Apr 30
A Postcard from the Revolution: Social, Political, and Artistic Change in Modern Iran
Mira Xenia Schwerda is a historian of Islamic art, specifically modern Middle Eastern art, print, and photography. She is the managing director and a founding member of Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online. As a Getty/ACLS postdoctoral fellow in the history of art, she is currently at work on her book manuscript-in-progress, tentatively titled Between Art and Propaganda: Photographing Revolution in Modern Iran (1905–1911). Dr. Schwerda has worked at the Harvard Art Museums, where she curated the photography section of the exhibition Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran and is the co-founder of the Virtual Islamic Art History Seminar Series. Translation and cross-cultural contact play a key role in her work, she has published her academic work in both English and Persian, and is the co-editor of the journal Art in Translation. She has taught courses in the history of photography, Islamic art history, and South Asian art history in the Department of Art History at the University of Edinburgh.