2023 Fall Practitioner-in-Residence Program Workshop
Modern Nudes: Bodies, Representations, and Imaginations of the Middle East
Modern Nudes: Bodies, Representations, and Imaginations of the Middle East
To assume that “Arabs have never dealt with nudes,” is pure Orientalist fantasy. Yet, ongoing histories, displays, and even political debates assume this as a fact. While introducing students to one missing history of Middle Eastern creativity and modernity, this workshop will provide skills for searching out other intercultural histories and developing exhibition spaces that confront stereotypes and surpass fitting non-western art in.
Our focus on the missing history of modern Middle Eastern nudes lets us explore why that history seems so improbable and how it relates to contests over “Arab” society today. For example, the 1920s-1960s nudes provide evidence of a proliferation of ideas about Islam that have been quashed not only through state bureaucracies but also through insensitive scholarship. While highlighting major artworks, the workshop tracks processes of institutionalization that marginalized women, defined modernity and sexuality in tandem, and, also, opened new avenues for piety.
This Practitioner-in-Residence workshop is part of the NYU Kevorkian Center's ongoing collaboration with the Global Engagement Initiative at the American University of Beirut.
Registration Deadline: September 11, 2023
Please submit this google form to register.
*NYU graduate students who want to take the course for credit must also register through Albert with the following course number: NEST-GA 3005: Topics in History and the Middle East: Practitioner-in-Residence
Kirsten Scheid is Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Beirut, and affiliated faculty in Fine Arts and Art History. She holds a PhD in Anthropology of Art, with a designated focus on the modern Middle East, from Princeton University, and a BA from Columbia University, where she will be a guest lecturer in the Art History Department. Her exhibitions also include Jerusalem Actual and Possible: the 9th edition of the Jerusalem Show (Jerusalem, 2018), The Arab Nude: The Artist as Awakener (Beirut, 2016), and Historical
Modernisms in the Middle East (2008-2010) with four artist retrospectives, at the ArteEast Virtual Gallery. Scheid’s research has been supported by The Clark Art Institute, Williams College, L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her scholarly writing has appeared in Aggregate, Anthropology Now, ArtMargins, International Journal for Middle East Studies, MERIP, Museum Anthropology, and Jadaliyya. She has also co-founded a cultural resource center and an Arabic children’s book line (Hikayat walad min Bayrut 2004) in Beirut.
To co-create situations for unlearning and untrusting what we know about art.
To develop new vocabularies and methodologies for supporting non-canonical, non-western bodies, representations, and imaginations in these spaces.
The workshop will meet in person Tuesdays from 4:55pm-6:55 pm at the Kevorkian Center Library, 255 Sullivan St.
The workshop will run from September 12-November 28, 2023. A required reading list will be sent out at the start of the workshop. Sessions will be held on:
September 12
September 19
September 26
October 3
October 17
October 24
October 31
November 7
November 14
November 28
This hands-on workshop will introduce students to the various phases of curating an ongoing exhibition–research project. Students will strategize research, craft installation settings, write interpretive wall-text and labels, and docent diverse audiences. By focusing on issues of cultural translation, representation, and interpretation through material objects and forms, it will imbue students with ways of thinking and acting that expand from the one example of modern (Middle Eastern) nudes to other de- and anti-colonial cases.
- Open to only current and prior graduate students (NYU and Non-NYU).
- Undergraduate applicants will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
- NYC PhD consortium students are encouraged to apply.
- Space is limited, our first priority for registration will be for students enrolled in the MA program in Near Eastern Studies (or GloJo-NEST), second will be for NYU graduate students.
- Participants from all disciplines are welcome to join.
- Applicants who are proficient in a Middle Eastern language and those who have a cultural, management and curation background will be given preference.