MES 18.04 Arts of Islam
This course is intended to introduce the arts of Islam during a period of dynamic cultural and political change in the Islamic world. It attempts to instill in the student a broad awareness of the diversity and the main achievements of Islamic architecture from the beginnings of Islam to the present day. It begins with a basic outline of Islamic material culture in its early and 'Classical' periods, from ca. 650 through to the art of the nation-state in the twentieth century. This period saw the initial formation of an Arab empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, a decline in centralized authority, and the rise to political prominence of various North African, Iberian, Iranian, Central Asian, and South Asian dynasties. These political developments are reflected in the increasingly diverse and dynamic nature of Islamic material culture over this period. The topics have been chosen to stress a dialectic between continuity with earlier artistic traditions and the dynamics of transformation and innovation that led to the creation of distinctive regional and transregional visual vocabularies.
Instructor
Agarwala
Cross Listed Courses
ARTH 31.03