In February 2022, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs landed in the news when it announced that performing the pilgrimage to Mecca in the Metaverse does not count as a ‘real hajj’. Mixed reactions to this declaration aside, this talk argues that, in the Metaverse era, the existence of a visible but immaterial … Read More
The Race and Gender in Islamic Art Workshop brings together a group of scholars who seek to acknowledge the ways in which race and gender converge and jointly impact codes of representation in Islamic image-making practices over the centuries. Exploring the artistic traditions of the lands of Islam writ large—from the Middle East to the … Read More
In the early nineteenth century, some of the most consequential developments in Ottoman architecture unfolded not in Istanbul but on the empire’s frontier. This talk explores the ambitious building program of Ali Pasha of Ioannina (r. 1788–1822), the renegade governor of Greece and Albania whose architectural patronage ranged from mosques to dervish lodges and even Orthodox … Read More
Since the 1990s, Jafar Panahi has been a central figure in contemporary Iranian cinema and one of its most acclaimed voices on the global stage. A master of the semi-documentary form, Panahi has captured the spirit and texture of Tehran with a rare intimacy and precision. Even after receiving a draconian sentence that placed him … Read More
From the era of the Mamluk Sultanate to the age of jet travel, Cairo has long served as an important hub of West African migration. Whether as a stop on the hajj to … Read More
The Iranian diaspora, estimated at 5 to 8 million people worldwide, has become increasingly visible, especially in North America and Europe. In response to misrepresentation and marginalization, many have turned to cultural work to reshape public narratives and claim space for more accurate and diverse expressions of Iranian identity. Drawing on 16 years of ethnographic … Read More
The Nakba of 1948 is often narrativized as a massive break in Palestinian cultural production. In this presentation, Drs. Ari and Amin will bring nuance to this idea through comparative studies of … Read More
Join us for a conversation about Dr. Amir Moosavi’s recently published book Dust That Never Settles: Literary Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War. The book is the first comparative study of Arabic and Persian literature from the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). It traces the ways in which writers from both countries have wrestled with state-sponsored narratives of war … Read More