Vishal Khandelwal specializes in modern and contemporary architecture, design, art, and visual culture with a focus on South Asia. His current book manuscript analyzes design and art pedagogy and practice at the National Institute of Design in India through the work of key individuals who taught visual communication, textile design, architecture, and product design at this experimental design school and at other academies in Ahmedabad and beyond between 1955 and 1985. Attentive to the movement of ideas, objects, and people across Europe, North America, and India, it places unlikely systems and agents such as the village, the developing economy, and the rural craftsperson at the very center of art and design theory to explore how pedagogical exchange, intellectual property definition, poverty management, socio-political decolonization, and Cold War politics dovetailed with art and design cultures in India and beyond during the twentieth century. The doctoral dissertation that forms the basis of this manuscript was awarded The UC Berkeley South Asia Art & Architecture Dissertation Prize for 2022. It was supported by the 2020 Carter Manny Writing Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, a Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship (2020-21) from the University of Michigan, and stipends from the Decorative Arts Trust and the Rockefeller Archive Center.