program.
Zitzewitz also teaches in the Global Studies in Arts and Humanities program, including courses on the history of photography and the contemporary art of migration, and IAH, for whom she teaches a course on Bollywood Cinema.
in the news
Art, Art History, and Design Professor Receives Humboldt Research Fellowship
http://www.cal.msu.edu/news/humboldtfellowship
Zitzewitz Appointed Interim Chair of AAHD
http://www.cal.msu.edu/news/zitzewitz-appointed-interim-chair-aahd
Critical Race Studies Residency Program Begins Second Year
http://www.cal.msu.edu/news/critical-race-studies-residency-program-begins-second-year
Critical Race Studies Residency Program Begins Third Year
http://www.cal.msu.edu/news/critical-race-studies-residency-program-begins-third-year