Winter quarter 2018

I’ll be teaching: Graduate Seminar – Major Monuments of Islamic Architecture

This course will examine Islamic architecture based on a number of select iconic monuments situated in a region spanning from Spain to India, such as the Dome of the Rock, the Alhambra, the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, the city of Isfahan, and the Taj Mahal. While following a chronological order, we will use these monuments and urban ensembles to focus on a variety of themes and issues—such as patronage, power, gender, the senses, and the history of reception. Readings by eminent scholars such as Oleg Grabar, Gülru Necipoğlu, and D. Fairchild Ruggles will familiarize students with different theoretical frameworks and methodological tools that scholars of Islamic Art and Architecture have employed. Course assignments include a reading journal containing analytical assessments of the assigned literature, a short research paper on a topic selected in consultation with the instructor, and student presentations of the research topic.

Nina Macaraig received her doctorate in Islamic Art History from the University of Minnesota in 2005. From 2005 to 2017, she worked at Koç University, Istanbul, first as Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, then as Instructor in the Department of History, and finally as faculty member in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art, where she became Associate Professor in 2014. In 2010, she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Kunsthistorische Institut in Florence, Italy. Fall 2015 she spent as Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, and in Spring 2016, she held a Getty Fellowship for her project on “Heavenly Fragrance from Earthly Censers: Conveying the Immaterial Through the Sensory Experience of Material Objects.”

Nina Macaraig specializes in Ottoman architectural history, in particular the “lesser” monuments within its canon, such as bathhouses and soup kitchens, as well as sensory aspects of the built environment. Her articles include “Ottoman Royal Women’s Spaces: The Acoustic Dimension,” Journal of Women’s History 26/1 (2014), and “The Fragrance of the Divine: Ottoman Incense Burners and Their Context,” The Art Bulletin 96/1 (2014), for which she received the Journal of Women’s History’s Third Biannual Best Article Award and the Ömer Lütfi Barkan Article Prize, respectively. Her book entitled Çemberlitaş Hamamı in Istanbul: The Biographical Memoir of a Turkish Bath is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press.