Associate Professor of Art History Stephennie Mulder will deliver the 2019 Chester Beatty Annual Lecture in Dublin, Ireland on February 7, 2019. Mulder will speak on the theme of her award-winning book The Shrines of the ` Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi’is, and the Architecture of Coexistence (published by Edinburgh University Press, paperback edition 2019).
The Chester Beatty is known as the pre-eminent Irish museum, holding a vast collection of art and antiquities from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. Its annual lecture has the distinct honor of building a bridge between Ireland and countries whose cultures are represented in the Chester Beatty collections. Previous speakers include Inge Reist, Director of the Center of the History of Collecting at The Frick Collection (2018); John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017); and James Cuno, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust (2016).
Mulder’s book, The Shrines of the ` Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi’is, and the Architecture of Coexistence, is the first illustrated, architectural history of the ` Alid shrines, deeply endangered by the conflict in Syria. A specialist in Islamic architectural history and archaeology, Mulder has spent years in the field in Syria and throughout the Middle East. Visit the history blog Not Even Past, to learn more about Mulder’s book and its central argument.