Students will have two guest lectures during the term:

The first guest lecture will given by Dr. Glaire Anderson from the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom). Dr. Anderson is a historian of art and architecture with expertise in the Middle East and North African (MENA), or alternatively, medieval Islamic (or Islamicate) societies and civilization. She is the founding leader of the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, and currently Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Anderson is also one of the consultants for the new Assassin’s Creed: Mirage game which is set in the ninth-century medieval Baghdad. Players will find information about the history of Baghdad under the Abbasid dynasty (people, daily life, and built environment), the caliphal period, and medieval Islamic art (objects, architecture, and monuments), and history in the game.

In the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, Dr. Anderson leads a team of students, designers, and programers to develop game projects (such as the Digital Munya 2.0 and the Córdoba Journey) that have the potential not only to entertain players but to make substantive historical knowledge accessible to players and wide range of audiences beyond the academy. You may join the Digital Lab’s official Discord Server to share your experience and discuss more about these games with Dr. Anderson and her team.

In this guest lecture, students will listen to Dr. Anderson and will learn about video games as a powerful educational tool, and how they can offer Islamic art historians a way to shape more inclusive and authentic perceptions of the past by making their research more accessible to a wide audience outside the academy including students and non-specialists who are interested in learning about the art and architecture of the Islamic world.

The second guest lecture will given by Dr. Tyler Kynn from the Central Connecticut State University. Dr. Kynn is an Assistant Professor of the History of the Islamic World. He is the co-creator of the Hajj Trail: A Journey along the Darb al-Hajj simulation. His dissertation entitled “Encounters of Islam and Empire: The Hajj in the Early Modern World,” has been the fundamental research for this historical simulation of the pilgrimage to Mecca in the early modern world. You can also find Tyler Kynn working on the Hajj Trail on their Twitch channel (twitch.tv/tkottomans) as well as follow him on Twitter.

In this guest lecture, Dr. Kynn will talk about the Hajj Trail simulation which is about the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. It is one of the five pillars of Islam and incumbent upon all able-bodied Muslims once during their lifetimes. The purpose of this educational historical simulation is to bring students along that same journey and understand how the hajj fit into the larger social, political, and cultural world of the Ottoman Empire and beyond.