Fellows Selected for Islamic Art Symposium at VCU-Qatar

By Tom Gresham

Fifteen scholars representing one dozen countries and a broad array of research interests have been awarded fellowships to attend the Second Biennial Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art scheduled for November at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar.

The fellows, whose specialties range from Islamic art history to water engineering, will receive full funding to attend the symposium, which is being held Nov. 4-6 at Education City in Doha, Qatar, one of the fastest growing centers of Islamic art in the Middle East. The theme of this year's symposium, "Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture," will explore the theme of water in Islamic lands from southern Europe to South Asia. Topics range from water supply and distribution to its role in religion and popular culture.

VCU School of the Arts, which co-hosts the symposium with VCU School of the Arts in Qatar, received more than 300 applications from 62 countries for the symposium's fellowships. Applicants represented four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and North America) and ranged from graduate students in their early 20s to senior scholars in their 60s and 70s. Applicants included historians, art historians, architects, engineers and curators. Recipients ultimately selected for the fellowship are citizens of Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Iran, Russia, Spain, Sudan, Turkey, Yemen and the United States.

The selection committee, headed by Sheila S. Blair, Ph.D., and Jonathan M. Bloom, Ph.D., shared holders of the Hamad Bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at VCU, faced a difficult task in narrowing down the field of applicants. Blair and Bloom are recognized as being among the leading scholars of Islamic art in the world.

"We were tremendously impressed with the range and seriousness of the 300 applicants for fellowships," Blair and Bloom said. "They show that there is a worldwide thirst for knowledge about Islamic art."

The keynote speaker of this year's symposium is Carole Hillenbrand, professor of Islamic History and head of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Hillenbrand, a recent recipient of the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies, is speaking on the roles of water in the Koran, Islamic history and literature.

A complete list of speakers and fellows for the "Rivers of Paradise" symposium, as well as online registration, is available at http://www.islamicartdoha.org.