Recent & Upcoming Talks

This experimental session will bring together scholars of economic and material history, cultural and religious exchange, anthropology, art history, and archaeology offsite at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History to examine a unique display of shipwreck artifacts from the Java Sea. A panel of historians of China, Southeast Asia, Mongol-dominated Eurasia, and the medieval Islamicate world will consider how a multi-disciplinary and multi-regional approach can illuminate the premodern history of Inter-Asian trade. Objects recovered from the twelfth-thirteenth century Java Sea Shipwreck will be on special display for the session and will serve as the centerpiece of reflection and discussion.

This panel seeks to explore how digital technologies—particularly video games, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and other interactive visual tools—can transform research and pedagogy in the field of Middle Eastern Studies. In an era where digital landscapes increasingly shape cultural and educational experiences, these technologies offer novel pathways for analyzing, interpreting, and teaching the histories and artistic legacies of the Middle East and North Africa.

Studying East of Byzantium VIII: Material Culture is a three-part workshop that intends to bring together doctoral students studying the Christian East to reflect on how to study the material world of the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with senior specialists in the field.

This panel proposes a global and transhistorical consideration of mirrors as powerful symbols of representation, everyday tools, and materials for aesthetic innovation, with particular attention to the political valences of these objects.

Studying East of Byzantium VI: The State of the Field is a two-day workshop that intends to bring together doctoral students in North America studying the Christian East to reflect on the state of the field across its many disciplines, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with senior specialists in the field.

Inspired by the interdisciplinary possibilities and the innovative scholarly avenues that the study of materiality can open in the field of Armenian Studies, the 2019 International Graduate Student Workshop focuses on the theme of material objects. The exploration of society, arts, culture, and politics through material objects will provide opportunities to discover the ordinary or the everyday practices and experiences of Armenian communities across space and time.