Nebahat Avcıoğlu received her BA in Architecture from Istanbul Technical University, and her PhD from the University of Cambridge, Department of History of Art. She has held several Post-Doctoral and Research Fellowships, notably at Harvard University (Aga Khan Fellow), Dumbarton Oaks, Oxford University (Barakat Trust Fellow) and Columbia University (Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris). Before joining Hunter College in August 2011 she taught at the University of Cambridge as a Newton Trust and Barakat Trust Lecturer, at University of Manchester and Sciences-Po Paris, as well as at MIT as Visiting Professor. During Fall 2018 she was Archives By-Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
Prof. Avcıoğlu specialises in Islamic architecture and art with a particular emphasis on Ottoman/European cultural encounters. Her research interests center on dissemination and transformation of forms and cultures, theories of artistic contact, and socio-political aspects of the history of architecture from the early seventeenth century to the present. Her publications focus on imperialism, art and travel, the Enlightenment and exoticism, nineteenth century Orientalism in architecture, post-classical Istanbul and modern and contemporary mosques in Europe. Currently she is preparing a critical reader on the Islamic city and planning an exhibition and a catalogue on costume albums in collaboration with colleagues and students from a variety of disciplines.
Prof. Avcıoğlu offers graduate and undergraduate courses on Approaches to Islamic Art and Cultures; The Islamic City; Cultural Contacts between the Ottoman Empire and Europe; History of Ottoman Architecture; Orientalism and the Post-colonial Object; Modern Architecture in the Middle East; The City of Istanbul from Imperial Capital to Globalization; and Research Methods.
Books
The Culture of Albums in the 18th Century for the special issue of Journal18, http://www.journal18.org/3224 Fall 2018.
Artistic Practices and Cultural Transfer in Early Modern Italy:Essays dedicated to Deborah Howard, (ed. with Allison Sherman), Ashgate Publishing, 2015.
Turquerie ve Temsil Politikası 1737-1876, Koç University Press, Istanbul: 2014.
Architecture, Art and Identity in Venice and its Territories: Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard, (ed. with E. Jones), Ashgate Publishing, 2013.
Globalising Cultures. Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century (ed. with B. Flood), special issue, Ars Orientalis vol. 39, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2011.
Turquerie and the Politics of Representation, 1737-1876, Ashgate Publishers, 2011.
Articles
‘Immigrant Narratives: The Ottoman Sultan Portraits in Elisabeth Leitner’s Family Photo Album of 1862-1873’, Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, Brill, Vol. 36 (December 2018), pp. 1-36.
‘Jeux de miroir: Architecture of Istanbul and Cairo from Empire to Modernism’ (with Mercedes Volait), in A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, eds. Gülru Necipoğlu and Finbarr Barry Flood, Wiley Blackwell, 2017, pp. 1122-1149.
Afterword to Artist Azra Aksamija’s Mosque Manifesto, Revolver Publishing: Berlin, 2015, pp. 431-439.
‘Le Hammam: a case of cultural rivalry between Paris and London’, in Paris-Londres, sous la direction de Dana Arnold and Jean-Louis Cohen, INF, Paris: 2015, pp. 359-386.
‘Introduction: Reframing the Renaissance’ in Artistic Practices and Cultural Transfer in Early Modern Italy:Essays dedicated to Deborah Howard, (ed. with Allison Sherman), Ashgate Publishing, 2015, pp. 1-14.
‘The Mosque and the European City’ in Public Controversies around Islam in Europe, ed. Nilüfer Göle, 2014, pp. 57-69.
‘Introduction: Architecture and Identity’ in Architecture, Art and Identity in Venice and its Territories: Essays in Honour of Deborah Howard, (ed. with E. Jones), Ashgate Publishing, 2013, pp. 1-14.
“Kiosque” in 1740, Un abrégé du monde. Savoir et collections autour de Dezallier d’Argenville: ed. Anne Lafont, Editions Fage, 2012, 138-148. In French.
‘The Turkish Bath in the West’ in Bathhouses in Anatolia and Beyond: Architecture, History and Imagination, ed. Nina Ergin, Peeters Publishers, Leuven, 2011, pp. 267-304.
‘Stanislas en Grand Seigneur, ou le Turban et la Couronne’, Turqueries et autres chinoiseries. L’Exotisme en Lorraine au XVIIIè siècle, Exhibition catalogue, Château de Lunéville, 2009, pp. 20-26.
‘The Contemporary Mosque: “in what style should we build”‘ in The Mosque Manifesto, the emancipation of a building in the West, eds. Ergün Erkoçu and Cihan Bugdac, Amsterdam, March, 2009, pp. 44-60.
‘Voyages du style : récits visuels et orientalisme en Angleterre à l’époque des Lumières’ in Les Orientalismes en architecture à l’épreuve des savoirs, eds. Mercedes Volait and Nabila Oulebsir, Editions Picard/Collection INHA, Paris, 2009, pp. 131-154.
’19. yuzyil. Osmanli saraylari ve emperialismin son goreysel cabalari ‘[Nineteenth century Ottoman palace and the visual discourse of imperial representation] in Dolmabahce Palace 150 years old, Istanbul, 2008 (in Turkish), pp. 118-130.
‘Istanbul: The palimpsest city in search of its architext’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, vol. 53/54 (Spring and Autumn, 2008), pp. 188-208.
‘Form-as-Identity: The Mosque in the West’ Cultural Analysis (published also electronically), vol. 6, February 2008, pp. 91-112, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/
‘A Palace of One’s Own: Stanislas I’s (1677-1766) Turkish Kiosks and the idea of Self-Representation’, Art Bulletin, vol. 85 no. 4 (December 2003) pp. 662-684.
‘Ahmed I and the Allegories of Tyranny in the Frontispiece to George Sandys’s Relation of a Journey Anno. Dom.1610‘, Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World, Brill, 18 (September 2001) pp. 203-226.
‘David Urquhart and the Role of Travel Literature in the Introduction of Turkish Baths to Victorian England’, in Interpreting the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, eds. Paul and Janet Starkey (Ithaca Press: 2001) pp. 69-81.
‘Constructions of Turkish Baths as a Social Reform for Victorian Society: the Case of the Jermyn Street Hammam’ in The Hidden Iceberg of Architectural History. Papers from the Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, eds., Colin Cunningham and James Anderson, (London: 1998) pp. 59-78.
Book and Exhibition Reviews
double book review: Mary D. Sheriff ed., Cultural Contact and the Making of European Art Since the Age of Exploration (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), and Michael North ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges Between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections (Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010), in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient / Journal d’Histoire Economique et Sociale de l’Orient (JESHO), 54 (2011) 270-374.
Gulru Necipoglu, The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire, (Princeton University: 2006), in caa.reviews (published electronically by the College Art Association), 9 December 2006.
Turks: A journey of a thousand years 600-1600, ed., David J. Roxburgh, (Royal Academy of Arts: 2005) in caa.reviews (published electronically by the College Art Association), 6 June 2005.
Debra Higgs Strickland Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art, (Princeton University Press: 2003) in Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. L. no. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 236-238.
Roger Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, & French North Africa, 1880-1930 (University of California Press: April 2003) in The Art Newspaper, May 2003.
Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600, (University of California Press: 2001) in The Art Newspaper, May 2002, p. 36.
Work in Progress
The Islamic City. A Critical Reader, in progress.
The Contemporary Mosque: A Cross-Cultural Analysis, in progress.
‘Towards a new typology of Modern and Contemporary Mosque in Europe including Russia and Turkey’ in A. Hilâl Uğurlu and Suzan Yalman eds., Liminal Spaces from Sacred to Urban: The Friday Mosque and the City in “Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East” series, Intellect Books (forthcoming, 2019).