Dr. Shukla’s first book, The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India, was published in 2008 and analyzes the everyday and special occasion dress of women in Banaras, India. The book investigates the male realms of production and commerce, and the female realm of creative adornment, in order to conceptualize a total model for the study of body art, traced in time and place, to achieve an artifactual life history. For this book, the Costume Society of America awarded her the 2009 Millia Davenport Publication Award, which is given to published works that make a significant contribution to the study of costume using appropriate methodology, original thought, and exceptional creativity. The book was also recognized by the South Asia Council of the Association of Asian Studies in 2010 with the A.K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize, which recognizes the best book written about India in English. Her second book, The Individual and Tradition: Folkloristic Perspectives, was co-edited with Ray Cashman and Tom Mould, and published in 2011. The book features a collection of performer-centered case studies, advancing the methodological and theoretical issues entailed in ethnographic endeavor. Dr. Shukla’s third book, Costume: Performing Identities through Dress, was published in 2015. This book presents a phenomenological overview of costume, with case studies on carnival costumes in Brazil; folk dress for Midsummer in Sweden; and costumes for historical reenactments and theatrical productions in the United States. Costume explores how individuals embrace and display special identities, unlike those they express through daily dress, showing how costume functions to reveal distinct identities in situations rich with significance. Her fourth book, Sacred Art: Catholic Saints and Candomblé Gods in Modern Brazil was co-authored with Henry Glassie, and published in 2018. Through close study with artists in the states of Bahia and Pernambuco, the book explores personal creativity and collective religiosity within Catholic and African Candomblé contemporary imagery, in clay, wood, paper, and canvas.
Books
Sacred Art: Catholic Saints and Candomblé Gods in Modern Brazil, 2018.
Costume: Performing Identities through Dress, 2015.
The Individual and Tradition: Folkloristic Perspectives., 2011.
The Grace of Four Moons: Dress, Adornment, and the Art of the Body in Modern India, 2008.
Articles
"The Future of Dress Scholarship: Sartorial Autobiographies and the Social History of Clothes." 2015.
“Evaluating Saris: Social Tension and Aesthetic Complexity in the Textile of Modern India.” 2008.
“An Introduction to the Study of Dress and Bodily Adornment.” 2006.
“The Study of Dress and Adornment as Social Positioning.” 2005.
Major Awards and Distinctions
Indiana University Graduate School Faculty Mentor Award
President's Award for Distinguished Teaching
Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award
Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award
A.K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize by the South Asian Council of the Association for Asian Studies, for The Grace of Four Moons. Awarded to "the author of the best English-language work in South Asian studies"
Millia Davenport Publication Award of the Costume Society of America, for The Grace of Four Moons, awarded for "excellence in scholarship in the study of costume”