Ringvorlesung Turkologie: Cultural Heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia: Conservation and Destruction

Heritage is a process: a place in the present and future given to the material and environmental cultures of the past. This lecture series focuses on heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia, with an emphasis on the processes of patrimonialization, whether perceived as positive (intellectual history, knowledge production, collection, exhibition, conservation) or negative (destruction). How are objects, built ensembles and spaces shown? What devices and discourses surround them? Whose heritage is collected, exhibited or, on the contrary, cancelled in museums and public spaces? Indeed, the destruction of works of art and monuments is also a powerful political gesture, which takes place in different contexts: protests, revolutions, destruction, wars. It also creates new realities and sometimes new artworks. What can we do with those voids and absences? How can we talk about collection history, museum conservation, but also voluntary destruction in contexts of extreme violence? Our aim is to reflect on all the frameworks that produce, display, or destroy heritage in the Middle East and Central Asia and over the long term.

08.01.2025
Ayşe Dilsiz Hartmuth (University of Vienna)
Envisioning ancientness: A closer look at cultural heritage discourses in early Republican Turkey (Abstract and bio)

15.01.2025
Yuka Kadoi (University of Vienna)
Building the Islamic Art Market after 9/11: A Heritage Economy of the 21st Century (Abstract and bio)

22.01.2025
Mahshid Sehizadeh / Mohammad S. Izadi (Bu-Ali Sina University)
Conservation or Destruction: A Review of Urban Policies towards the Historic Areas of Iranian Cities during the last four decades (Abstract and bio)

Expired Dates:

09.10.2024
Markus Ritter (University of Vienna)
The Rise of the Concept of „Islamic Art“ (Abstract and bio)

16.10.2024
Tara Andrews (University of Vienna)
Scribal networks and the rescue of Armenian historiography in the seventeenth century (Abstract and bio)

23.10.2024
Rian Thum (University of Manchester)
When are Domes Acceptable?: Logics of Sacred Site Destruction in Chinese Central Asia (Abstract and bio)

30.10.2024
Kristina Pfeifer (Technical University Vienna)
Turkish Yörük Culture in Transition - Tensions of Reinvention in Vernacular Architecture (Abstract and bio)

06.11.2024
Mazen Iwaisi (Queen’s University Belfast)
No State, no NGOs: Reflection on Families' Approach in Converting Traditional Houses into Local Museums in Palestine (Abstract and bio)

13.11.2024
Tobias Mörike (Weltmuseum Wien)
From Ethnographic Specimen to Memory Device. Aspiring Heritage Justice in an Ethnographic Collection (Abstract and bio)

20.11.2024
Jeremy F. Walton (University of Rijeka)
Lessons in Laundering Violence: Postimperial Memories of Interimperial Conflict in Istanbul and Vienna (Abstract and bio)

27.11.2024
Mohammad Talebian (University of Tehran)
Challenges of conservation and development in the historical center of Hamedan (Abstract and bio)

04.12.2024
Gönül Bozoğlu (University of St. Andrews)
Missing Heritages in Official Sites and Museums: Case of the Greek (‘Rum’) Communities of Istanbul (Abstract and bio)

11.12.2024
Nadia Radwan (HEAD Genève)
Making Art for Whom? Urgency, Cancellation and Loss (Abstract und bio)