Professor Persis Berlekamp will be teaching in the History of Art department this Fall semester as the Guitty Azarpay Visiting Professor.
An Associate Professor of Art History and the College at the University of Chicago, and Affiliated Faculty in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Prof. Berlekamp teaches courses in Islamic art and architecture. Her research focuses on the roles the visual arts played within the major cultural and intellectual debates of the late medieval Islamic world (13th-15th centuries). She is the author of Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval Islam(Yale University Press, 2011), an analysis of illustrated Arabic and Persian wonders-of-creation manuscripts produced in the wake of the Mongol Conquests of Iran and Iraq. Her current book project, Petrified Powers: Medieval Islamic Talismans, analyzes medieval Islamic "talismans," an English word deriving in part from the Arabic "tilasm" and its Persian and Turkish cognates, as they arose in a wide variety of objects, sculptures, and architectural reliefs. Another research focus is a particularly challenging illustrated Persian manuscript on Chinese medicine made for the vizier, historian, doctor, and patron Rashid al-Din (d. 1318).
Prof. Berlekamp is offering the following two courses for Fall 2024:
Graduate seminar: Special Topics in Fields of Art History: Authorities of Knowledge in Islamic Art
https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2024-fall-histart-290-002-sem-002?iframe
Histart 290 002
In times of profound challenge and change, questions about how art both confronts and asserts contested authorities of knowledge are manifold. In this course, we will delve into varying iterations of the art - authority - knowledge trifecta, as they emerge from a range of selected topics and case studies in Islamic art history.
Undergraduate lecture course: Topics in Islamic Art: Introduction to Islamic Art and Architecture
https://classes.berkeley.edu/content/2024-fall-histart-c121a-001-lec-001?iframe
Histart C121A / MELC C121
Throughout the history of Islam, artisans, architects, and artists have created new forms referencing earlier ones they find inspiring. From seventh-century Arabia to the present, which visual forms have served as meaningful references? How and why has the answer to this question shifted across time and space? Learn to recognize major types and styles of Islam's medieval and early modern mosques, memorials, gardens, and palaces, and to chart basic histories for its manuscripts, metalwork, textiles, and ceramics. Learn to describe the visual forms of specific monuments and artifacts in relation to such factors as production techniques, markets, modes of piety, and models of political legitimacy. Learn to situate all the above against the shifting historical map of the Islamic world, and against the geopolitical histories of the land and sea routes linking Asia, Africa, and Europe.