Critical Historiography as Method
For more than 35 years, Nasser Rabbat’s work has critically challenged methodologies inherited from the study of Western art and architecture. His vocal interrogations of the status quo have influenced generations of scholars and practitioners to search for new ways of critically reconstructing history. To recognize Rabbat’s lifetime of scholarly achievements—including his impact in and beyond the field—a Festschrift is being organized in his honor. This symposium will gather some of the volume’s contributors, who will present their methodologically framed papers, demonstrating how criticality and a concern for historiography has oriented the research of Nasser’s students, mentees, and close colleagues over the years.
This event will not be live streamed, but a recording will be available online in the days following the symposium.
Please register in advance on the symposium website: https://sites.mit.edu/festschrift/register/
Schedule
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Dreyfoos Lecture Hall (E14-633)
MIT Media Lab
Welcome
9 – 9:30 AM
Sign in, pick up your name tags, and socialize over light refreshments.
Opening Remarks
9:30 AM
"Framing a Legacy: The Festschrift Commences"
Courtney Lesoon
Self-Reflexivity, the Field, and the Future
9:40 AM
"(Un)Denying the Politics of the Present: Nasser Rabbat, the Ethics of AKPIA, and the Reshaping of a Discipline’s Futures"
Nancy Demerdash
"Nasser Rabbat in Arabic: A Scholar as a Public Intellectual"
Ahmad Sukkar
"Mehmet Ağa-Oğlu and the Contested Origins of Islamic Art History in the United States"
Roxanne Goldberg
"The Chicago Oriental Institute Archaeology Network: A Mesh and a Sieve"
Can Bilsel
[Coffee Break, 11 –11:15 AM]
The City as a Scale of Inquiry
11:15 AM
"Girlhood Mappings: An Irano-Armenian Saunter in Reza Shah’s Tehran"
Talinn Grigor
"The Last Levantine City: Rethinking Beirut’s Historiography"
Chantal El Hayek
"Bridge Over Troubled Water: Cairo’s River Island of al-Rawda and a City in Flux"
Heba Mostafa
"Aleppo and the Entangled Art Histories of the Medieval Middle East"
Heghnar Watenpaugh
[Lunch on the Town, 12:35 – 2 PM]
On the Reception of Art
2 PM
"‘Mamlouks’ in Paris: Reflections on a Recent Exhibition"
Ellen Kenney
"The Matter of Palestine in Mona Hatoum’s Present Tense, 1996"
Nisa Ari
"Global Museology and Ancient Egypt, Ciphered"
Karin Oen
"When We Were Not There: Thinking Art, Artifact, Signs and Sources from 1980s Damascus"
Anneka Lenssen
[Coffee Break, 3:20 – 3:35 PM]
New Frontiers for a New World
3:35 PM
"Desert Futurity: Toward an Alternative Architectural Epistemology"
Pamela Karimi
"From Archive to Afterlife: Critical Cartography and Urban Memory in the Making of Modern Egyptian Cities"
Mariam Abdelazim
"Islamic Architecture, Science, & Technology at Play"
Glaire Anderson
"Migration, the Myth, and the Miniature: Attuning to the Spaces of Displacement"
Ila Sheren
Closing Remarks & Festschrift Dedication
5 pm