Climate Change and the Art of Devotion

"A wonderfully imaginative addition to the growing body of literature on the Little Ice Age. Sugata Ray traces the influence of climatic variations on South Asian art, architecture and devotional practices with extraordinary interpretive skill. This book is a must read for everyone with an interest in human responses to climate variability."—Amitav Ghosh, author blog

"By opening art history to questions about how humans have thought about the earth, and how art and religion have been shaped by human changes and natural disruptions to the earth, Ray's brilliant book guides us to new problems, and to new ways of thinking about art"—H-Asia (H-Net)

"This is an excellent book that is well worth reading. Sugata Ray is a very good writer, and Climate Change and the Art of Devotion was impressively researched."—Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR) / Reading Religion

"This is a thought-provoking work whose greatest contribution is that it carves a path for new studies that may extend our understanding of the deep and complex interrelationships among geoaesthetics, ecology, spiritual practice, and the built environment in early modern India."—Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

"[E]nchanting and compelling. Ray musters visual and textual evidence for an original approach to representations of the natural environment in art and temple architecture devoted to the god Krishna during a three-hundred-year time span, 1550-1850."—The Middle Ground

"[T]he methodologies entailed in geoaesthetics and eco art history open up new avenues for understanding the history of Braj religion and art in particular, and the cultural dynamics of climate change more broadly. As we enter ever more deeply into the Anthropocene, scholarship such as Ray's will be increasingly important."—Journal of Religion