OCTOBER 17, 2008

Theme: “'Unity and Variety’ Once More: Time, Place, Material”
> Download Speaker Bios & Abstracts (pdf)

NEW LOCATION:
Rainey Auditorium, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
9:00 – 9:15 am • Welcome

9:15 – 10:15 am • Keynote Speaker: Gülrü Necipoglu, Harvard University:
Reflections on the Birth and Growth of the Field called Islamic Art

10:15 – 10:30 am • Coffee Break

10:30 am – 12:15 pm • (20 minutes per paper; 15 minutes for discussion)
Session 2.1

Session Leader: D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Session Topic: "Women and Patronage"
Session Description: Although the patronage of architecture and the visual arts by women has been a rich topic of exploration in the field of art history and gender studies in general, until recently very few scholars had explored the role of women in Islamic art. Those studies that do exist show that women, both freeborn and slave, could amass fortunes and play a key role in the transfer of property, the construction of family identity and genealogy, and the public display of piety through their activities and endowed foundations. Although they did not appear prominently in chronicles and histories, women were important patrons of Islamic art and especially the built environment. One can hardly imagine Istanbul without the mosque, tomb, and bath complexes commissioned by Ottoman women, or Cairo without the tombs and pious foundations of Fatimid and Ayyubid women.

The study of women relies on a different methodology than that for men. Although women of the Prophet’s family and in ruling houses appear in biographies and court chronicles, to find middle and lower class women, one must plumb court cases, dowry records, waqfiyyas, and commercial contracts and correspondence, often seeking moments when women stepped out of normative anonymity and asserted their legal or economic rights. Thus the study of women has benefited from – and contributed to – the methods of “microhistory” with its emphasis on individuals rather than broad currents.
Moreover, with our emphasis on material culture and the built monument, art historians (and historians engaged in art history) have made important contributions to the study of women and Islamic culture in general, exploring the operative boundaries of private and public space and the exercise of political power through urban investment.

A critical work in the study of women in Islam was Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam (1992) because it introduced the issue to a wide reading public. In art history, Esin Atil’s special issue of Asian Art (1993) was directed toward a general museum audience, but it was written by scholars and inspired others to pursue similar questions. In the past few years alone, many new works – several by HIAA members – have appeared on the theme of female patronage in Islam. The session will adopt a specifically visual and historical point of view and will present new research on female architectural spaces, female patronage of public building, and the methodology of such studies.

Speakers:

• Delia Cortese, Middlesex University and Simonetta Calderini, Roehampton University: The Patronage of Fatimid Women

• Lucienne Thys-Senocak, Koc University: The letters of Hadice Turhan Sultan

• Afshan Bokhari, Suffolk University: Jahan Ara Begum’s ‘Gendered’ Loci of Memory and Legacy: Begum Dalani, Ajmer (1638), Chahar Burj, Lahore (1646) and Agra Masjid (1648)

• D. Fairchild Ruggles, Women and Patronage in Islam: a historical overview of the study

12:15 – 1:30 pm • •Lunch Break

1:30 – 3:15 pm (20 minutes per paper; 15 minutes for discussion)
Session 2.2

Session Leader: Linda Komaroff, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Session Topic: Pushing the Boundaries of the Iranian World: Theme; Medium; Dynasty (ies); Place
Session Description: The art and architecture of the Iranian world in the Islamic period encompasses an enormously diverse body of material with expansive and often elastic temporal and spatial boundaries. This panel will take some of the by now traditional ways in which we look at and classify Islamic/Iranian art, whether stylistic, thematic, iconographic, dynastic, geographic or medium-based but will offer new perspectives. The boundaries to be pushed may be literal or figurative or both.

Speakers:

• M. Shreve Simpson, Independent Scholar, Baltimore: Notions of Narrativity in Persian Imagery, or Giving the Freer Beaker a Narrative Turn

• Yuka Kadoi, Art Institute of Chicago: Blue in Medieval Iranian Textiles: The Cycle of ‘Chinoiserie’

• Sheila Blair, Boston College/Virginia Commonwealth University: Dynasties in Iranian Art: the Case of the Ilkhans

• Tim Williams, University College London: Merv: The Organization of Space in the Early Islamic City

3:15 – 3:30 pm • Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:15 pm • (20 minutes per paper; 15 minutes for discussion)
Session 2.3

Session Leader: Barry Flood, Institute of Fine Arts/New York University
Session Topic: “Unity in Diversity? Circulation, Stasis and the Canon”
Session Description: Among the many recent developments in the field that have helped redefine and refine the problematic notion of ‘Islamic’ art is a burgeoning interest in the nature of art produced in regions formerly considered marginal to the canon. Despite its undoubted innovations, much of this work assumes a rather static relationship between region and style, or subsumes regional and stylistic variety into a unity implied by dynastic labels. In addition, the majority of this research has been concerned with the relationship between Islam and its non-Muslim ‘others’. With few exceptions (the recent interest in Fatimid-‘Abbasid rivalry, for example) there have been far fewer attempts to analyze or deconstruct the nature of the Muslim self and its relevance to the history of material culture.

These phenomena reflect the instrumentality of fixed or static categories of analysis to the construction of a canon. By contrast, this session seeks to examine aspects of circulation and mobility, their relevance to the material culture of the Islamic world, and implications for its study. The mobility in question might entail shifting patterns of self-identification (conversion between different faiths or modes of Islamic belief, for example), the circulation of artistic forms and concepts as a result of mercantile exchange or pilgrimage, or the ‘translation’ of formal concepts between different media.

Speakers:

• Lawrence Nees, University of Delaware: “Decorated Verse ‘Markers’ in Early Qur’an Manuscripts and their Transregional Connections”

• Elizabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University & SOAS, UK: “Travelling with Style – Merchants, Craftsmen and the Transmission of ‘Islamic’ Material Culture in the Western Indian Ocean”

• Emine Fetvacı, Art History Department, Boston University: " ‘Ottoman’ Art at the Service of ‘Ottoman’ Identity”

5:30 – 6:30 pm
Workshop II: On Reading Urban Fabric led by Attilio Petruccioli, Annalinda Neglia and Claudio Rubini, Bari Polytechnic