Friday, October 14, 2016 9:00 am – 5:30 pm 38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall
RSVP: 212.501.3019, academicevents@bgc.bard.edu
Sponsored by the Trehan Research Fund for Islamic Art and Material Culture
in conjunction with the Spain-North Africa Project.
In the twelfth century, new powers emerged throughout the Western Mediterranean, from the Almohads of North Africa to the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. In the Iberian Peninsula, upstart rulers with broad ambitions emerged in both Muslim and Christian territories. New city-states appeared with the dissolution of the Almoravid Empire in al-Andalus, and older kingdoms, including Castile-Leon and Aragon, began massive expansions under rulers who claimed imperial titles. This symposium explores how the rulers of this region deployed art (conceived in the broadest sense) to legitimate new claims, how they asserted their authority through the construction of palatial and liturgical spaces, and what kinds of objects their kingdoms produced, traded, or coveted. Talks will investigate how these rulers looked to imperial and caliphal precedents and rivals for models, how they elaborated on these models, and which communities of artisans and workmen they drew from. By bringing together scholars who work on the component kingdoms of this region, this symposium seeks to clarify the connections among them, crossing the geographic, ethnic, and religious lines imposed by modern scholarship. In doing so, it aims to develop new models for understanding the imbricated world of the medieval Western Mediterranean.
9 am
Peter N. Miller
Dean and Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Welcome
Abigail Krasner Balbale
Assistant Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Introduction
Camilo Gómez-Rivas
Assistant Professor of Mediterranean Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz; President, Spain-North Africa Project
Introduction
9:15 am
Lev Arie Kapitaikin
Faculty Lecturer, Islamic Art, Tel Aviv University
“Evoking Tales in a Medieval Ceiling: Sulayman’s / Solomon’s Birds in the Capella Palatina of Palermo”
10 am
Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza
Professor of Art History, Complutense University of Madrid
“Al-Andalus and Castile in Front of Hispania: Art and Its Protagonists in the Construction of a Shared Identity”
10:45 am
Coffee Break
11:15 am
María Judith Feliciano
Independent Scholar
“Twelfth-Century Textiles in Iberia at the Crossroads of Commerce and Ritual”
12 pm
Lunch Break
1 pm
Francisco Prado-Vilar
Director of Cultural and Artistic Projects, Harvard University, Real Colegio Complutense
“Laudes Regiae: Kingship, Transfiguration, and Eschatology in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela”
1:45 pm
Response and Q&A
Abigail Krasner Balbale
Assistant Professor, Bard Graduate Center
Respondent
2:30 pm
Coffee Break
3 pm
Graduate Student Papers and Panel
Linda G. Jones
Ramón y Cajal Research Professor, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona
Chair
Umberto Bongianino
Doctoral Candidate, Islamic Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, Khalili Research Center
“The Ideological Power of Some Almohad Illuminated Manuscripts”
Negar Rokhgar
Doctoral Student, Art History, Rutgers University
“Squinches, Signifiers of Muslim-Norman Integration at the Church of S. Cataldo in Palermo”
Heather Hoge
Doctoral Candidate, History of Art and Architecture, The Pennsylvania State University
“The Towers of Cefalù: A Display of Power in Roger II’s New Kingdom”
4:30 pm
Concluding Discussion
5 pm
Reception
RSVP is required. Please click on the registration link below, email academicevents@bgc.bard.edu, or call 212.501.3019.
Register: https://www.bgc.bard.edu/news/events/art-and-ideology/register.html#register-form
Go to the BGC page: http://www.bgc.bard.edu/news/events/art-and-ideology.html