Afshan Bokhari, Assistant Professor
Afshan Bokhari
Assistant Professor of Art History, Foundation Studies
Education
PhD, University of Vienna, Institute of Art History
MA, Boston University
MDes, Harvard University
BA, Wellesley College
Courses Taught at the School of Art & Design
Ideas of Western Art I, Ideas of Western Art II, Art of the Silk Road, Arts of India, Non-western Art: Cultures Traditions, Women in Art: Eastern and Western Perspectives
Teaching Philosophy
Art History courses have been designed to integrate museum collections from local museums to formally and critically analyze the work's iconological shaping. An underlying focus is on intercultural and inter-artistic agency; the mobility of ideas, artists and works of art; and the creation or transformation of spaces within the chronological and topographical framework of the coursework. Object-based research has the potential to expand and even reinvent the student's understanding of culture and history and / or reinterpret standing historical conversations.
Recent Professional Highlights
- 2011: Journal of Persianate Studies, Special Issue, "Imperial Transgressions and Spiritual Investitures: Female Agency in Seventeenth Century Mughal India" (June 2011, Brill Publishers).
- 2011: Routledge Publications, "Between Patron and Piety: Jahan Ara Begum's Sufi Affiliations and Articulations" in Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200-1800 C.E., ed. John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander (London and New York: Routledge, August 2011)
- 2011: Palestinian American Research Council, (CAORC) Faculty Research Grant
- 2010 - 2011: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Harvard University
- 2011: Academic Video Series: "Treasures of Islam," (GardnerFilms.com) Broadcast Network: PBS, Broadcast Date: To be released in 2012. The film is a two-hour documentary for PBS about the visual and material legacy of the Muslim world. The film takes the audience to locations as diverse as Syria, Spain, India, and Mali, to explore the immense richness of Islamic art and architecture: the Taj Mahal in India, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Alhambra in Spain and an extraordinary collection of cultural treasures and artifacts.