After successful completion of the course, students are able to...
… gain a comprehensive overview of the history of cultural heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia.
… understand the history of collections and their preservation in museums.
… interpret the interdisciplinary relationships between objects, ensembles, and spaces.
… address and discuss the destruction of cultural heritage in contexts of extreme violence.
… analyze the fundamental principles of cultural heritage in various cultures and investigate the possibilities of its restoration and conservation.
… plan and conduct in-depth research on a specific topic in the presented regions based on the lectures.
Ringvorlesung: Cultural Heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia: Conservation and Destruction.
Heritage is a process: a place in the present and future given to the material and environmental cultures of the past. This lecture series focuses on heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia, with an emphasis on the processes of patrimonialization, whether perceived as positive (intellectual history, knowledge production, collection, exhibition, conservation) or negative (destruction). How are objects, built ensembles and spaces shown? What devices and discourses surround them? Whose heritage is collected, exhibited or, on the contrary, cancelled in museums and public spaces? Indeed, the destruction of works of art and monuments is also a powerful political gesture, which takes place in different contexts: protests, revolutions, destruction, wars. It also creates new realities and sometimes new artworks. What can we do with those voids and absences? How can we talk about collection history, museum conservation, but also voluntary destruction in contexts of extreme violence? Our aim is to reflect on all the frameworks that produce, display, or destroy heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia and over the long term.
The lecture takes place in cooperation with Prof. Dr Jeanine Dağyeli (Central Asian Studies, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna and Institute for Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences), Prof. Dr Noémie Etienne (Faculty Centre for Transdisciplinary Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna) and Prof. Dr Yavuz Köse (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Chair of Ottoman and Turkish Studies, University of Vienna).
Detailed programme:
The lectures take place every Wednesday from 17:00 to 18:30 at the University of Vienna.
09.10.2024: Markus Ritter (University of Vienna).
The Rise of the Concept of „Islamic Art“
16.10.2024: Tara Andrews (University of Vienna)
Scribal networks and the rescue of Armenian historiography in the seventeenth century
30.10.2024: Kristina Pfeifer (Technical University Vienna)
Turkish Yörük Culture in Transition - Tensions of Reinvention in Vernacular Architecture
06.11.2024: Mazen Iwaisi (Queen’s University Belfast)
No State, no NGOs: Reflection on Families' Approach in Converting Traditional Houses into Local Museums in Palestine
13.11.2024: Tobias Mörike (Weltmuseum Wien)
From Ethnographic Specimen to Memory Device. Aspiring Heritage Justice in an Ethnographic Collection
20.11.2024: Jeremy F. Walton (University of Rijeka)
Lessons in Laundering Violence: Postimperial Memories of Interimperial Conflict in Istanbul and Vienna
27.11.2024: Mohammad Talebian (Universität Iran-Teheran
Challenges of conservation and development in the historical center of Hamedan
04.12.2024: Gönül Bozoğlu (University of St. Andrews)
Sites and Museums: Case of the Greek (‘Rum’) Communities of Istanbul
11.12.2024: Nadia Radwan (University of Bern)
Making Art for Whom? Urgency, Cancellation and Loss
08.01.2025: Ayşe Dilsiz Hartmuth (University of Vienna)
Envisioning ancientness: A closer look at cultural heritage discourses in early Republican Turkey
15.01.2025: Yuka Kadoi (University of Vienna)
Building the Islamic Art Market after 9/11: A Heritage Economy of the 21st Century
22.01.2025: Mahshid Sehizadeh/ Mohammad S. Izadi (Universität Iran-Hamedan)
Conservation or Destruction: A Review of Urban Policies towards the Historic Areas of Iranian Cities during the last four decades
Willingness to actively participate in the discussion and to make oral statements after the individual lectures.
- In order to provide evidence of independent engagement with the topic ‘Cultural Heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia: Conservation and Destruction.
a kind of project paper must be submitted by all participants (upload in TUWEL)
Project paper : 5 to max.8 four A4 pages, min. 7000 to max. 10,000 characters continuous text (incl. footnotes, and bibliography and figures)