Academic Sessions: Glasgow 2010
AAH Annual Conference 2010
15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow
Visual Culture of the Medieval Middle East: Islamic Art History Now?
Session Convenors:
Moya Carey, Victoria & Albert Museum, m.carey@vam.ac.uk
Margaret Graves, University of Edinburgh, margaretgraves_36@hotmail.com
In the ten years that have passed since the last dedicated panel on medieval Islamic art was presented at an annual conference of the AAH, there have been massive shifts in the international perception of Islam and Islamic culture. Concurrently, our field has expanded, museum displays have been overhauled, the international market for Islamic material has boomed, and the visual culture of the Islamic world has begun to move towards the centre stage of art history.
The discipline of Islamic art history has been going through dramatic changes for several decades, both in its methods and its fields of enquiry. The very use of the terms ‘Islamic’ and ‘art’ to describe the parameters of the field have been exposed as persistently problematic, misleadingly equating visual culture with religion whilst promoting a western hierarchy of artistic production that cannot accurately reflect the cultural activity of the enormous geographical area under discussion. To study the visual culture of the medieval Islamic world at present involves straddling findings and approaches from a multitude of disciplines. While this makes our practice both exhilarating and exhausting, we must consider whether these are the best approaches to the material. In showcasing current research being conducted on the visual culture of the medieval Islamic world, this session aims to survey the present state of the discipline, whilst also opening up the field to self-analysis.
Speakers:
Martina Muller-Wiener (University of Bonn)
‘The Soul Never Thinks Without an Image’: Text/ Image Relationships in Thirteenth- Century Illustrated Manuscripts
Alain George (University of Edinburgh)
The Illustrations of the Maqamat and the Shadow Play
Melanie Gibson (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
A Ceramic Menagerie: Animal Sculptures from Iran and Syria, c. 1150-1250
Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga
Mirabilia, Bestiaries and Islamic Textiles (Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries)
Jennifer Scarce (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee)
Colour in the Glazed Tilework of Iran during the Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries
Dorothée Kreuzer (University of Bonn)
Looking for Geese on the Silk Road. Nasta'liq and the Poiesis of Writing
Stephennie Mulder (University of Texas at Austin)
Seeing the Light: Polyvalent Iconographies at Three Medieval Syrian Shrines
Moya Carey (Victoria & Albert Museum)
Border Zones: Scholarship into the Inlaid Metalwork of Twelfth-Century Khurasan