HIAA ONLINE WORKSHOPS

The premise that research and teaching of the historical art and architecture of the Middle East can be dispassionately separated from urgent political and cultural issues of the region has been thoroughly dismantled by postcolonial critical practices. Yet, at the same time, it remains an open question how curricular and pedagogical practices of historical “Islamic” art and architecture might be responsive to such concerns. For students interested in the field, these issues are of prime interest, as they are for faculty who are often lack the critical tools to engage with historical material as it is set within proximate location to death, destruction, and conflict, to state things in the starkest of terms. This workshop will bring together a multidisciplinary group of art historians and others in related fields whose work, and research practices involve conceptualizing connections between the study of historical art and architecture and these various urgent concerns. These concerns include modes of neo-colonial exploitation, warfare, ethnic cleansing, genocide, Islamophobia, human rights, cultural heritage protection, among others. The Humanities offer us no easy answers or concrete methodologies to address these challenging proximities, but nonetheless they need to be urgently discussed.

Register here.