Event time:
Thursday, March 26, 2026 - 4:00pm to Friday, March 27, 2026 - 4:00pm
Location:
Loria Hall 351 (190 York Street)
Event description:
Sohbat: Third Biennial Graduate Symposium on Islamic Art and Architecture
March 26-27, 2026
Department of History of Art, Yale School of Architecture | Yale University
190 York Street, New Haven, CT 06520
This year, the symposium will convene around the themes of destruction and reconstruction. The broad range of papers which will be presented over the course of two days respond to this theme from a range of historical, geographical, and methodological positions and address how can art and architectural histories recuperate the material past, as well as sensory and cognitive experiences that register in the memory and mentalities of a community. The symposium will begin with a keynote lecture by Professor Stephennie Mulder on March 26, followed by a full day of panels on March 27.
PROGRAM
Thursday, March 26th
Loria 351
4 p.m. Welcome and Opening Remarks, Loria 351
4.15 p.m. Keynote Lecture by Professor Stephennie Mulder, Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, University of Texas, Austin.
5:45 p.m. Reception.
Friday, March 27th
Loria 351
9:45 - 10:45 a.m. Panel 1: Crafting Material Worlds
Katelyn Kawthar Yang, Bard: Supple Memories: Leather Pilgrim Flasks and Material Transformation in Ottoman Turkey
Khushi Chaudhary, Bard: Bombay School Pottery: Sindh and Punjabi Origins
Elizabeth Akant, CUNY Graduate Center: Folk Craft, Populism, and Secular Vision in Turkish Modernism in Nurullah Berk’s Series
Discussant: Ayesha Ramachandran, Professor of Comparative Literature
10:45 Tea Break
11 a.m. - 12 p.m. Panel 2: History and Method
Nooralhuda Al Qayem, MIT: Unstable Histories and the Retroactive Construction of Memory: The Case of the King David Hotel Bombing as Told Through Oral Micro-Histories
Masha Nouri Soula, Temple University: Writing as Preservation: Remembering the Lost Life of Toopkhaneh Sqaure
Ms. Iffath Nreetha Uthumalebbe, Eastern University, Sri Lanka: Between Remembering and Preserving: Mapping Islamic Architecture in Eastern Sri Lanka (Online)
Alae El Ouazzani, Columbia University: The Anonymous Square Dirham and the Unmaking of Sijilmassa
Discussant: Morgan Ng, Assistant Professor of History of Art
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Panel 3: Processes and Identities in Islamic Architecture
Muhammad Fateha, MIT: Contextualizing the Demolition of the Islamic Monuments of Cairo
Ryan Mitchell, Temple University: Adapted Eclecticism and the Italians in the History of Late Ottoman Architecture in Egypt
Moaaz Lafi, American University in Cairo: Quiet Spaces of Power: Reinscribing Shi’i Funerary Presence in a Sunni Urban Landscape
Chiara Tedesco, Chartes PSL: The Ottoman Monuments of the Morea, Between Local Histories and Forgotten Heritage
Discussant: Craig Buckley, Associate Professor of History of Art
2:30 Tea Break
2:45 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. Panel 4: Remapping Medieval and Early Modern Landscapes
Richard W. Ellis, UW Madison: Painted Ruins in Safavid Manuscripts: From Allegory to Augury
Zahra Rashid, UC Berkeley: The Garden Space of a Mughal Album: Parallel Metaphors in a Sufi Imaginary (Online)
Blair Winter, UIUC: The Shaping of a Medieval Landscape of al-Salihiyyah
Discussant: Jane Mikkelson, Associate Professor of the Humanities
Admission:
Free