The Future of the Past: Arts of the Shahnama (Book of Kings)

The Shahnama (Book of Kings) is an epic poem composed in Persian by the poet Firdausi in the early eleventh century, and ranks among the most widely copied and circulated literary works in the Persianate world. Considering both prominent early modern Shahnama manuscripts and their reception today, this talk explores questions of temporality, focusing on correlations between historical self-awareness, portraiture, and antiquity in the arts of the Shahnama.

About the speaker:

Dr Peyvand Firouzeh is Lecturer in Islamic Art at the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney. She specializes in medieval and early modern art and architecture from the Islamic world, with research interests in arts of Sufism, the interaction of image, space, and text, and the mobility of artistic and intellectual networks within and beyond the Persianate world. Previously she has held research fellowships with the Getty Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Forum Transregionale Studien and Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, and served as acting curator of Eastern Islamic collections at the British Museum in 2014-2015.

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