Historiography of Islamic Architecture

Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

Course Overview

This seminar offers a critical review of scholarship on Islamic architecture through close reading of scholarly texts, museum exhibitions, and architectural projects. It also tackles methodological and historiographical questions about the field’s formation, genealogy, recent expansion, and its evolving historical and theoretical contours. First, how can we study a culturally defined architectural tradition like Islamic architecture without reducing it to essential and timeless categories? Second, how can we critique the dominant Western architectural paradigm without discarding the idea of paradigm or turning away from its comparative examples? Third, how can we rethink periodization in Islamic architectural history in a more representative way? And fourth, how can we reclaim the assumed temporal boundaries of Islamic architecture—Late Antiquity as a predecessor and Modernism as a successor—as constitutive forces in its evolution?

Prerequisite

MIT students were required to obtain permission of the instructor.

Grading

This course requires:

• Weekly reading and occasional writing assignments
• Preparation of and participation in discussions
• A 15 to 20-page research paper. Students are to select their topics in consultation with instructor. Topics may be in-depth studies of texts, representations, architectural project, or scholarly traditions within the field of Islamic art and architecture.
  • Abstracts and preliminary bibliography are due by the end of the 4^th week.
  • Students will present their paper proposals, introductions, and / or research ideas in class on the 6^th week. This will give them a chance to test their ideas before writing the final paper.
  • The final papers will be presented in class during the last two sessions and then submitted at the end of the term.

Calendar

SES #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
1	Overview and Class Structure
2	Reviews of the Field	Assignment 1 due
3	Early Historiographical Developments
4	Founding Scholars	Assignment 2 due
5	The Issue of Image in Islamic Art
6	Presentations of Paper topics and discussion
7	Islamic Architecture and the Word	Assignment 3 due
8	The Sufi Tradition and the Symbolist Approach
9	A Paradigmatic Islamic Monument: The Taj Mahal	Assignment 4 due
10	The “Islamic” Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art	Assignment 5 due
11	Locating Islamic Art and Architecture in Theory
12	Students Presentations
13	Students Presentations (cont.)