"ENSLAVED MUSLIMS AND MEMORY IN LOUIS XIV'S FRANCE"
Meredith Martin, NYU & Gillian Weiss, Case Western Reserve University
Part of the Silsila fall 2019 Lecture Series, Bonded
Exploring the material traces of two thousand esclaves turcs (enslaved Turks) captured or purchased to row on royal galleys and toil at port during Louis XIV's reign, this lecture also considers some of the factors shaping their depiction in monuments and museum collections. Ship design, naval weapons, medals, paintings and prints depicting these Ottoman, North African and presumed Muslim subjects helped proclaim royal supremacy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What are the stakes of remembering them today?
Meredith Martin, Associate Professor of Art History at NYU and the Institute of Fine Arts, and Gillian Weiss, Associate Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University, won an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship (2016-2018) to research and write The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Slavery in Louis XIV's France (forthcoming). Their book challenges traditional court-centered accounts of Louis XIV-era art by telling a vital story of early modern France marked by Islam and reoriented towards the Mediterranean Sea.
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