Forthcoming Series: Islamic Art in Resonance - Objects, Manuscripts, Collections & Scholarship

Edited by Anna Contadini, SOAS University of London, Mattia Guidetti, University of Bologna, and Carine Juvin, Musée du Louvre

The new book series Islamic Art in Resonance (IAR) focuses on a wide variety of Islamic objects in public and private collections, and on treasuries that have had, and still have, global resonance. By adopting a broader theoretical approach of objecthood, the books in this series aim to transform current approaches to Islamic art, and to contribute to the broader field of Global Art History.

Islamic Art in Resonance (IAR) facilitates and actively commissions the study of art objects, manuscripts, coins, archaeological artifacts, and their circulation. By foregrounding the cultural contexts of production and reception, the series promotes themes of translocation and transculturation, the examination of the intellectual aspects of object reception, and the investigation of the impact that objects and collections have had on, for example, European art and scholarship. The series is also open to Studies on collectors and scholars.

The publications of the series may take the form of monographs, thematic edited volumes, and conference proceedings in English and other European world languages.

The first volume The Bologna Nexus: Art and Scholarship from the Islamic World by Anna Contadini is to be expected in 2025. It focuses on the collections of Islamic art, manuscripts, and related documentation in Bologna, together with those of Modena, Ferrara, and Mantua. Unique but little studied, the collections scattered across the Bologna Nexus are of great importance for understanding the Islamic cultural contribution to European art and thought. The book not only studies the objects in these collections, but also analyses their cultural resonance, and explores the transmission of knowledge from the Islamic world that accompanied them.

ISSN: 3050-5453

Call for Manuscripts

Authors are cordially invited to submit proposals and/or full manuscripts by e-mail to Acquisitions Editor Teddi Dols or Series Editor Anna Contadini.

Readership

Scholars, curators, and a wider public interested in the fields of Art History, Islamic Art History, Islam and the West, Asian Art, Art and Cultural Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Global Art History, World Art History, History of Collections, Museum Studies, and Interdisciplinary Humanities.

Editorial Board

Anna Contadini is Professor of the History of Islamic Art at SOAS University of London. Her main areas of research are illustrated book culture of the Islamic world; object studies; translocation and transculturation; and artistic and cultural contacts between Europe and the Islamic world. Professor Contadini has held visiting professorships at Leiden, Heidelberg, and Bologna Universities, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and Harvard University at I Tatti. She is a member of the editorial board of Brill’s Open Access Journal of Material Cultures of the Muslim World, and the author of A World of Beasts: A Thirteenth-Century Illustrated Arabic Book on Animals (the Kitāb Na't al-Ḥayawān), Brill, 2011. Her latest publications stem from long-standing projects, and include: The Pisa Griffin and the Mari-Cha Lion. Metalwork, Art, and Technology in the Medieval Islamicate Mediterranean (concept, author, and editor), Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2018; “The Middle Eastern Intellectual and Artistic Context at the Time of Ariosto”, in Mario Casari et al. (eds), Ariosto and the Arabs, I Tatti Research Series 4, 2022; “Intertextual Animals: Illustrated Kalila wa-Dimna Manuscripts in Context”, in Éloïse Brac de la Perrière et al. (eds), Les périples de Kalila et Dimna, Brill, 2022; (editor and author) Conoscenza e Libertà. Arte Islamica al Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna (bilingual), Genova: SAGEP Editori, 2024—an exhibition catalogue thematically related to the first volume of the series.

Mattia Guidetti is Associate professor in Islamic archaeology and art history at the University of Bologna. He previously held positions at the University of Vienna and at the University of Edinburgh, and post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University, the Getty Institute and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. His research and teaching activities focus on art and architecture of the Medieval Mediterranean and Islamic lands. He is the author of In the Shadow of the Church, The Building of Mosques in Early Medieval Islam, Brill, 2016, and co-editor, with Andreas Goerke, of Constructing and Contesting Holy Places in Medieval Islam and Beyond, Brill, 2024.

Carine Juvin is curator for the Medieval Near and Middle East at the Musée du Louvre, Islamic Art Department. She has taught Islamic art history at Ecole du Louvre, Paris, and at the University of Strasbourg. Her research focuses on Arabic epigraphy and calligraphy, and on the material culture of the medieval Near and Middle East. She guest edited, with François Déroche, Volume 4 (2023): Special Issue 1 of Brill’s Open Access Journal of Material Cultures of the Muslim World, entitled From Visual Power to Private Stories: Inscribed Objects from the Medieval Arab World.