Seminars - SOAS Research Seminars in Islamic Art (Spring 2018, London)

Ellen Kenney Discussion
From: Alex Dika Seggerman <sec.hiaa@gmail.com>
Date: 22 February 2018
 
Forwarded from Tanja Tolar <tt30@soas.ac.uk>

Please find below the information on our 2017/18 season of Research Seminars in Islamic Art, held at SOAS, London, on Thursdays at 5.30 pm in room B104 (Brunei Gallery). Seminars are convened by Professor Anna Contadini.
 
Thursday 1st March
Jessica Rose Holland
Digitising the Past: The Growing Archival movement in Amman.
 
Abstract: Amman has a host of archival digitisation projects underway, in national institutions, foreign public institutions and private collections; ranging from photographs stretching back 70 years through to multi-media records of past exhibitions at the city’s cultural institutions.  One of the motivating factors is the imperative to document and preserve the heritage of the Middle East, as it goes through another decade of dramatic aesthetic and political change. The American Centre of Oriental Research (ACOR) Photo Archive currently provides a representative record of Jordan’s archaeological and social history spanning from 1955 to the early 2000s. Photos soon-to-be-digitized will feature subjects from Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. Amman’s digitisation projects depict archiving as a stubborn act of resistance; a refusal to let rich resources become irrelevant by giving them new life as digital collections.
 
Thursday 26th April
Cailah Jackson
Illuminated Islamic Manuscripts of Konya, 1270s - 1330s
 
Abstract: This presentation will address the gap in scholarship by discussing several illuminated manuscripts produced in Konya between 1278 and 1332. Consisting mainly of works by Jalal al-Din Rumi and Sultan Walad, most of this material has not been published in detail or studied within a broader cultural framework. The talk will outline the diverse decorative features of these manuscripts, and their codicological properties. It will demonstrate that Konya – despite frequent outbreaks of violence, and the absence of an effective centralised governing structure in the region – possessed an active artistic scene that was populated by Seljuk bureaucrats, Mevlevi dervishes, converts from Christianity, and Turkmen beys. 

Thursday 3rd May
Valerie Gonzalez
Re-examining the Genesis of Mughal Painting
 
Abstract: In this seminar, I will re-examine the elusive genesis of Mughal painting, based on the findings expounded in my book Aesthetic Hybridity in Mughal Painting, 1526-1658 (Ashgate, 2016). How did Mughal painting become what it became during the three reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan? The exploration of this question will allow to deconstruct misconceptions and redefine the ontology of early Mughal pictoriality as the product of a complex phenomenon of artistic hybridization. Thus, the role of the three creative forces at work in this pictoriality, namely the Sultanate painting’s legacy, and the post-Timurid and European pictorial imports, will be re-evaluated.