Viewing of the collections and the exhibition “Refracted Histories through Stained Glass: 19th Century Islamic Windows as a Prism into MIT’s Past, Present, and Future,” followed by a light lunch. Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT. Capped at 30, please register.

Welcome Remarks, Boston College

Roundtable: Provenance and Islamic Art: Current Discussions and Future Directions. Speakers: Elizabeth Dospel Williams, Gwendolyn Collaço, Inês Fialho Brandão, Margaret Graves, Amanda Phillips, Martina Rugiadi, Eiren Shea, Alyson Wharton (-Durgaryan), Franziska Kabelitz

Keynote lecture: Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT. Writing (Art) History in the Time of War

Reception and visit “Wonders of Creation: Art, Science and Innovation in the Islamic World.” McMullen Museum, Boston College, 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA

• Panel 1: “Inscribed Meaning, Memory, and Identity: The Embodiment of Textiles, Dress and Jewels in the Islamic World”
  • ‘Reading’ Inscribed Textiles in Context: an Abbasid tiraz textile in a Fatimid Burial. Arielle Winnik, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University Art Gallery
  • Messages in Minerals: Decoding Inscribed Gemstones. Courtney Stewart, Research Associate, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Two Inscribed Ghurid Talismanic Jewels in the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait. Jochen Sokoly, Associate Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar
  • Traceable Origins of Coins, Embroidery & Adornment in Palestinian Headdress, (Late 19th - Early 20th Centuries). Wafa Ghnaim, Founder, Tatreez Institute and Research Scholar, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Moderator: Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım, Curator, Harvard Art Museums

Coffee Break

• Panel 2: "Writing, Speaking”
  • Flipping the Script of a Historical Whodunnit: An Epigraphical Forgery at the Abbasid Nilometer in Cairo. Heba Mostafa, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, St George
  • Playing with Arabic Script: Visual Analogies and the Imagination in Medieval Islamic Aesthetics. Zahra Kazani, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge
  • Cloths of Mourning: Late Safavid Epigraphic Textiles. Sarah Molina, PhD Candidate, Harvard University

            Moderator: Matt Saba, Program Head, Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT

• Lunch
  • Optional lunchtime discussion: AI and Islamic Art History. Led by Nancy Um, Associate Director for Research and Knowledge Creation, Getty Research Institute, and Hossein Nakhaei, PhD Candidate, University of Pittsburgh. Capped at 20, please register.

• Collection viewings, limited capacity. Please register.
  • "Inscribed Meaning, Memory, and Identity: Dress and Adornments in the MFA Collections"
  • “Contemporary Calligraphy - New Acquisitions”

• Panel 3: “Architecture Speaks”
  • Architecture as Archive: Re-framing Mughal Imperial Lineage. Srinanda Ganguly, PhD Candidate, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
  • A Seventeenth-Century T-Shaped Mosque in Anatolia? The Byzantinizing Mosque of Hüsrev Paşa near Eskişehir. Zeynep Oguz, University of Zagreb
  • The “Defender of Islam” Defiant: The Mausoleum of Qus and the Virtual Hajj.” Mikael Muehlbauer,  Interim Assistant Educator, Office of Academic and Professional Programs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
  • Forging locality in domes: Muslim architecture of Quanzhou, Chendai, and Baiqi in the 20th and 21^st centuries. Sylvia Wu, Assistant Professor, the University of Texas at Austin

Moderator: Laura Weinstein, Curator, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

• Panel 4: “The Architecture and Arts of Islamicate Central Asia during Dynastic Ruptures”
  • Bihzad’s Ghost: The Timurid—Abu’l-Khayrid transition in Transoxiana, 1480–1510. Jaimee Comstock-Skipp, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Oxford
  • Qarakhanid Architecture Re-examined: Portals, Patronage, and Consolidating Turko-Islamic Power in eleventh-century Transoxiana. Dilrabo Tosheva, AKPIA Fellow, Harvard University
  • The pre-Mongol City of Balkh as Seen by its Residents: a Report from the Fadaʾil-i Balkh. Said Reza Husaini, Research Fellow, King’s College, Cambridge University
  • Historical Madrasas as Spolia: Appropriating Timurid and Abu'l-Khayrid Monuments in Toqay-Timurid Urban Squares. Yue Xie, PhD Candidate, Harvard University

Moderator: Alexander Brey, Assistant Professor, Wellesley College

Coffee Break

Critical Explorations of Gen AI through Visual Datasets and the 'Missing Metadata' of Islamic Art,  Aroussiak Gabrielian, Assistant Professor, USC Architecture (Landscape Architecture + Media Arts), Huma Gupta, Assistant Professor, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT

• Lunch
  • Optional lunchtime discussion: Teaching Difficult Topics. Led by Zohreh Soltani, Assistant Professor, Ithaca College, and Emily Neumeier, Assistant Professor, Temple University. Capped at 20, please register.

• Panel 5: “Responding to a Changing World”
  • Tool of Craft or Homage to Profession? A Study of a Qajar Architectural Tablet and a Futuwwatnama of Architects. Salimeh Hosseini, PhD Candidate, University of Chicago,
  • The meaning of ‘photography’ (fotogerāfi) is light-drawing (nūr-negārī)”: Mystical Metaphors in Technical Manuals of Photography in Nineteenth-Century Iran. Chaeri Lee. PhD Candidate, Indiana University
  • “The Gift of the Orient”: Ottoman Cultural Brokers in the US, ca. 1900. Roxanne Goldberg, PhD Candidate, MIT
  • The Spatial Realms of Ottoman Imperial Portraiture: Sultan Selim III, Self-Representation, and Topkapı's Renewal. Hilal Uǧurlu, Associate Professor, MEF University, Istanbul, and Deniz Türker, Assistant Professor, Rutgers University

Moderator: Dana Sajdi, Associate Professor, Boston College

Coffee Break

• “Realms of Response: Javab and Cultural Production in Early Modern Iran and South Asia”
  • The Poetics of Pottery and the Aesthetics of Absence: Isfahan’s Music Room. Michael Chagnon, Aga Khan Museum
  • Speaking Cities: The City and the Self in Premodern Urban Descriptions. Farshid Emami, Assistant Professor, Rice University
  • Mirroring the Cosmos: The Mi‘raj as an Inner Journey Towards God in Hindustani Painting. Murad Khan Mumtaz, Associate Professor, Williams College
  • Self/Reflection: Ghiyas/Sherley, or how to talk back in Safavid art and history. Kishwar Rizvi, Professor, Yale University
  • Discussant: Paul Losenky, Professor, Indiana University

            Moderator: Emine Fetvacı, Professor, Boston College

Closing reception at the McMullen Museum, Boston College, 2101 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA