Contents

Academic Sessions: Glasgow 2010

AAH Annual Conference 2010
15 - 17 April, University of Glasgow

New Perspectives on the Art of the Middle East

Session Convenor:

Christine Riding, Tate Britain christine.riding@tate.org.uk

Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978, a substantial literature has grown up taking as its critical object western perspectives on ‘the East’. This session seeks to widen this focus and venture beyond ‘western Orientalism’ to a more representative understanding of the visual culture of the Middle East. There is a strong scholarly literature on the art of the Middle East, generated by Near and Middle Eastern scholars over the last few decades. For example, important work has been done on the art and architecture of the Ottoman Empire and contemporary art and visual culture; while the question of Middle Eastern appropriation of Orientalist discourse, Ottoman Orientalism or contemporary collecting is a live issue of debate.

This is a deliberately broad session with the intention of identifying the key areas of current scholarship and opening them to a broader audience. The session will both assess the state of this scholarship and identify priorities for new avenues of research in what is a diverse and vibrant field.

Speakers:

May Farhat (American University of Beirut)
A Mediterraneanist’s Collection: Henri Pharaon’s ‘Treasure House of Arab Art’

Inessa Kouteinikova (Groningen Museum)
Between Europe and Asia: Paintings for the Kazan Railway Station in Moscow, 1913-1916

Funda Berksoy (Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts)
The Construction of the ‘Modern’ against the ‘Traditional’ during the Early Republican Era in Turkey: The Orientalist Imagery in Nazmi Ziya’s Painting ‘Taksim Square’

Martina Becker (University of Geneva)
Considering Conceptualisation: The Reformation of Art Education in the Early Turkish Republic

Onur Ozdemir (Istanbul Technical University)
The Ottoman Baroque in the Urban and Rural Quarters in the 18th Century

Shirine Hamadeh (American Research Institute in Turkey)
Hybridity and the Struggle for Public Space in Eighteenth-century Istanbul

Alyson Wharton (School of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of London)
Rewriting the History of Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Architecture

Tim Kennedy (American University of Sharjah)
Walking the Ruined Map of Dubai Creek

Abdallah Kahil (Lebanese American University)
Identity in Landscape Painting in Twentieth-century Lebanese Art

Nermin Saybasili (Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts)
No(w)here: Towards a ‘Glocal Vision’: The Development of Artistic Practices

Hamid Keshmirshekan (Advanced Research Institute, The Iranian Academy of Fine Arts)
Globalisation and the Question of Identity: Discourses on Contemporary Iranian Art during the Past Two Decades

Aikaterini Karavida (City University)
The Issue of the Representation of the ‘Margins’ in Contemporary Art Exhibitions: The Case of the Thessaloniki Biennale

Sylvia Shorto (American University of Beirut)
Prisoners of War: Ideologies and the Exhibition of Contemporary Lebanese Art

Georges H. Rabbath (Human and Urban, Beirut)
‘The Lebanese Collection’: Trends in Contemporary Collecting