Dr. Madhuri Desai

Biography

Madhuri Desai is an Associate Professor specializing in Art History and Asian Studies, with a focus on South Asian architecture, urbanism, and art. Her published monograph, 'Banaras Reconstructed: Architecture of Sacred Space in the Hindu Holy City' (University of Washington Press, 2017), provides an in-depth analysis of the remaking of the city of Banaras from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This work earned her the 2019 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. Currently, she is engaged in projects addressing the complex intersections of archaism and formal revival in Early Modern South Asia, including an exploration of Mughal temple architecture and its contribution to sacred cartographies and architectural innovation. Desai's research includes the architectural and urban histories of the Maratha federation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, emphasizing how architecture serves political, artistic, and cultural purposes. She has received fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in Visual Arts and the Social Science Research Council, among others. As an educator, Desai teaches graduate seminars and upper-level courses covering the history of architecture and urbanism across South and Southeast Asia, as well as Islamic art.

Research Interests