It was so fun meeting this guy again! @SAMAart on Monday at the opening of the exhibition for the 1st c. BC Roman portrait bust found in an Austin Goodwill, brought home for $34.99 by local antiques dealer Laura Young, who promptly nicknamed him Dennis
How did a Roman portrait bust from a museum in Germany end up in a Goodwill in Texas? Probably brought back in the kit bag of an American soldier after the museum was bombed in WWII, his family likely donated it after he passed away. We’ll probably never know for certain.
The identity of the man depicted is not certain, but thanks to the intrepid research of @lynleyjmcalpine we have a lead
I have seen Timothée of Arabia caress the spice-laden sands while having messianic visions of a blue-eyed Zendaya in a desert perfume commercial and reader, on the whole, it was magnificent. A few thoughts on #DuneMovie 🧵
Herbert's story turns the Star Wars-style hero's journey and the white savior story on its head, subverting readers' expectations of a heroic superman by writing a mid-20th century critique of empire and imperialism, as @use_theforce_em has argued tor.com/2019/03/06/why…
Villeneuve seems to be following the overall narrative arc of Herbert's novel closely, as he sets up Paul's inevitable fall as a failed messianic/imperial leader. The film ends just at the point when Paul begins his journey into megalomania that will end in imperial autocracy.
15 years ago I published my first article. It was about the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i in Cairo, built in 1211 by Sultan al-Kamil, nephew of the great Saladin. Now it is again resplendent thanks to an exquisite restoration by May al-Ibrashy & team. A story for #WorldHeritageDay
In 1180, Saladin had vanquished both the Fatimids and the Crusaders, and his first construction in Cairo - even before building the Citadel - was here, at the burial place of the Imam al-Shafi'i, founder of one of the Sunni legal schools and long a beloved figure in the city.
Imam al-Shafi'i's mausoleum was located in the most southerly of Cairo's ancient necropolises, often called the Cities of the Dead, though then, as now, they were in fact filled with life. theislamicmonthly.com/living-amongst…
This conversation about @UTAustin athletics raises interesting points. Buckle up, it’s time to talk about the value of the humanities and ask how we got in a situation where it seems logical to argue sports and STEM matter more than history.
First, this argument hinges on the idea that that the monetary worth of a thing is its primary form of value, and that in a free-market, democratic society, monetary investments “naturally” reflect the desires of the people.
That system of value has a name: neoliberalism, an economic and political model that has its own distinctive history – first theorized by economists at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and ‘60s, it was then embraced by politicians in the ‘80s and ‘90s in the U.S. and U.K.
Congratulations @wendymk for winning Honorable Mention for the Albert Hourani Book Award at #MESA2020! This is only the second time an Islamic art historian has won the prize, and it couldn't go to a more paradigm-shifting book. Read it.
"Professor Shaw’s book is a bold and successful attempt to reconceptualize the historiography of Islamic art outside the current Euro-centric and colonial paradigm." mesana.org/awards/awardee…
"To do so Shaw takes “Islam” seriously as a category of analysis, arguing that it drives the production of Islamic art, rather than being incidental to it. In the process she places in generative tension the Islamic and Western paradigms for understanding agency and subjectivity"
There are so many things wrong with this analysis that I'm not sure where to begin. First, Dune is so patently *not* inspired by the fall of Roman Empire - Herbert calls it The Galactic Padishah Empire for a reason. It's not subtle. Not everything in history is Rome, Tom.
The idea that early Muslims would have understood the "fall of Rome" is equally anachronistic. The early Arabs experienced the Roman empire as a continuous & living entity: what we call (equally anachronistically) Byzantium, they called Rome, al-Rūm. hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?is…
And not only did they view the Eastern Roman Empire as a living entity, it was a vibrant source of inspiration: influencing art, scholarship, and knowledge production in the early Islamic period. halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-0081740…