Looking for a future path? Love old buildings? Why not make them new again? NYU’s London-based M.A. Program provides an immersion in adaptive reuse and sustainable building practice. Come learn about the program at our Fall open house, featuring presentations about our faculty and curriculum, admissions information for 2023-24 and a discussion of career opportunities in the field. Program directors, faculty, and alumni will be there to discuss the program and answer your questions. Applications for 2023-24 are due March 1, 2023.
Keynote address to Rethinking Arab History, Society, and Culture – A Conference in Honor of Aziz Al-Azmeh, Central European University, Vienna, “Legalism, Iconoclasm, and Anti-Colonialism – Other Statue Histories”
The sensory turn in many areas of the humanities has so far failed to make a decisive impression on the study of Muslim cultures in historical perspective. However, in the last couple of years there has been a rise in interest in historical manifestations of the Muslim sensorium, as is demonstrated by a series of symposia devoted to the topic on both sides of the Atlantic, several large-scale research projects, as well as multiple ongoing publication projects, including a 2022 Special Issue of The Senses & Society (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfss20/17/1?nav=tocList) and a multi-author Reader in Islamic Sensory History (forthcoming in Brill’s Handbook of Oriental Studies series, ed. Adam Bursi and Christian Lange). In this talk, I aim to summarize these recent developments, provide insights from a number of case studies, describe the challenges involved, and formulate some ambitions for the future study of Islamic sensory history.
Christian Lange (Ph.D. Harvard, 2006) is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is the author of Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge 2008) and Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (Cambridge 2016). From 2017 to 2023, he is the Principal Investigator of SENSIS (“The Senses of Islam”), a research project funded by the European Research Council (https://sensis.sites.uu.nl/).
Date: Wednesday, September 21st Time: 12:30-2:30pm Location: Online
This event will take place as a live Webinar at 12:30pm EDT (New York time). To register as an attendee, please use the following link: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qrQszyYTSX6Yf-Lmo9z92g Only registered attendees will be able to access this event.
Silsila: Center for Material Histories is an NYU center dedicated to material histories of the Islamicate world. Each semester we hold a thematic series of lectures and workshops, which are open to the public. Details of the Center can be found at:
Please join the DAH and IFA in congratulating Professor Sullivan on this prestigious award! We heard the news first from Christine Poggi, Director of the Institute of Fine Arts:
I am thrilled to announce that our colleague and friend, Professor Edward J. Sullivan, has been selected to receive the 2023 Distinguished Scholar Award at the CAA Annual Meeting. This is a fantastic and well-deserved award, and one that we will celebrate at an alumni event at the Duke house this February, when CAA will be held in New York. You will remember that Edward won the Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award given by CAA in 2019. We all recognize the importance of his work as a scholar, curator, teacher, and mentor, and it is wonderful to see that his many accomplishments will be publicly celebrated. The session will be held in person on Thursday, February 16, 4:30-6pm ET at the New York Hilton Midtown.
Here is how CAA describes the Distinguished Scholar Session:
Established in 2001, the Distinguished Scholar Session illuminates and celebrates the contributions of senior art historians. Not intended as a static honor, the event brings the honoree together with his or her colleagues, oftentimes the scholar’s former students. In this way, the session can therefore be viewed as the equivalent of a living Festschrift: an occasion for applauding, examining, and extending a distinguished career in art history and an opportunity for encouraging dialogue between and among several generations of scholars.
Sterenn Le Maguer-Gillon, CEFREPA/Institut Catholique de Paris
Wednesday, September 14th, 12:30pm EDT
Silsila Fall 2022 Series, Body and Senses
Lion-shaped incense burner, cast bronze. H. 85,1 cm. Iran, Seljuk period, 1181-82. Metropolitan Museum of Arts (51.56). Photo S. Le Maguer-Gillon
Fragrant substances such as musk or camphor appear several times in the Qur’an. In addition, the use of perfumes and scented smoke is recommended for purification before prayer in some hadiths attributed to the Prophet collected by authorities such as al-Bukhari. This lecture will shed light on the use of perfumes and incense in medieval Arab society between the 7th and the 15th centuries. First, based on medieval Arabic texts and archaeological records, I will present the main substances used as perfumes and incense in the medieval Islamic world. Secondly, I will highlight the main sources and production locations of scented products (whether of vegetal or animal origin) in order to map the geographical origins of the trade in fragrant substances. As we will see, most of the substances originated in the Far East or Southeast Asia; their importation therefore relied on a long-distance trade which contributed to redefining olfactory tastes in the Islamic world. Finally, I will examine the objects produced to respond to the high demand in perfumes and incense in the medieval Islamic world. As I will show, it was not only the urban elites who used these products; archaeology also attests to the use of incense among lower income groups, highlighting the importance of perfumes among all strata of society.
Sterenn Le Maguer-Gillon is an archaeologist specializing in the incense trade in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Peninsula. She also focuses on the status of fragrances in medieval Islamic society and has recently published several papers on the topic. Le Maguer-Gillon is affiliated with CEFREPA (Kuwait) and CNRS ‘Orient & Méditerranée’ (Paris), she has participated in many archaeological missions in Yemen and the Gulf area. She is involved in museum and heritage projects in Saudi Arabia. She is currently teaching ‘Arts, history and culture of the Arab-Persian world’ at Institut Catholique de Paris and ‘Art, archaeology and cultural exchanges in the Mediterranean’ at Sciences-Po Middle East (Menton).
Date: Wednesday, September 14th Time: 12:30-2:30pm Location: Online
Only registered attendees will be able to access this event.
Silsila: Center for Material Histories is an NYU center dedicated to material histories of the Islamicate world. Each semester we hold a thematic series of lectures and workshops, which are open to the public. Details of the Center can be found at:
Fields of Vision 