Seminar on how culture interacts with architecture. Analyzes architecture as a conveyor of messages that transcend stylistic, formal, and iconographic concerns to include an assessment of disciplinary, political, ideological, social, and cultural factors. Critically reviews methodologies and theoretical premises of studies on culture and meaning. Focuses on examples from Islamic history and establishes historical and theoretical frameworks for investigation.

‘Islam resembles what was later to be called “the Western tradition” in so many ways—the intellectual efforts to fuse Judeo-Christian scripture with the categories of Greek philosophy, the literary emphasis on courtly love, the scientific rationalism, the legalism, puritanical monotheism, missionary impulse, the expansionist mercantile capitalism—even the periodic waves of fascination with “Eastern mysticism”—that only the deepest historical prejudice could have blinded European historians to the conclusion that, in fact, this is the Western tradition.’

David Graeber, “There Never Was a West. Or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between,” 2007

شمس العداوة حتى يستقاد لهم ... وأعظم الناس أحلاماً إذا قدروا

الأخطل في قصيدة يمدح بها عبد الملك بن مروان من كتاب الأغاني                               

In Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Garth Fowden says, “There are roads out of Antiquity that do not lead to the Renaissance.”  This statement challenges the dominant historical narrative, which posits the West as the only heir to the classical tradition, and opens the door for the Islamic culture to reclaim it. 

Following Fowden, this seminar offers a revision of the concept of Late-Antiquity through an in-depth study of the early Islamic artistic and architectural culture.  It examines the sequence of well-known Umayyad and early Abbasid monuments and artifacts (7th-8th c), which engaged in a vibrant and dynamic cross-cultural creative process. They treated Late Antiquity as a heritage to synthesize and build upon, or, sometimes, modify, deconstruct, or combine with other cultures with which the Islamic world came into contact.  The patterns of appropriation, modification, and transposition are interpreted as a conscious attempt to chart a new, or, perhaps more accurately, a Post-Post-Classical art and architecture, which ultimately bypassed all ethnic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries within the Islamic world despite its political fragmentation and crossed over to inform and invigorate the emergent European awakening in the late Middle Ages.  In other words, the seminar challenges the exclusive historiography of art history that posits the Western Renaissance as the sole heir of Antiquity and proposes another scenario with a more hybrid genealogy that invites us to rethink the impact of periodization on our conception of art history itself.

4.616 Syllabus (MIT Certificate Protected)

4.605 Undergraduate | 4.650 Graduate

Provides an outline of the history of architecture and urbanism from ancient times to the early modern period. Analyzes buildings as the products of culture and in relation to the special problems of architectural design. Stresses the geopolitical context of buildings and in the process familiarizes students with buildings, sites and cities from around the world.

Additional work required of graduate students.

4.605/4.650 Syllabus (MIT certificate protected)

This course will study the creation of art from Paleolithic times through to the mid-twentieth century, with a non-exclusive focus on European and American practices. Along the way, it will seek to challenge traditional narratives—especially default assumptions about gender and male artistic genius—and question our inherited approaches, while integrating the work of artists and cultures that have long been sidelined owing to modern biases rather than historical fact.

4.601 Syllabus (MIT Certificate protected)

Required for doctoral students in HTC as a prerequisite for work on the doctoral dissertation. Prior to candidacy, doctoral students are required to write and orally defend a proposal laying out the scope of their thesis, its significance, a survey of existing research and literature, the methods of research to be adopted, a bibliography and plan of work. Work is done in consultation with HTC Faculty, in accordance with the HTC PhD Degree Program guidelines.