Course Syllabus

Cities of Knowledge: Orientalizing Manhattan

Location: Room 934, Schermerhorn Hall 

Date: Tuesdays 2:10-4:00 pm

 

Professor Avinoam Shalem
Email: as4501@columbia.edu
814 Schermerhorn Hall
Office hours: Tuesday 10:30 am-12:00 pm

 

Professor Ziad Jamaleddine, GSAPP
Email: mzj2104@columbia.edu
Address: Avery Hall, Columbia University
Office hours: Tuesday 10:30 am-12:00 pm

 

Course Description:

In this course, graduate students from different disciplines will explore the ‘Orient’ in Manhattan. The course involves the active search for and analysis of Manhattan's urban space to survey its ‘Oriental’ buildings, monuments, parks, public inscriptions, and even ephemeral, everyday spaces that carry the sense of the ‘Orient’ to the city. Cities are physical places, yet, they are also assemblages of different layers of time, and geographies. These layers are designed to create communal identities and evoke recollections of past memories. Focus will be put on the written history of these spaces by searching in archives (in the City of New York) and digging out written and oral information about the histories of the formation of these spaces and their interactions with their surroundings. 

The course will cover many monuments, like the famous obelisk in Central Park or the less-known Jordanian column in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens; public buildings like Central Synagogue on Lexington, the Islamic Cultural Center on Upper East Side Mosque, or Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, NY; but also, the inner decorations of restaurants, bars (the Carlyle Bar) and even oriental Halal shops, as well as ephemeral spaces like international fairs, and Cairene grill boots. 

Traditionally, Islamic art and Islamic architecture have been studied separately within art history and architecture history disciplines. The purpose of this course is, in the first place, to bridge the gap between the two disciplines while working across theories of visual culture and critically revisiting urban studies. A further aspect evolves the discourse about architectural ornament as part of the entire approach to ornament as an ‘Oriental’ trope. Thus, canonical discussions about Orientalism will form part of the course’s readings and will contribute to understanding how the architectural ornament of Manhattan forms identities. The course will introduce and discuss theoretical issues concerning urban architecture and ‘Orientalism’ and the making of the image of ‘Others’ in NYC public spaces. It will also provide a historical survey of these spaces and aim to create a novel comprehensive map for ‘Orientalized’ New York.

 

Sites and topics of Study:

1. The Sakura Park (Japan) on Riverside Drive
2. Assyrian-styled buildings in Manhattan
3. Mudejar synagogues
4. Fast Food boots (Cairene)
5. Embassies and Public buildings (Looking at banners with Arabic inscriptions located at the entrances to hotels and embassies) 
6. Oriental/Byzantine revival in buildings’ ornamentation
7. Mosques in the city of Manhattan and Muslim cultural centers
8. Supermarkets (Halal), and restaurants
9. The Olana House and Museum, Greenport, NY
10. Carlyle Bar (Ottoman style décor)
11. Metropolitan Museum of Art (Arts of Islam, especially the historical rooms)
12. The Jordan/Jerash column in Queens
13. The Obelisk in Central Park
14. Ephemeral: Muslim Street feasts and international fairs
15. Cemeteries
16. …
    
    

Additional Notes:

The course will collaborate with GSAPP’s Center for Spatial Research (CSR) on its mapping and visualization scope in the second half of the semester.

This course combines theoretical discussions on urbanism and aims at supporting individual and specific study of Manhattan’s ‘oriental’ architecture. Located at Columbia and in the city of Manhattan, it enhances the ‘in situ’ experience as forming part of scholarly undertaking, while benefiting from the material and information gathered on the ground and from archival and research institutions located in Columbia (Avery, and Butler) and in Manhattan and the state of NY.

Statement on Academic Freedom in the Classroom

Knowledge flourishes when inquiry is free and respectful. This class, which has been approved as part of the Columbia curriculum by appropriate faculty bodies, aims to advance knowledge through discussion, debate, and carefully selected readings and assignments. In accordance with principles of academic freedom promulgated by the American Association of University Professors and affirmed by many universities, including Columbia, the instructor has the authority to set the class syllabus, which may include controversial material relevant to topics being studied. While all participants and their views will be treated respectfully, no one should expect to be shielded from challenging or even upsetting ideas, since thoughtfully engaging such ideas is crucial to free inquiry and intellectual growth. 

 

Course Requirements:

This course is geared towards graduate students only.

1. Class attendance and participation in discussions: Students should read the reading assigned in order to actively participate in discussions. Extra reading or preparations, not on the syllabus, may be assigned. In each session of reading and discussion, 2 to 3 students will be asked to present specific readings to the class (20%).
2. Midterm: A preliminary short abstract as the midterm will be due TBD. The paper (max. 3 pages, double-spaced) should, ideally, focus on a specific site in Manhattan. The abstract should explain the uniqueness of this building as forming part of Oriental Manhattan and set the method of research needed and results envisioned. A short list of bibliography of all sources and secondary literature consulted should be included too.
3. Presentations: Each student will be asked to present her/his preliminary results during the 2 working sessions on TBD as well as final results during the final presentations on TBD date (40%).
4. Final: A final seminar paper (15-18 pages, double-spaced), based on original research on a topic to be decided in consultation with the instructor, due TBD. (40%)

 

Explanation of Grades:

A = exceptional work, indicated by an excellent critical understanding and articulation of course material, superior analysis of texts and visuals, and a demonstration of independent, original thought.

B = good work, indicated by more than a satisfactory understanding and articulation of course material, strong analysis of texts and visuals, and a demonstration of clearly articulated thinking.

 C = satisfactory work, indicated by a basic understanding and articulation of course material and adequate analysis of texts and visuals.

D= unsatisfactory work, indicated by an inadequate understanding and articulation of course material and inadequate demonstration of analysis.

F= failure to complete the course work and/or an inability to demonstrate an understanding or articulation of course material and/or to demonstrate analysis. The submission of plagiarized work, or with inadequate citation and critical distance, will automatically lead to an F in that assignment.

 

All students registered in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation are graded as described below:

HP (high pass) = a superior level of work

P (pass) = an acceptable level of work

LP (low pass) = work that meets minimal standards

F (fail) = work that is unsatisfactory

 

The mark of INC (Incomplete) is not used except in the case described below: at the request of a student who has satisfactorily met all the requirements for a course except for the completion of certain assigned papers, graphic presentations, or reports that the student had to postpone because of proven illness.

Authorized Incompletes must be changed to a final grade by the first day of registration for the spring term in the case of all fall papers and projects, and by June 10 for all spring work. Any INC that has not been removed by the instructor by the relevant deadline will automatically turn into the grade of F. This grade cannot be changed to Pass; if the course is a required course, it will have to be repeated.

 

Academic Integrity:

Scholarship, by its very nature, is an iterative process. Each idea and insight builds naturally upon the work of scholars who precede you. Collaborative scholarship requires the study, analysis and free discussion of such work in such a way that any previous idea that informs your own is explicitly acknowledged. The exchange of ideas in written form relies upon mutual trust and an objective scientific approach in which all sources, opinions, facts, and insights that are not your own are clearly noted, cited, and credited. All students are responsible for the full citations of others’ ideas in all writing assignments. Likewise, when taking exams, due credit must be given to the theories and ideas of others when they become part of your discourse. Furthermore, you must be scrupulously honest when taking your examinations, submitting your own work and not that of another student, scholar, or other person. All students are expected to submit work in accordance with the Columbia College Honor Code.

 

Students with disabilities:

If you are a student with a disability and have a DS-certified ‘Accommodation Letter,’ please come to my office hours to confirm your accommodation needs. If you believe that you might have a disability that requires accommodation, you should contact and register with Disability Services (disability@columbia.edu).

 

WEEKLY SYLLABUS & READINGS

1. September 2: First meeting

Explanation of the concept of the course and the material to be discussed as well as administrative issues concerning the running of this course. This course will include working sessions, in which students present their preliminary findings and receive feedback and directions. The final aim of this course (to be ran over three years) is the building of a database of sites studied with the help of the CSR (Center for Spatial Research) at Columbia (Laura Kurgan).

 

2. September 9: Wandering in the City and the City as Palimpsest

Readings:

• Certeau, Michel de. 1984. “Walking in the City.” In The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Ingold, Tim. 2022. “Culture on the Ground: The World Perceived through the Feet.” In Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, 41–62. London: Routledge.
• Rabbat, Nasser. 2023. “The Khitat: History and Belonging.” In Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project, 154–201. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Avcıoğlu, Nebahat. 2008. “Istanbul: The Palimpsest City in Search of Its Architext.” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 53–54 (1): 190–210.
• Koolhaas, Rem. 1978. “The Double Life of Utopia: The Skyscraper.” In Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: Oxford University Press: 81-160.
• Tafuri, Manfredo. “The Disenchanted Mountain.” In The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal, 431–487. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1983.
• Gandy, Matthew. “Symbolic Order and the Urban Pastoral.” In Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City, 76–113. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
• Kimmelman, Michael. 2022. “Introduction” and “Harlem”. In The Intimate City: Walking New York. New York: Penguin Press, ix-xvi and 99-110.

Additional Readings:

• Sadler, Simon. 1998. “Drifting as the Revolution of Everyday Life.” In The Situationist City, 91–95. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.
• Lefebvre, Henri. “Brief Notes on Some Well-Trodden Ground.” In Critique of Everyday Life, translated by John Moore. London: Verso, 1991.
• Schlögel, Karl. 2016. “Reading Maps.” In In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics, translated by Gerrit Jackson. Cultural Histories of the Material World. New York: Bard Graduate Center, pp. 56-79 and 215-220.

 

3. September 16: Orientalism/Medievalism, the Ornamental Craze, and between Orintalizing and Representing the Orient

Readings:

• Said, Edward. 1978. “Introduction.” In Orientalism, 9–36. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Ganim, John M. “Introduction.” In Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture, and Cultural Identity, 1st ed., 1–15. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. “Egypt at the Exhibition.” In Colonising Egypt, 1–33. University of California Press.
• Çelik, Zeynep. 1992. “Introduction.” In Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs, 1–15. Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies 12. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Additional Readings:

• Tageldin, Shaden M. 2011. “Cultural Imperialism Revisited: Translation, Seduction, Power.” In Disarming Words: Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt, 1–32. FlashPoints 5. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Ockman, Carol. 1995. “A Woman’s Pleasure: the Grande Odalisque.” in Ingres’s Eroticized Bodies: Retracing the Serpentine Line, 33-66. Yale Publications in the History of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press.

 

4. September 23: The Anthropology of Ornament

Readings:

• Jones, Owen. 1865. The Grammar of Ornament. London: Day and Son, Ltd. Chapters VII to X, pp. 49-74.
• Necipoğlu, Gülru. 1995. “Ornamentalism and Orientalism: the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century European Literature.” In The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, 61–72. Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities.
• Necipoğlu, Gülru. 1995. “Recent Studies on Geometric Ornament.” In The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture, 73–83. Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities.
• Grabar, Oleg. “A Theory of Intermediaries of Art.” In The Mediation of Ornament, 9–46. The A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 1989. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
• Shalem, Avinoam, and Eva-Maria Troelenberg. 2012. “Beyond Grammar and Taxonomy: Some Thoughts on Cognitive Experiences and Responsive Islamic Ornaments.” Beiträge Zur Islamischen Kunst Und Archäologie 3: 385–410.
• Flood, Finbarr Barry. 2016. “The Flaw in the Carpet: Disjunctive Continuities and Riegl’s Arabesque.” In Histories of Ornament, 82–93. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Riegl, Alois. 1996. “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Essence and Its Development.” In Historical and Philosophical Issues in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Readings in Conservation 1. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute.
• Arrhenius, Thordis. 2004. “The Cult of Age in Mass-Society: Alois Riegl’s Theory of Conservation.” Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 1 (1): 75–81.

Additional Readings:

• Grabar, Oleg. 1987. “Early Islamic Decoration: The Idea of an Arabesque.” In The Formation of Islamic Art, 178–94. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Grabar, Oleg. 2001. “Die Ethische Dimension Des Ornaments.” In Die Rhetorik Des Ornaments, 60–75. München: W. Fink.
• Frank, Isabelle. 2001. “Das Körperlose Ornament Im Werk von Owen Jones Und Alois Riegl.” In Die Rhetorik Des Ornaments, 77–99. München: W. Fink.

 

5. September 30: Architecture and Identity: Heritage and Ornament Revival

Readings:

• Rabbat, Nasser. 1997. “The Formation of the Neo-Mamluk Style in Modern Egypt.” In The Education of the Architect: Historiography, Urbanism, and the Growth of Architectural Knowledge Essays Presented to Stanford Anderson on His Sixty-Second Birthday, 363–86. Cambridge (Mass.) London: the MIT press.
• Rüstem, Ünver. “A Tradition Reborn, The Nuruosmaniye Mosque and Its Audience.” In Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul, 111–61. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
• Ghoche, Ralph. 2019. “Erasing the Ketchaoua Mosque: Catholicism, Assimilation, and Civic Identity in France and Algeria.” In Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Africa, Asia, and Europe, 87–105. Architext Series. New York: Routledge.
• Teriba, Adedoyin. “Style, Race, and a Mosque of the ‘Oyinbo Dudu’ (White-Black) in Lagos Colony, 1894.” In Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present, 277–87. Culture, Politics, and the Built Environment. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.
• Rabbat, Nasser, and Pamela Karime. 2016. “The Demise and Afterlife of Artifacts.” Aggregate, December 12, 2016.
• Flood, Finbarr Barry. 2002. “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum.” The Art Bulletin 84 (4): 641–59.
• Volait, Mercedes. 2006. “Appropriating Orientalism? Saber Sabri’s Mamluk Revivals in Late-Nineteenth Century Cairo.” In Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation, and Eclecticism, 60:131–55. Islamic History and Civilization. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
• Rizvi, Kishwar. 2015. “Global Islam and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Architecture of Assimilation.” In The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East, 69–106. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
• Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. 2007. “Architectural Style and Identity in Egypt.” In Material Identities, 67–81. New Interventions in Art History. Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
• Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. 2006. “The Visual Transformation of Egypt During the Reign of Muhammad ’Ali.” In Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation, and Eclecticism, 60:109–29. Islamic History and Civilization. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
• Ruggles, D. Fairchild. 2011. “The Stratigraphy of Forgetting : The Great Mosque of Cordoba and Its Contested Legacy.” In Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure, and Exclusion in a Global World, 51–65. New York and London: Springer.
• Davidson Kalmar, Ivan. 2001. “Moorish Style: Orientalism, the Jews, and Synagogue Architecture.” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, 7 (3): 68–100.

Additional Readings:

• Deringil, Selim. 1993. “The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1808 to 1908.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1): 3–29.
• Blessing, Patricia. 2017. “Seljuk Past and Timurid Present: Tile Decoration of the Yeşil Külliye in Bursa.” Gesta 56 (2): 225–50.
• Yenişehirlioğlu, Filiz. 2006. “Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul: Sultan Abdülaziz and the Beylerbeyi Palace.” In Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation, and Eclecticism, 60:57–87. Islamic History and Civilization. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
• Flood, Finbarr Barry. 1997. “Umayyad Survivals and Mamluk Revivals: Qalawunid Architecture and the Great Mosque of Damascus.” Muqarnas 14: 57–79.
• Wharton, Annabel Jane. 2006. “Mechanically Reproduced Jerusalem: Entrepreneurs and Tourists.” In Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Francine Giese. 2021. “When does Mudéjar Architecture Belong?” in Francine Giese (ed.), Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe. Leiden, Brill.

 

GOING TO SITES

6. October 7: Mosques of New York (midterm due)

Visit: the Harlem Mosque

Please consult this video:

https://vimeo.com/394471323

Readings:

• Dodds, Jerrilynn Denise. 2002. New York Masjid: The Mosques of New York City. New York, NY: Power House Books.
• Dunlop, David. 1992. “A New Mosque for Manhattan, for the 21st Century.” New York Times, April 26, 1992.
• Rizvi, Kishwar. 2015. “Introduction.” In The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East, 1–32. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
• Rabbat, Nasser, and Nebahat Avcıoğlu. 2007. “Identity-as-Form: The Mosque in the West.” Cultural Analysis 6: 91–112.

 

7. October 14: Synagogues of New York

Visit: Central Synagogue and New York City Center

            Additional visit: October 20^th Open House at the Central Synagogue

Readings:

• Bush, Olga. 2004. “The Architecture of Jewish Identity: The Neo-Islamic Central Synagogue of New York.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 63 (2): 180–201.
• Coenen Snyder, Saskia. “An Architecture of Emancipation or an Architecture of Separatism?” In Building a Public Judaism: Synagogues and Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-Century Europe, 25–86. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.
• Danby, Miles. 1995. “Chapter 6: Zenith of the Style in the Nineteenth Century” and “Chapter 7: Developments and Variations in the Twentieth Century”. In Moorish Style. London: Phaidon.
• Davidson Kalmar, Ivan. 2001. “Moorish Style: Orientalism, the Jews, and Synagogue Architecture.” Jewish Social Studies, New Series, 7 (3): 68–100.
• Dolkart, Andrew. 2001. Central Synagogue in Its Changing Neighborhood. New York: Central Synagogue.
• Gray, Christopher. 1995. “Streetscapes/Central Synagogue; A $500,000 Restoration of an 1872 Masterwork.” New York Times, April 2, 1995.

 

8. October 21: Working Sessions I and II: Preliminary result presentations and discussion (a longer double session on October 21^st)

 

9. October 28: (No meeting, Shalem on academic obligation)

 

10. November 4: No Class (Election Day Holiday)

 

11. November 11: Gardens/open spaces I

Visit: Queens  (possibly half day trip on Nov 15)

Readings:

• Macaulay-Lewis, Elizabeth, and Jared Simard. 2015. “From Jerash to New York.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 74 (3): 343–64.
• Katz, Emily Alice. “It’s the Real World After All: The American-Israel Pavilion-Jordan Pavilion Controversy at the New York World’s Fair, 1964–1965.” American Jewish History 91, no. 1 (March 2003): 129–55.

 

12. November 18: Gardens/open spaces II

Visit: The Obelisk in Central Park and possibly the Sakura Garden

• Central Park Conservancy. Obelisk: Thomas P. Campbell. https://on.soundcloud.com/C2b6e.

Readings:

• Marcello, Flavia, and Aidan Carter. “The Axum Obelisk.” In Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Africa, Asia, and Europe, 42–64, 2020.

 

13. Saturday (TBC): Gardens/open spaces III

Visit: the Olana House, Hudson NY

• Rosenbaum, Julia. “Outside In: Space, Light, and the Artful Interior at Frederic Church’s Olana.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 20, no. 2 (n.d.): 5–33.
• Roberts, Mary. 2020. “Sightlines on the Hudson.” Presented at the Olana Perspectives, The Olana Partnerships, September 9. https://youtu.be/CXFETd-BW3A?si=qQhdZa1eMtBSjCHF.

 

14. November 25: Final Short Presentations I

 

The final paper is due TBD  

Extra Online sites for research in Manhattan buildings

Please find below additional archival web-link and other references for archival material and research tips and methods. This list is compiled by the Center for Spatial Research at Columbia, GSAPP:

1. Mapping Historical New York
2. Research guide from Center for Brooklyn History: This source is full of links to other archives across the city. (The issue is that sources don't support a broad inquiry into building history across the city before consolidation.)

https://www.bklynlibrary.org/cbh/collections/research-guides/house-building

1. Start with maps to identify location of building and historically relevant address (e.g. Sanborns, Fire Insurance Atlases at NYPL, etc.). Look for Fire Insurance Maps Online, which CU licenses through its library, also has a vast collection of maps of NYC beyond Manhattan.
2. Sources that mostly support a deep dive by building or neighborhood if you're working with DOB or other city sources that are digitized. They are often organized under the umbrella of real estate history, like the holdings at Avery. Here are a few more finding aids:

https://guides.nyu.edu/realestate/newyorkcity

https://libguides.nypl.org/househistory/construction

1. Avery has a searchable archive of The Real Estate Record - -where individual houses / buildings may appear in transactions over time.
2. Historic Photographic archive:

https://1940s.nyc/map#13.69/40.7093/-73.99397

 

Co-instructors’ Biographical Sketches

Professor Avinoam Shalem:

Shalem’s main field of interest concerns artistic interactions in the Mediterranean basin, migration of objects, and medieval aesthetics. He has published extensively on medieval Islamic, as well as Jewish and Christian art.

Professor Shalem has written numerous articles on varied subjects including stylistic observations, document-based researches and cultural studies, historiographies and art criticism. He also researches and publishes on issues concerning Modernity in the Islamic world, especially in the Near East (see his last publication on the Syrian Artist Tammam Azzam: Tammam Azzam: Untitled Pictures (Munich, Hirmer and Gallerie-Kornfeld, Berlin, 2021). He has acted as the initiator of the series of exhibitions Changing Views that were held in Munich in 2010-2011, and co-curated the exhibition The Future of Tradition: The Tradition of Future in Haus der Kunst in Munich.

Shalem taught in different universities, such as The Graduate Art History Program at the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Mass., (2016-17), JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) in New Delhi (2011), Institute of Jewish and Christian Studies at the University of Luzern (2010), and run several seminars at the universities of Bamberg, Heidelberg and the International University of Venice. He acted as a guest Professor at the KHI (the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence) Max Planck Institute (2007-2015), and as guest professor at the I Tatti (Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies) in Florence. Shalem directed in 2021 the American Academy in Rome.

His impact in the field is mainly through his constant publications (circa 17 books and over 150 articles), organization of workshops and conferences, and as a director (and co-director) of Getty-supported art-historian educative programs like Art Space Mobility (Connecting Art Histories at the Getty), Framing Medieval Mediterranean Art and Archaeology (Advisory Board, The American Academy in Rome), and Black Mediterranean/Med Nero: Artistic Encounters and Counter Narratives (With Harvard I Tatti Center in Florence). He also ran the successful research group Crossing Boundaries Making Images: In search of the Prophet Muhammad (this project resulted in the publication of 4 books, all written by members of the research group) as well as several other research projects which were published too, like for example: The Segregation Wall in Jerusalem: Graffiti on Walls (see Facing the Wall 2011), Gazing Otherwise: Modalities of Seeing (Harvard publication: Muqarnas 2015), The Salerno Ivories 2016),  Seeking Transparency with Cynthia Hahn, 2020) and recently Approaching Architecture in the Lands of Islam (with Ruba Kana’an), Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World 4 (2023)

 

Assistant Professor Ziad Jamaleddine:

Ziad Jamaleddine is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, and co-founder and partner of L.E.FT Architects based in New York and Beirut. He has been coordinating Advance IV Studios, teaching Advanced Architecture Studios, and seminars in the History & Theory sequence, and conducting summer workshops in the Middle East and North Africa since 2018. Jamaleddine is a practitioner and scholar with a particular research focus on Islamic architecture—rigorously interrogating topics such as the mosque architecture typology, religiosity in public space, and the question of reconstruction in post-war cities.

Before joining Columbia University, Jamaleddine taught design studios and seminars at Cornell University, PennDesign, the Yale School of Architecture, the University of Toronto, and the MIT Aga Khan Program. He is the recipient of the 2002 Young Architects Forum Award and the 2010 Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York. At Columbia University, Jamaleddine is the recipient of the Provost’s Grants Program for Junior Faculty Who Contribute to the Diversity Goals of the University.   

His architecture firm L.E.FT, in partnership with Makram el Kadi, was the 2009 Finalist in MoMA’s Young Architects Program, a member of Architectural Record’s 2010 Design Vanguard, a finalist for the 2010 Iakov Chernikhov Prize, and AD50: The Middle East’s Brightest Talents in Architecture and Design (2019). His architecture work at L.E.FT Architects has won several awards including AIA Religious Art and Architecture Faith and Form Award (2018-2024), Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture, Third Cycle: “Mosque architecture in the twenty-first century”(2022). Among the built projects by L.E.FT Architect is the award-winning Amir Shakib Arslan Mosque in Moukhtara, Lebanon (2017), and the award-winning Office for Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices at Vassar College, US.

Jamaleddine's historical research and art installations on the architectural typology of the mosque were presented at several venues, including the Oslo Architecture Triennial (2016), Studio-X Gallery in Istanbul (2017), Milan Architecture Triennale (2018), Sharjah Architecture Triennale (2019), and most recently at the Jeddah Islamic Arts Biennale (2023). His writings on the Arab-Islamic city and the architecture of the historical mosque have been published in The Arab City: Architecture, and Representation (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016), Places online journal (2020- forthcoming 2024), 21: Inquiries Into Art, History, and the Visual online Journal (2022), Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World (Brill, 2024), and International Journal of Islamic Architecture (Intellect, 2025). He is currently working on a book on his architecture and artwork, which will be published by Actar in 2026.