Dr. Ünver Rüstem
Dr. Ünver Rüstem will explore art and fashion of the Ottoman Empire in a talk on Tuesday, March 4.
“Shown in a Lifelike Way” (or ‘No Great Art Therein’): Ottoman Costume Albums and the Art of Self-Representation,” will be given in the Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall at 11 a.m. and is free and open to the public.
Dr. Rüstem’s talk will address the link between sartorial choices and politics in the Ottoman Empire and discuss how Ottoman rulers and subjects used clothing to express, and in some cases transgress the hierarchical, religious and communal distinctions defining their society.
In the presentation, Rüstem will refer to his current research on costume albums made by Ottoman painters for European buyers during the 18th century, and how and why dress became such a charged site of cross-cultural interaction, posturing and self-assertion in the empire’s dealings with the West.
A Second Decade Society Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University, Rüstem is a historian of Islamic art and architecture, with a focus on the Ottoman Empire in its later centuries and on questions of cross-cultural exchange and interaction. He is the author of “Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of Eighteenth-Century Istanbul.”
Rüstem has written articles and chapters on subjects as diverse as the reception of illustrated Islamic manuscripts, the ceremonial framing of Ottoman Mosque architecture and the distinctive burial art of Ottoman Cyprus. A new book project he’s working on explores the role of costume in Ottoman interactions with Western Europe during the Early Modern and Modern periods.
Support for the campus presentation has been furnished by the Mary Louise White Visiting Writers Series through the Fredonia College Foundation and the departments of English and Visual Arts and New Media.
