Mary Beth Coffman-Heston
Associate Professor Asian Art/Art of India
Director, Asian Studies Program

Telephone:(843) 953-8285
Fax:(843) 953-8212
Office: First floor, Rivers Museum
58 George St.
Email: hestonm@cofc.edu

Courses:

ASST 101 Introduction to Asian Studies
ARTH 103 History of Asian Art
ARTH 308 Studies in Asian Art
ARTH 321 Hindu Myth and Image
ARTH 322 Indian Painting
ARTH 341 History of the Art of India
ARTH 342 History of the Art of China
ARTH 343 History of the Art of Japan

Education:
BA, Ohio State University
Ph.D. Ohio State University

Mary Beth Heston teaches courses on the visual arts and visual culture of South Asia, China, and Japan; she also teaches in Asian Studies, and is the founding Director of the Asian Studies Program. Her research has focused on the arts of the Kerala region of south India; her publications and current projects examine constructions of the body; architecture and kingship; defining a regional visual tradition; painting and its patronage as expressions of authority; and visual narratives.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS:
Articles:

• "Mixed Messages in the New 'Public' Travancore: Building the Capital 1860-1880" (under consideration)
• "Powerful Bodies: "Kerala Style" Bronzes and Thinking about a Regional Style," Archives of Asian Art, vol. 54 (2004), 63-93
• The Nexus of Divine and Earthly Rule: Padmanabhapuram Palace and Traditions of Architecture and Kingship in South Asia," Ars Orientalis XXVI (1996), 81-106*
• Nalukettu Palaces: Developments in Cochin and Travancore, Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries," in Gauravam. Recent Researches in Indology, editors KV Ramesh, MD Sampath, V. Shivananda, LN Swamy. New Delhi: Marman Publishing, 1996, 262-285.*
• Images of the Past, Vision of the Future: the Art of Marttanda Varma," in Perceptions of India‘s Visual Past, editors Catherine Asher and Thomas Metcalf. New Delhi: Oxford and India Book House, 1994: 199-210*
• The Palace Murals at Padmanabhapuram: The Politics of an Image," in Potpourri of Indian Art, editor P. Pal. Bombay: Marg Publications, 1988: 115-131*

WORK IN PROGRESS:

• Building a Polity: Royal Architecture in Colonial Kerala (book manuscript)

RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

• "Contested and Collaborative Public Spheres: the Nature of an Emerging Public in a Colonial South Asian Native State," for session "Architecture, Public Art, and the Public Sphere," College Art Association Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, February 23, 2006
• "Powerful Bodies: a Case Study in Kerala Bronzes," for Roundtable on "Drawing on the Visual Culture Reservoir," Annual south Asia Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, October 7, 2005
• Mixed Message in the new 'Public' Travancore: Building the Capital 1860-1880," for session ¸New Directions in Architecture," American Council for Southern Asian Art Symposium, Salem and Boston, May 7-9, 2004
• Round table for ¸Globalizing Asian Studies: Paying the Piper," ASIANetwork conference, Greenville, SC, April 2003
• Respondent for panel on "Kerala: Links East Links West," College Art Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, February 2002*
• "Centering the Book of War: Heroic Fury in the Ramayana Murals at Mattanceri Palace in Kerala," Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison WI, October 2001*
• "Urbanism from the Pre-Colonial Era in Kerala," for panel "Thinking of Milton Singer/ Rethinking the "City" in India: Architecture and Urban Space Beyond the Bounds of the "Colonial"," Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 2000*