This course focuses on the history of the image in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Sikhism, and Islam in South Asia. What is an icon, an image, a representation, and what is the ritual function of each form? When is the destruction of an icon and act of “iconoclasm”? In this course we consider acts of political plunder, reuse and rebuilding (spolia), and the power of the visual in shaping South Asian religious lives.