Thursday, November 29, 2018 5:00 PM
Chung-wen Shih Conference Room
Suite 503 | 1957 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
The Sigur Center for Asian Studies, and the Institute for Middle East Studies cordially invite you to a book launch of Mughal Occidentalism and a discussion with the author.
This event is free and open to the public.
About the Book:
In Mughal Occidentalism, Mika Natif elucidates the meaningful and complex ways in which Mughal artists engaged with European art and techniques from the 1580s-1630s. Using visual and textual sources, this book argues that artists repurposed Christian and Renaissance visual idioms to embody themes from classical Persian literature and represent Mughal policy, ideology and dynastic history. A reevaluation of illustrated manuscripts and album paintings incorporating landscape scenery, portraiture, and European objects demonstrates that the appropriation of European elements was highly motivated by Mughal concerns. This book aims to establish a better understanding of cross-cultural exchange from the Mughal perspective by emphasizing the agency of local artists active in the workshops of Emperors Akbar and Jahangir.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Mika Natif (Ph.D., New York University – Institute of Fine Arts, 2006) is a historian of Medieval art focusing on the intercultural exchanges and global connections that Muslim societies forged with the European sphere in the pre-Modern era. Her primary field of research is Islamic painting, with special interest in Central Asia, Iran, India, and the Mediterranean. She had held teaching positions at Princeton University and at the College of the Holy Cross (MA), and curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and most recently at the Harvard Art Museums (as Assistant Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art). She has conducted research in archives, galleries and museums all over Europe, as well as Turkey, Israel, and India.
Robert Sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at the Elliott School of George Washington University beginning in 2011. He also serves as the school’s Director, Program of Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs.
Paul Heer is an adjunct professor at The George Washington University, where he received his Ph. D. in diplomatic history in 1995. During 2007-15 he served as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia—the senior analyst of East Asian affairs in the US Intelligence Community—in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A career officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, he began that career in 1983 as a political and foreign policy analyst on Southeast Asia before specializing on China as an analyst and analytic manager. He served on the staff of the President’s Daily Brief, and as a member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service and the Senior Intelligence Service. He is a recipient of the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and the DNI’s National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Dr. Heer was a Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during 2015-16. He was the Visiting Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations during 1999-2000 and was subsequently elected a Life Member of the Council. He holds a B.A. degree in history from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa; and an M.A. in history from the University of Iowa. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Bernard Adeney-Risakotta was born in China of British and American parents. He was founding director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta. He studied in Wisconsin, London, and Berkeley, where he taught for nine years before moving to Indonesia in 1991. Among his many publications is Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World.
A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of Target Tokyo, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, The Christian Science Monitor and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His other works include The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. His fourth book, Rampage, will be released on October 2, 2018. Scott lives with his wife and two children in Mt. Pleasant, SC.
Dr. Janet Steele is an associate professor of journalism at the George Washington University and the director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. She received her Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University and focus on how culture is communicated through the mass media.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine; Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies; a member of Dissent Magazine‘s editorial board; and an academic editor of the China Channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He has contributed commentaries and reviews to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and various other newspapers and to magazines. His other books include, as editor, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (2016). He received his PhD from UC Berkeley.
Maura Cunningham is an Associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and edits the #Asianow blog of the Association for Asian Studies. She has written on modern Chinese history for the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ms., World Policy Journal, and Time. A past editor of China Beat, she is an advising editor to the China Channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books. She received her PhD from UC Irvine.
Ornit Shani is a scholar of politics and modern history of India. Her research focuses on the modern history of democracy and citizenship in India, as well as the rise of Hindu Nationalism, identity and caste politics, and communal and caste violence. Dr. Ornit was a Research Fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge University and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her new book How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise explores the creation of the electoral roll and universal adult franchise in India. Dr. Shani’s other research interests include modern South Asia, democracy and democratization, India’s constitutionalism, India legal history, Indian elections, nationalism, and identity politics.