Christiane Jacqueline Gruber :: Faculty
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Assistant Professor, History of Art Office: Fine Arts 132 EducationPh.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005 |
Research Interests
Texts and images of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension; images of the Prophet Muhammad; illustrated manuscripts of the Turco-Persian world; Islamic codicology and paleography; post-revolutionary Iranian art; and modern Islamic visual culture.
Statement
Dr. Christiane Gruber’s primary field of research is Islamic painting, in particular illustrated books of the Prophet Muhammad's ascension. She is the author of The Timurid Book of Ascension (Mi‘rajnama): A Study of Text and Image in a Pan-Asian Context (2008) and The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Devotional Tale (2009). With Frederick Colby, she edited the volume entitled The Prophet’s Ascension: Cross-Cultural Encounters with the Islamic Mi‘raj Tales (2009).
She is now working on a related theme, namely images of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic traditions. She is currently writing her next book, Picturing the Prophet: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images, as well as collaborating with Dr. Avinoam Shalem (Munich University), with whom she is editing a volume of approximately 23 articles, entitled Picturing Prophetic Knowledge: The Prophet Muhammad in Cross-Cultural Literary and Artistic Traditions.
Dr. Gruber also pursues research in Islamic book arts, having authored the online catalogue of Islamic calligraphies in the Library of Congress (2006). She also edited the volume of articles, The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Islamic Book Arts in Indiana University Collections (2009), a publication linked to an exhibition that she curated at the Indiana University Art Museum in Spring 2009. The show’s web module, authored by Yasemin Gencer (Ph.D. student, Indiana University), is available online at: http://www.iub.edu/~iuam/online_modules/islamic_book_arts/.
Her third field of specialization is modern Islamic visual culture and post-revolutionary Iranian visual and material culture, about which she has written several articles. Along with her colleague Sune Haugbolle (Copenhagen University), she is now editing a volume of articles on modern Islamic visual culture. At the same time, she continues to pursue research and writing towards her book-length study, The Art of Martyrdom in Modern Iran.
Dr. Gruber’s research has been supported by a number of grants, including the Max-Planck Foundation, the Mellon Foundation / Council on Library and Information Resources, the National Endowment for the Humanities / American Research Institute in Turkey, the American Institute of Iranian Studies, the American Research Center in Egypt, and Fulbright-Hays. Over the past decade, she has taught art history at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and has done extensive research in Islamic art collections in America, Europe, Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. She currently is serving as a board member of the Historians of Islamic Art Association (http://www.historiansofislamicart.org/portal/) as well as editor of the listserve H-Islamart (http://www.h-net.org/~islamart/).
Selected Publications
Books and Edited Volumes
The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Devotional Tale (London, 2010).
The Timurid Book of Ascension (Mi’rajnama): A Study of Text and Image in a Pan-Asian Context (Valencia, 2008).
(with Frederick Colby) The Prophet’s Ascension: Cross-Cultural Encounters with the Islamic Mi‘raj Tales (Bloomington, 2010).
The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections (Bloomington, 2009).
Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy: an online catalogue of 355 calligraphic specimens in the Library of Congress (Washington D.C., 2006). URL: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/intldl/apochtml/apochome.html
Selected Articles
“Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting,” Muqarnas 26 (2009), 1-34.
“Realabsenz: Gottesbilder in der Islamischen Kunst zwischen 1300 und 1600,” in Das Bild Gottes in Judentum, Christentum und Islam, eds. Eckhard Leuschner and Mark Hesslinger (Petersberg, 2009), 153-179.
“The Writing is on the Wall: Mural Arts in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Persica, vol. 22 (2008), 15-46.
“Jerusalem in the Visual Propaganda of Post-Revolutionary Iran,” in Jerusalem: Idea and Reality, eds. Suleiman Mourad and Tamar Mayer(London, 2008), 168-197.
Selected Honors and Awards:
Arnheim Visiting Professorship, Humboldt University, Berlin, Spring 2012Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, Indiana University, 2010
New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Grant, 2008 and 2010
Senior Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Max-Planck Foundation, 2008
Senior Post-Doctoral Fellowship, American Institute of Iranian Studies, Fall 2007
Margaret Sevcenko Prize for Best Article on Islamic Art, College Art Association, 2006
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, American Research Institute in Turkey, Summer 2006
“Excellence in Teaching” Award, International Studies, Indiana University, Spring 2006
Dissertation Fellowship, American Research Institute in Turkey, 2004
Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2003-4
Dissertation Fellowship, American Research Center in Egypt, Summer 2003
Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship, 2002-3
