Indiana University Bloomington

Department of the History of Art

Christiane Jacqueline Gruber | Faculty

Christiane Jacqueline GruberAssistant Professor, History of Art
Assistant Professor, International Studies
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Central Eurasian Studies

Office: Fine Arts 132
Phone: (812) 855-6714
E-mail: chgruber@indiana.edu

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Education

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2005
M.A., University of Pennsylvania, 2001
B.A., Princeton University, 1998

Research Interests

Texts and images of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension; illustrated manuscripts of the Turco-Persian world; Islamic codicology and paleography; post-revolutionary Iranian art; and modern Islamic visual culture.

Personal Statement

My primary field of interest revolves around bio-apocalyptical texts and images of the Prophet Muhammad in the Persian and Turkic worlds. My first book entitled “The Timurid Book of Ascension: A Study of Text and Image in a Pan-Asian Context,” provides an overview of Islamic ascension (mi’raj) texts and images, as well as a careful analysis of a Turco-Persian illustrated “Book of Ascension” produced in Herat ca. 1436. My second book entitled “The Ilkhanid Book of Ascension: A Persian-Sunni Prayer Manual” analyzes texts and images of Muhammad’s ascension in the medieval Persian world, underscoring how the theme and paintings of the mi’raj could be used for procedures of conversion to Sunni Islam during the Ilkhanid period.
I also am interested in Islamic book arts, in particular the study of manuscripts (codicology) and penmanship (paleography). I authored the online catalogue of the Islamic calligraphies in the Library of Congress (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/intldl/apochtml/apochome.html), and am currently organizing an exhibition and publication on the Islamic book arts in Indiana University collections.

More recently, I have turned my attention to modern Islamic art and, more specifically, to the public art of post-revolutionary Iran. I have written about post-revolutionary Iranian murals and posters, and plan to complete a book on modern Iranian visual culture in the coming years. Through a number of conferences and publications with international colleagues, I also am working towards promoting the scholarly field of modern Islamic visual culture.

Selected Publications

Arabic-Script Calligraphic Items

Books

Articles

Honors and Awards