Esra Akin-Kivanç

Associate Professor, Art and Architecture of the Middle East and North Africa
PhD, Ohio State University
Phone: 813.974.2360
Email: eakinkivanc@usf.edu
Office: FAH 251

Esra Akın-Kıvanç holds the Doctor of Philosophy in the History of Art from The Ohio State University. Prior to her appointment at USF, she taught at Oberlin College & Conservatory, where she held the position of Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History and Religion. Dr. Akın-Kıvanç teaches courses in Islamic art, architecture, visual, and material culture.

She is the author of Mustafa ‘Ali’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Study on the Earliest Ottoman Text of the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 2011) and Muthanna/Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy: History, Theory, and Aesthetics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020). She co-authored, with Howard Crane, Sinan’s Autobiographies: Five Sixteenth-century Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Dr. Akın-Kıvanç’s past research and publications were supported by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University, the Presidential Scholarship at The Ohio State University, the American Research Institute in Turkey, American Council of Learned Societies, and National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She is currently preparing a monograph titled Islamic Art of Calligraphic Design: An Unorthodox History.

Courses Taught

Surveys
Introduction to Islamic Art and Architecture
Visual Cultures of the Middle East
Faces of Islam: Society, Culture, Art (with Professor Roy Kaplan)
Themes in Islamic Art and Architecture

Seminars
Ottoman Imperial Identity and Visual Culture
Cross-Cultural Interactions in Islamic Art
The Human Figure in Islamic Art
Critical Issues in Cultural Heritage: The Middle East and North Africa
Abstraction in Islamic Art and Architecture
Ornament in Islamic Art and Architecture

Publications

Monographs
Muthanna/Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy: History, Theory and Aesthetics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020.

Mustafa Âli’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Study on the Earliest Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the Islamic World. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2011.

Sinan’s Autobiographies: Five Sixteenth-century Texts. Co-author with Howard Crane. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2006.

Practice Book for First Year Turkish. Columbus: The Ohio State University Foreign Language Publications and Services, 2000.

Book Chapter

“The Making of a Legendary Calligrapher: Textual Portraits of Sheikh Hamdullah.” Hani Khafipour (ed.). Empires of the Near East and India: Sources for the Study of Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Societies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Peer-Reviewed Research Articles

“In the Mirror of the Other: Imprints of Muslim-Christian Encounters in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 75 (Jan. 2022): 237–62.

“‘Such a Qur’an No Individual Might Own’: A 15th-century Mamluk Qur’an from Ottoman Jerusalem.” The Journal of Ottoman Studies 48 (July, 2016): 229-268.

“Mustafa Âli’s Epic Deeds of Artists and New Approaches to Written Sources of Ottoman Art.” Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies 2, no. (2015): 225–258.

Book Reviews

The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages by François-Xavier Fauvelle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), Speculum 95/2 (April 2020): 547–48.

The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting by Lamia Balafrej (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), College Art Association Reviews (March 2020).

Invited Essays

“Modern Narratives of the Past at Çatalhöyük.” The Middle East and South Asia Folklore Bulletin. Vol. 16, Numbers 2/3 (Spring/Autumn, 2000): 6-10

 

VIDEO PRESENTATIONS

Muthanna

 

Interviews

Kufic Calligraphy

 

Grants and Fellowships

• 2023 Proposal Enhancement Grant, Office of Research and Innovation, University of South Florida
• 2022 Fall Research Grant, College of The Arts, University of South Florida
• 2021 Creative Scholarship Grant, University of South Florida
• 2019 National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Grant
• 2017 Summer Research Grant, College of The Arts, University of South Florida
• 2017 Creative Scholarship Grant, University of South Florida
• 2017 Faculty International Travel Grant, University of South Florida
• 2017 Fall American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship
• 2015 Summer Research Grant, College of The Arts, University of South Florida
• 2015 Travel Grant, College of The Arts, University of South Florida
• 2014 New Researcher Grant, University of South Florida
• 2011-2013 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, Oberlin College and Conservatory
• 2004 Presidential Fellowship, The Ohio State University
• 2003 Dissertation Writing Grant, American Research Institute in Turkey
• 2003 Samuel Kress Travel Fellowship in the History of Art, June 2003 (declined)
• 2003 CIC Traveling Scholar, University of Chicago, Summer Consortium in Arabic
• 2002 CIC Traveling Scholar, University of Chicago, Summer Consortium in Arabic
• 2000 Research Travel Grant, Office of International Education, The Ohio State University

AWARDS

• 2020 Outstanding Faculty Award, The Provost’s Office, University of South Florida

• 2018 Outstanding Faculty Award, The Provost’s Office, University of South Florida

• 2015-2016 Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, University of South Florida

• 2002 Graduate Associate Teaching Award, The Ohio State University