This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

Sacred texts, catalyzed through extremely different hermeneutical approaches, have had great political influence in both Eastern and Western cultures. This conference explores the interaction between canonical texts and the array of hermeneutical modes – from fundamentalism to contemporary philosophy – through which they are culturally activated. Do sacred texts and their specific normative content actually have political influence? Or are they just objects of use or abuse by players whose ideologies are informed by motivations independent of the sacred texts they advocate? What cultural contexts favor fundamentalist approaches, and where do open-perspective philosophical attitudes towards sacred texts develop? Is there any possibility for mutual illumination among advocates of these seemingly incommensurate positions? These issues will be discussed in a keynote address followed by a one-day conference. Scholars from different religious backgrounds will analyze test cases, showing how specific sacred texts have been used in diverse historical and cultural contexts as well as their contemporary political relevance. Scholars from philosophy and cultural studies will explore, from their perspectives, how these issues can be approached.

Please see the attachment below for the complete program of speakers.

This conference is sponsored by American Academy in Rome and the Pontifical Biblical Insititute.

The event will be held in English. You can watch this event livestreamed at https://livestream.com/aarome.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

Horological inventions such as the marine chronometer (the technological breakthrough enabling accurate global navigation), and the transplantation of metropolitan time marking practices to colonial outposts were a fulcrum of the empire building of European nation states in the nineteenth century. Western progress and its counterpoint, the non-west as a repository of premodernity, were part of the telos of modern colonialism and orientalism. As Edward Said put it in the opening paragraph to his seminal book Orientalism, the Orient of European invention is defeated by time: “its time was over.”

The recent global turn in our discipline resituates European orientalism within a broader, more politically contested cultural geography. It’s a move east of west. How is the temporal logic of modernity differentially articulated across this expanded cultural geography of the visual? Analysing the interiors of two nineteenth-century British orientalist artist-collectors in the imperial capitals of Istanbul and London, and the Islamic and European art displayed there, discloses their entanglements within British, Ottoman, and Sicilian orientalism. In doing so, this lecture reveals the ways the aesthetics of these spaces were inflected by the heterochronicity of Ottoman and European modernity. Focusing on the temporal logic of these sites enables us to elaborate the transcultural and transhistorical complexities of art’s time.

Mary Roberts is John Schaeffer Professor of Art History at the University of Sydney in Australia. She is the author of Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists, and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture (2015), which maps patterns of transcultural exchange between Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Istanbul Exchanges won the 2016 Art Association of Australia and New Zealand prize for best book and was translated into Turkish that same year. Roberts also wrote Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature (2007). Her current book project, Artists as Collectors of Islamic Art, extends her inquiry into the temporality of modernity forged through visual exchange across cultures.

The event will be held in English. You can watch this event at https://livestream.com/aarome.

Mary Roberts’s lecture, along with the exhibition Yto Barrada, The Dye Garden, opening on May 10, and the international symposium, Islamic Art and Architecture in Italy: Between Tradition and Innovation on May 17–18, are the culminating events of the East and West thematic program at the AAR for 2017–18.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

A conversation between Mario Cresci, one of the most compelling artists in Italy to explore the contemporary world through photography, and Roberta Valtorta, Founder and former Director of the Museo di Fotografia Contemporane. Taking as its cue the two works by Cresci on view in the Academy’s fall exhibition, Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town, the artist and curator will discuss Cresci’s art, photography as a language, and the key role photography has played in redefining Italian landscape from the 1970s to today.

The event will be held in Italian. You can watch it livestreamed at https://livestream.com/aarome. On this occasion, the exhibition will be open from 5pm to 8pm.

The 2017–18 Conversations/Conversazioni series is sponsored by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

EXHIBITION EVENTS

Inaugural Lecture
Dacia Maraini
12 October 2017
5:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Exhibition Opening
12 October 2017
6:30pm-9pm, AAR Gallery

Curator Lecture
Lindsay Harris
Matera Imagined
16 October 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Lecture
Emmet Gowin
A Life in Photography
14 November 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

GALLERY HOURS

Thursday-Sunday, 4pm-7pm
12 October- 26 November 2017

The exhibition will also be open on 16 October, 14 November and 21 November from 5pm to 8pm.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

In the twentieth century, the southern Italian town of Matera has evolved in the collective imagination from an ancient backwater at the edge of civilization to a cultural bellwether for the future of Europe. In the 1940s, following the publication of Italian author Carlo Levi’s best-selling memoir, Christ Stopped at Eboli, Matera became a symbol of southern Italian backwardness. Today, just over a generation later, Matera has emerged as a model of authenticity that will represent Europe as Capital of Culture in 2019. In conjunction with the Academy's fall exhibition, Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town, this talk will explore Matera's recent evolution through photography.

Lindsay Harris is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the American Academy in Rome and curator of the exhibition Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town, which is currently on show in the Gallery of the American Academy until 26 November 2017.

The event will be held in English. You can watch it live at https://livestream.com/aarome. On this occasion, the exhibition will be open from 5pm to 8pm.

EXHIBITION EVENTS

Inaugural Lecture
Dacia Maraini
12 October 2017
5:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Exhibition Opening
12 October 2017
6:30pm-9pm, AAR Gallery

Lecture
Emmet Gowin
A Life in Photography
14 November 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Conversation
Mario Cresco with Roberta Valtorta
Photography and Matera
21 November 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

GALLERY HOURS

Thursday-Sunday, 4pm-7pm
12 October- 26 November 2017

The exhibition will also be open on 16 October, 14 November and 21 November from 5pm to 8pm.

Artists: Piergiorgio Branzi, Esther Bubley, Mario Carbone, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mario Cresci, Marjory Collins, Luigi Ghirri, Emmet Gowin, Fosco Maraini, David Seymour, Augusto Viggiano, Carrie Mae Weems, Dan Weiner, Joseph Williams, and Yasmin Vobis.

Organized by the American Academy in Rome, this exhibition highlights how photography has framed modern perceptions of Matera, a southern Italian town noted for its millennia-old cave dwellings. A palimpsest of history and traditions characteristic of Mediterranean culture, Matera in the twentieth century was transformed in the collective imagination from an ancient backwater at the edge of civilization to a cultural bellwether for the future of Europe. In the 1940s, following the publication of Italian author Carlo Levi’s best-selling memoir, Christ Stopped at Eboli, Matera became a symbol of southern Italian backwardness. Today, just over a generation later, Matera has emerged as a model of authenticity that will represent Europe as Capital of Culture in 2019.

The exhibition charts Matera’s recent evolution through photography. It highlights for the first time the town's constant allure for photographers around the globe, as well as their pivotal role in transforming what Levi termed Matera’s “tragic beauty” into a symbol of ageless, Mediterranean place. Like filmmakers Pierpaolo Pasolini or Mel Gibson, who used Matera as a surrogate for Jerusalem, the photographers who ventured to Matera observed in its cave dwellings signs of the origins of civilization. At the same time, as was true of New Deal era photography in the United States, photography in Matera in the postwar years played a decisive role in shaping public policy, land reform, and social change. More recently, Matera has inspired artists to explore through photography concepts ranging from memory and perception, to identity and cultural patrimony. Featuring works by some of the most celebrated photographers of their time, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Esther Bubley, Luigi Ghirri, Emmet Gowin, David Seymour, and Carrie Mae Weems, the exhibition presents a new narrative about Matera’s ancient heritage.

Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town is curated by Lindsay Harris, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the American Academy in Rome. The exhibition and catalogue are made possible by Fondazione Matera Basilicata 2019. Additional support provided by Richard Baron and Adi Shamir Baron.

Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town travels to the Museo nazionale d’arte medievale e moderna, Palazzo Lanfranchi in Matera from December 7, 2017, to February 4, 2018 as part of a series of events celebrating Matera as the European Capital of Culture 2019.

Exhibition Events

Inaugural Lecture
Dacia Maraini
October 12, 2017
5:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Curator Lecture
Lindsay Harris
Matera Imagined
October 16, 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Lecture
Emmet Gowin
A Life in Photography
November 14, 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Conversation
Mario Cresco with Roberta Valtorta
Photography and Matera
November 21, 2017
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

Gallery Hours

Thursday–Sunday, 4:00–7:00pm
October 12–November 26, 2017

The exhibition will also be open on October 16, November 14, and November 21 from 5pm to 8pm.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts and Humanities: East and West.

This exhibition features new work by the acclaimed Franco-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, who is at the forefront of international artists reconfiguring the models established by the Orientalist tradition and its echoes in modern art. She explores the landscape and culture of North Africa as it was understood and trafficked in the colonial and postcolonial eras. Her work in various media riffs on modernist works by American or European artists who have traveled in or represented Morocco, reinterpreting their canonical abstract motifs through the lens of decorative traditions characteristic of the Maghreb. Playfully subversive, Barrada often approaches serious issues through the self-conscious fake or the medium of children's toys, the means through which insidious ideas were reinforced. In doing so, she undermines both the ideological foundations of the East–West divide and the mechanisms used to perpetuate it.

Barrada studied history and political science at the Sorbonne and photography in New York. She is the founding director of Cinémathèque de Tanger, dedicated to the circulation and preservation of film in Morocco. Barrada’s work in photography, film, sculpture, prints, and installation began by exploring the peculiar situation of her hometown, Tangier. Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern (London), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Renaissance Society (Chicago), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennale. She was the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year for 2011. A comprehensive monograph of her work was published by JRP | Ringier in 2013. She is a recipient of the 2013 Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and was awarded the 2015 Abraaj Group Prize for Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian artists.

Her exhibition Agadir is on view at the Barbican in London through May 20, 2018. Pace Gallery in New York has staged a survey of her work, titled How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself, that is open until May 5.

Yto Barrada is the Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. The Dye Garden is curated by Peter Benson Miller, Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome. This exhibition is made possible by the Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence Fund and the Embassy of the United States of America to Italy.

Collateral Events

Keynote Lecture
Avinoam Shalem
Through the Backdoor: The Histories of “Islamic” Art and Architecture in Italy
17 May 2018
6:30pm, Lecture Room

Conference
Islamic Art and Architecture in Italy: Between Tradition and Innovation
18 May 2018
10:00am–6:00pm, Lecture Room

Gallery Hours

Thursday–Saturday, 4:00–7:00pm
10 May–8 July 2018

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts and Humanities: East and West.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

In this conversation, which kicks off the American Academy in Rome’s 2017–18 theme, East and West, a series of events in several disciplines exploring exchanges and conflicts between the West and the Islamic World, Yto Barrada discusses her work with the MAXXI curator Bartolomeo Pietromarchi. Barrada studied history and political science at the Sorbonne and photography in New York. Her work—including photography, film, sculpture, prints and installations—began by exploring the peculiar situation of her hometown Tangier. Her work has been exhibited at Tate Modern (London), MoMA (New York), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Whitechapel Gallery (London), and the 2007 and 2011 Venice Biennale.

She was the Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year for 2011, after which her exhibit RIFFS traveled to several cities, including the MACRO in Rome under Pietromarchi’s directorship. Barrada is also the founding director of Cinémathèque de Tanger. A comprehensive monograph of her work was published by JRP Ringier in 2013. She is a recipient of the 2013–14 Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography (Peabody Museum at Harvard University) and was awarded the 2015 Abraaj Prize.

Barrada is the Mary Miss Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the fall of 2017. The event will be held in English.

The 2017–18 Conversations/Conversazioni series is sponsored by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

Modern biographies of Louis IX discuss at considerable length his efforts to convert the Jews to Christianity. Perhaps because he was a crusader king, however, scholars have paid little attention to any aspects of his relations with Muslims except those pertaining to war and diplomacy. Yet, as William Jordan will make plain in this lecture, the king’s interest and actions in promoting conversions of Muslims to the Catholic faith turn out to be well worth exploring.

William Jordan is Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and chairman of the History Department at Princeton University. He is the Lester K. Little Scholar of Medieval Studies at the American Academy in Rome in fall 2017.

The event will be held in English. You can watch it live at https://livestream.com/aarome.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

The keynote address for the conference “P. B. Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam: Texts, Subtexts, Contexts,” organized in collaboration with the Keats-Shelley House, will be given by the celebrated author Don DeLillo, whose novel Falling Man (2007) explores the aftermath of September 11 through the experience of a survivor of the attacks on New York. A postcard sent from Rome—a reproduction of the cover of Shelley’s poem that was purchased at the Keats-Shelley House in Piazza di Spagna—makes an important cameo appearance in the novel.

DeLillo is the American Academy in Rome Writer in Residence in December 2017. The lecture and reading will be held in English.

This event is supported in part by the Embassy of the United States of America to Italy and in part by the Keats-Shelley House.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts and Humanities: East and West.

As part of the series of events at the American Academy in Rome exploring East and West, and in particular the misunderstandings and exchanges between the West and the Islamic World, this conference organized in collaboration with the Keats-Shelley House revisits Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem The Revolt of Islam, first published in 1817 as Laon and Cythna. On the afternoon of December 15, 1817, the publisher Charles Ollier met with Thomas Love Peacock, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Shelley himself to discuss the potentially controversial and contentious nature of Shelley’s poem. Marking the bicentenary of that meeting, papers in English and in Italian will focus on historical and contextual issues, as well as the contemporary resonances of Shelley’s poem.

The keynote address (at 6:00pm) will be given by the celebrated author Don DeLillo, whose novel Falling Man (2007) explores the aftermath of 9/11 through the experience of a survivor of the attacks on New York. A postcard sent from Rome, a reproduction of the cover of Shelley’s poem purchased at the Keats-Shelley House in Piazza di Spagna, makes an important cameo appearance in the novel. DeLillo is the American Academy in Rome Writer in Residence in December 2017.

The conference is organized by Giuseppe Albano, curator and director of the Keats-Shelley House, and Maria Valentini, professor of English literature at the Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale. This event is supported in part by the Embassy of the United States of America to Italy and in part by the Keats-Shelley House.

Both the conference and the keynote address will be held in English. You can watch the event at https://livestream.com/aarome. The keynote address will not be livestreamed.