Department of Art History

The Department of Art History applauds Chaeri Lee, who recently completed her Ph.D. in Art History.
Dr. Lee described her dissertation as follows:

The title of my dissertation is “Ās̲ār: Visualizing Vestiges of Time in Late Nineteenth-Century Iran,” and it examines nineteenth-century Iranian visual and material engagements with the ancient past through the term ās̲ār, which at its core, signifies “traces” and “effects”. Since the early Islamic period, Muslim authors described the physical remnants of pre-Islamic civilizations as ās̲ār—a rhetorical practice rooted in the Qur’an, which portrays pre-Islamic ruins as edifying traces of divine power. In my dissertation, I argue that the metaphysical and philosophical connotations of the Islamic concept of ās̲ār resonated deeply in the nineteenth-century Iranian re-discovery of ancient Persian vestiges. Concurrently, the concept of ās̲ār itself became intricately linked to new mediums of image production, such as photography and lithography. By tracing the transformations in the meaning of ās̲ār, I show how "seeing” became an integral condition of “knowing” in late nineteenth-century Iran.

A central figure in my dissertation is a polymath intellectual, poet, and artist named Mirza Muhammad Nasir Husayn Shirazi, known more commonly by his pen-name “Fursat.” Fursat published the first illustrated survey of the ancient Persian monuments and ruins of southwestern Iran, titled Ās̲ār-i ‘Ajam (Vestiges of Ancient Persia, 1896). In the Ās̲ār-i ‘Ajam, Fursat fuses the Perso-Islamic historiographic tradition with modern scientific approaches to the study of ās̲ār. He believed that through the systematic de-coding and deciphering of latent or imperceptible meanings and signs that adhere in material traces, we can reach a deeper understanding of the metaphysical, divine order. As can be seen in the image below, Fursat’s engagement with ās̲ār extended beyond the page, to a design for a monumental carpet measuring more than 7 meters high. The carpet highlights the importance of acknowledging such artisanal works as a vital part of the modern intellectual discourse on the ancient past in late nineteenth-century Iran.

The dissertation was made possible through the generous support I received throughout the PhD from the Department of Art History and the University, as well as a two-year predoctoral fellowship from CASVA, National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.)

Image: Detail from Mirza Muhammad Nasir Husayn "Fursat" Shirazi (1854 - 1920), Ās̲ār-i ‘Ajam (Vestiges of Ancient Persia), 1896.