Christiane Jacqueline Gruber :: Faculty
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Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art Office: Fine Arts 132 EducationPh.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005 |
Research Interests
Texts and images of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension; illustrated manuscripts of the Turco-Persian world; Islamic codicology and paleography; post-revolutionary Iranian art; and modern Islamic visual culture.
My primary field of interest revolves around bio-apocalyptical texts and images of the Prophet Muhammad in the Persian and Turkic worlds. My first book entitled “The Timurid Book of Ascension: A Study of Text and Image in a Pan-Asian Context,” provides an overview of Islamic ascension (mi’raj) texts and images, as well as a careful analysis of a Turco-Persian illustrated “Book of Ascension” produced in Herat ca. 1436. My second book entitled “The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Prayer Manual” analyzes texts and images of Muhammad’s ascension in the medieval Persian world, underscoring how the theme of the mi’raj could be used for procedures of conversion to Sunni Islam during the Ilkhanid period.
I also am interested in Islamic book arts, in particular the study of manuscripts (codicology) and penmanship (paleography). I authored the online catalogue of the Islamic calligraphies in the Library of Congress (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/intldl/apochtml/apochome.html), and am currently organizing an exhibition entitled “From Pen to Printing Press: Ten Centuries of Islamic Book Arts,” to be held at the IU Art Museum from March to May 2009. A volume of articles, entitled “The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections” (to be published by Indiana University Press in September 2009), provides eight thematic studies on IU’s collections of Islamic paintings and calligraphies.
More recently, I have turned my attention to modern Islamic art and, more specifically, to the public art of post-revolutionary Iran. I have written about post-revolutionary Iranian murals and posters, and plan to complete a book on modern Iranian visual culture in the coming years. Through a number of conferences and publications with international colleagues, I also am working towards establishing and promoting the scholarly field of modern Islamic visual culture.
Publication Highlights
Books
The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Prayer Manual (London: I.B. Tauris and British Institute for Persian Studies, forthcoming, Spring 2009).
The Timurid Book of Ascension: A Study of Text and Image in a Pan-Asian Context (Valencia, Spain: Patrimonio Ediciones in collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2008).
Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy: an online catalogue of 355 calligraphic specimens in the Library of Congress (Washington D.C., 2006). URL: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/intldl/apochtml/apochome.html
Articles
“Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting,” Muqarnas 26 (Forthcoming, Spring 2009).
“The Writing is on the Wall: Mural Arts in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Persica, vol. 22 (2008), 15-46.
“Jerusalem in the Visual Propaganda of Post-Revolutionary Iran,” in Jerusalem: Idea and Reality, eds. Suleiman Mourad and Tamar Mayer(London: Routledge, 2008), 168-197.
“The Keir Mi'raj: Islamic Storytelling and the Picturing of Tales in the Fifteenth Century,” Central Eurasian Studies Review 4/1 (February 2005): 35-39. Also available online at: http:cess.fas.harvard.edu/cesr/pdf/CESR_04_1.pdf
“L’Ascension (Mi'raj) du Prophète Mohammad dans la peinture et la littérature islamiques,” Luqman: Annales des Presses Universitaires d’Iran 39/1 (Fall & Winter 2003-4): 55-79.
Honors and Awards:
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Max-Planck Foundation, 2008-2012
Senior Post-Doctoral Fellowship, American Institute of Iranian Studies, Fall 2007
Margaret B. Sevcenko Prize for Best Article on Islamic Art, College Art Association, 2006
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, American Research Institute in Turkey, Summer 2006
“Excellence in Teaching” Award, International Studies, Indiana University, Spring 2006
Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2003-4
Dissertation Fellowship, American Research Center in Egypt, Summer 2003
Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship, 2002-3
