Medieval Islamic Art between Cosmic Frame & Human Agency

press release: Dr. Persis Berlekamp, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, will offer a workshop and public lecture next Friday as part of the Borghesi-Mellon Workshop on "Science, Nature, and Wonder int he Middle Ages."

Dr.  Berlekamp will present the public lecture "Medieval Islamic Art between Cosmic Frame and Human Agency" on Friday November 5th at 4:00-5:30 in L150, Conrad A. Elvehjem Building.

The lecture will consider astrological and talismanic arts at the court of the Rum Seljuks and their rivals during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.   Talismans offer a chance to pursue the question of what art does in a manner that continues to engage with the discipline’s abiding concern with how art looks. Within this emerging conversation, medieval Islamic talismans deserve particular attention because, along with their ancient Greek and Byzantine precursors, they are historically foundational to modern understandings of the term “talisman.”  

Free and open to the public.