141163 VO Ringvorlesung: Manuscript Cultures in Eurasia (2025W)

The lecture serie discusses the production, conservation, and destruction of cultural heritage in the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) Region. 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 (spoilation, 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 region and over the long term.

09.10. Markus Ritter (Vienna). The Rise of the Concept of 'Islamic Art'
16.10. Tara Andrews (Vienna). Scribal Networks and the Rescue of Armenian Historiography in the Seventeenth Century
23.10. Rian Thum (Manchester). When are Domes Acceptable? Logics of Sacred Scribes Destruction in Chinese Central Asia
30.10. Kristina Pfeifer (Vienna). Turkish Yörük Culture in Transition. Tensions of Reinvention in Vernacular Architecture
06.11. Mazen Iwaisi (Belfast). No State, no NGOs. Reflection on Families' Approach in Converting Traditional Houses into Local Museums in Palestine
13.11. Tobias Mörike (Vienna). From Ethnographic Specimen to Memory Device. Aspiring Heritage Justice in an Ethnographic Collection
20.11. Jeremy F. Walton (Rijeka). Lessons in Laudering Violence. Postimperial Memories of Interimperial Conflict in Istanbul and Vienna
27.11. Mohammad Talebian (Tehran). Challenges of Conservation and Development in the Historical Center of Hamedan
04.12. Gönül Bozoglu (St.Andrews). Missing Heritages in Official Sites and Museums. Case of the Greek ('Rum') of Istanbul
11.12. Nadia Radwan (Geneva). Making Art for Whom? Urgency, Cancellation, and Loss
08.01. Ayse Dilsiz Hartmuth (Vienna). Envisioning Ancientness. A Closer Look at Cultural Heritage Discourses in Early Republican Turkey
15.01. Yuka Kadoi (Vienna). Building the Islamic Art Market after 9/11. A Heritage Economy of the 21st Century
22.01. Mahshid Sehizadeh (Hamedan). Conservation or Destruction? A Review of Urban Policies towards the Historic Areas of Iranian Cities