Professor Cynthia Packert

Cynthia Packert received her MA and PhD from Harvard University in Fine Arts. She is presently the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Art History, at Middlebury College in Vermont. A scholar in South Asian art and architecture, Dr. Packert spent a year based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat while researching the work of a Swaminarayan Hindu sect that is based in Gujarat, India, and that has established a recognizable sectarian identity through its distinctive visual culture of elaborate temple arts and architecture.  She was a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar and recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship that supported her work while in India. Professor Packert has been the author of many publications including The Art of Loving Krishna: Ornamentation and Devotion and The Sculpture of Early Medieval Rajasthan.  Her publications focus on Indian iconography, art, and religious imagery, with a special emphasis on Gujarat and Rajasthan. Conversant in Hindi, she has been an invited speaker throughout the United States, India and Europe.