Sylvia W. Houghteling, associate professor of history of art at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, has received the R.L. Shep Book Award from the Textile Society of America for her book, for The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton University Press, 2022). The book, which also won the Charles Rufus Morey Award from the College Art Association, centers on the aesthetics and techniques of cloth making, and how textiles influenced South Asian countries.
As a scholar, Dr. Houghteling specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism. She joined the faculty at Bryn Mawr College in 2016, and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses.
Dr. Houghteling is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard University. She holds a master’s degree in history from the University of Cambridge in England and a Ph.D. in the history of art from Yale University.