Biography

I am a scholar and educator of architecture and textiles in the early modern Islamic world and the Global South. I have an academic and professional background in architectural design and historic preservation.

Research Overview

Research Interests

• Themes: Power and agency; Modes of production and consumption; Transmission of knowledge; Orientalism; Nationalism, and Historiography.
• Topics: Architecture and city (patronage, spaces of manufacturing, landscapes of borderlands); Pre-industrial manufacturing (know-how of making things (mainly textiles), chaîne opératoire, and their social relations); Textiles and dress (social and political implications of fibers and dyes, weaving techniques and technologies, design, and pattern making).
• Contexts: West and South Asia, Islamic World, Indian Ocean; 17th- 19th centuries.

Courses Offered (subject to change)

•  Islamic Textiles: Society, Economy, Politics
•  Cities of the World
•  Introduction to Islamic Art and Architecture
•  Introduction to Art and Architecture of South Asia

Selected Publications

• “Prophets and Caterpillars: The Story of Job and the Social Mobility of Silk Workers and Weavers in the Early Modern Islamic World.” In Stories of Immigrant Labor in Global Textile and Clothing Production. Edited by Nazanin Hedayat Munroe. Bloomsbury Publishing (in press).
• “Architecture of Exclusion: The Savujbulagh-i Mukri Garrison, Border-Making, and the Transformation of the Ottoman-Qajar Frontier.” In Boundary, Flows and the Making of Modern Muslim Selves through Architecture. Edited by Farhan Karim and Patricia Blessing. Intellect Publishers (in press). First published with the same tile in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 8:2 (2019), 363–88. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/ijia/2019/00000008/00000002/art00005;jsessionid=lf9d7590mnk9.x-ic-live-02
• “Wine bearers in landscape, a Safavid textile.” In Smarthistory, March 15, 2021, accessed May 17, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/wine-bearers-safavid-textile/.

Selected Awards and Fellowships

• Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 2021-2022
• Ann Lacy Crain Scholarship Fund, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Spring 2019
• Graduate Art History Endowed Scholarship, Department of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin, Spring 2018
• Barakat Trust Award, UK, Spring and Summer 2015
• School of Architecture and Urban Planning Travel Grant, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Summer 2013
• Architecture General Scholarship, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Summer 2013
• School of Architecture Award, Kogakuin University, Tokyo, Summer 2013
• Travel Grant, Historians of Islamic Art Association, Spring 2011