Hima in the House: Avian Architecture across the Islamic World

Name: Hima in the House: Avian Architecture across the Islamic World
Start: 2023-02-25T18:00:00+02:00
End: 2023-02-25T20:00:00+02:00
Location: Oriental Hall

by Public and Community Events

Academic

Sat, Feb 25, 2023

6 PM – 8 PM (GMT+2)

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Oriental Hall

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Through its recent ecological turn, the scholarly study of “Islamic” architecture has expanded to take into greater account both the animal and vegetal worlds. As nature’s most accomplished architects, birds have long contributed to the biomorphic landscape and built environment of the greater Middle East. Stretching from Morocco to India, houses made for birds, and made by birds, attest to the thriving of avian architecture across the centuries. Bird houses, whether impromptu or purpose-built, provide a type of sanctuary and refuge—or hima as conceptualized within Islamic philosophical and ecological traditions—dedicated to protecting avifauna and their related regions, the latter used as agricultural lands for human sustenance and/or as biodiversity reserves for non-human survival. Fluttering from nest and nook to tower and palace, this talk examines various types of bird houses, their architectonic language and creative forms, their intersections with vulnerable places and peoples, and their bio-material contributions to an integrated creaturely world.

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Speakers

Christiane Gruber

Professor

University of Michigan

Christiane Gruber’s primary field of research is Islamic book arts, paintings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islamic ascension texts and images, about which she has written two books and edited a volume of articles. She also pursues research in Islamic book arts and codicology, having authored the online catalogue of Islamic calligraphies in the Library of Congress as well as edited the volume of articles, The Islamic Manuscript Tradition. Her third field of specialization is modern Islamic visual culture and post-revolutionary Iranian visual and material culture, about which she has written several articles. She also has co-edited two volumes on Islamic and cross-cultural visual cultures. She recently completed her third book, titled The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images.

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