"In association with Qatar Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar." Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Shaykhi's moth : small creatures in fifteenth-century Persian painting -- The quest for thermal delight -- Cultivars and catastrophes in al-Andalus : on nature and human will -- The floating mosque, environmental change, and Muslim material ethics -- Visualizing the marshes in Mayzara : a material history of urban wetlands in Baghdad -- War ecology : petropolitics, contemporary art, and the Middle East -- "A luminous golden spirit owns us" : legal sculpting and the rights of nature -- Survival by design : oil crisis, the Middle East, and the quest for lunar settlements -- Behind the sun : the theater of oil expenditure -- Landscapes of Arabia : Tarek Al-Ghoussein and camille Zakharia.
Summary:
"The Islamic world finds itself increasingly at the epicenter of our escalating climate emergency, both as a locus of the petrochemical industry and as home to extraordinary landscapes in which the effects of environmental transformation are acutely felt. Yet, far from a solely twenty-first-century concern, engagement with changing, and often extreme, natural conditions has long characterized Islamic art and architecture in the central Islamic lands and beyond into the Muslim diaspora. This new book brings together a diverse group of scholars and critics whose contributions address this profound ecological awareness through the dual lenses of Islamic culture and climate change. Their case studies range from the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, the Indian Subcontinent, North Africa, and even outer space. Contributors examine the optimistic, sustainable, and innovative responses adopted by artists and builders in the face of often irreversible and escalating environmental destruction that necessitates such ingenuity. Breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries, this timely book brings together a diverse range of perspectives to bear on this increasingly urgent problem"-- Publisher's website.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.