Kishwar Rizvi teaches the history of Islamic art and architecture as well as seminars on modern architecture in the Middle East and South Asia. Her primary research is on representations of religious and imperial authority in the art and architecture of Safavid Iran. She has also written on issues of gender, nationalism and religious identity in the contemporary art and architecture of Iran and Pakistan.

She is completing her book, The Safavid Dynastic Shrine: Architecture, piety and power in 16th and 17th-century Iran.  Another book, co-edited with Sandy Isenstadt, Modernism and the Middle East: Politics of the built environment (Washington University Press, 2008) was awarded a Graham Foundation publication grant.  Rizvi has also been awarded a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for research on the 1605 Safavid Shahnama (Book of Kings) at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin.

She teaches undergraduate introductory surveys on Islamic art and architecture, as well as seminars on pilgrimage, gender, and representations of kingship.  Her graduate courses focus on issues in modernism and the Middle East; Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal art and architecture; and a new research project on the cultural and political significance of the documentary survey in Europe and the Middle East during the 16-20th centuries.


Selected Publications
“Persian Pictures: Art, Documentation, and Self-Reflection in Bernard and Picart’s Representations of Islam,” in The First Global Vision of Religion: Bernard Picart’s Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, edited by Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob and Wijnand Mijnhardt, (Getty Research Institute), forthcoming 2010.

“Safavid Architecture and the Patronage of Shrines in Ardabil, Mashhad, and Qum,” chapter in Shah ‘Abbas and the Great Shi`i Shrines, edited by Sheila Canby, (British Museum Press), publication accompanying exhibition at the British Museum, forthcoming Summer 2009.

“Modern Architecture and the Middle East: The burden of representation,” Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and politics in the twentieth century, co-editor, (University of Washington Press) 2008. View PDF.

 “Art History and the Nation: Arthur Upham Pope and the discourse on ‘Persian Art’ in the early 20th century,” Muqarnas: Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture, vol 24, (2007).

“Religious Icon and National Symbol: The Tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran,” Muqarnas: Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture, vol 20, (2003). View PDF.

“Gendered Patronage: Women and Benevolence in Safavid Architecture,” Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies, ed. D. F. Ruggles, (SUNY: New York), 2000. View PDF.

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