ARTH 337 - Arts of the Islamic Sensorium

FC ARHU CD WADV

4 credits
Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. How are the senses embodied in Islamic visual culture? How might art history, a discipline often critiqued for privileging vision at the expense of other senses, reshape the so-called “sensory turn” in Islamic Studies? Using object-based and site-specific case studies, students will explore the Islamic sensory apparatus, or sensorium, through the prism of art and architecture from across the Islamic world. Topics include the Quran and mosque complex, palace architecture and gardens, the accoutrement of court ceremonial, culinary traditions and dining culture, wondrous mechanical devices, pleasures and erotica, and death and the afterlife.

Prerequisites: one 200-level course in ARTH.