Renata Holod

College of Women Class of 1963 Professor

Art History

215.898.8714

rholod@sas.upenn.edu

Renata Holod is a Professor of the History of Art and Curator, Near East Section, of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.  She received her B.A. in Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto, her M.A. in the History of Art from University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard University.  She has done archaeological and architectural fieldwork in Syria, Iran, Morocco, Central Asia, and Turkey, and completed an archaeological/ethno-historical survey on the island of Jerba, Tunisia.  

Professor Holod has served as Convenor, Steering Committee Member, and Master Jury Chair of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.  She also served as consultant to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), Arthur Ericson Architects, and Venturi Scott-Brown Architects. In 2004, the Islamic Environmental Research Centre honored her with an Award for outstanding work in Islamic Architectural Studies.

Education:

B.A., University of Toronto, St. Michael's College (1964); M.A., University of Michigan (1965); Ph.D., Harvard University (1972)

Languages:

Arabic (3), Church Slavonic (1), French (4), German (3), Greek (1), Italian (2), Latin (2), Ottoman Turkish (1), Persian (3), Russian (3), Spanish (2), Turkish (1), Ukrainian (4)

Research Interests:

Architecture of Iran, 14th-16th Centuries; Architecture and Urban History; Architecture and Archaeology of the Mediterranean; Central Asia and the Iranian Highlands, 700-1300

Overseas Research Experience:

Syria, Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia

Representative Awards and Distinctions:

Getty Collaborative Grant 2006-2009; Ukraininan Studies Foundation, 2005; Islamic Environmental Design Achievement Award, 2004

Recent Publications:

An Island through Time: Jerba Survey. Final Report, co-author and co-editor, with A. Drine and E. Fentress. Journal of Roman Archaeology. 2009; The City in the Islamic World, with Salma Jayyusi, Attilio Petruccioli, and Andre Raymond, Eds. Brill 2009;City in the Desert:  an account of the archaeological expedition to Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Syria; Architecture and Community: Building in the Islamic World Today; Modern Turkish Architecture,The Mosque and the Modern World, London-New York, 1997

Courses:
  • Introduction to Visual Studies (VLST 101)
  • Introduction to the Visual Culture of the Islamic World (ARTH 217/ 617)
  • Undergraduate Seminar: Orientalism/ Occidentalism (ARTH 301)
  • Early Islamic Art and Architecture, up to 1250 (ARTH 416)
  • Pro-Seminar: Art of Al-Andalus (ARTH 516)
  • Pro-Seminar: Introduction to Arabic and Persian Epigraphy
  • Seminar: Art of Iran (ARTH 517/AAMW 517), recent topics include “Studying a Nizami Manuscript”
  • Seminar: Islamic City (ARTH 518)
  • Seminar: Islamic Art (ARTH 716), recent topics include “Vision and Optic Effects in Islamic Art”
  • Seminar: Islamic Archaeology (ARTH 717), recent topics include “Approaches to the Archaeolgoy of Islamic Periods”
  • Seminar: Islamic Architecture (ARTH 718), recent topics include “Town and Territory, Approaches to the Study of Islamic Cities”