Stephennie Mulder

Stephennie Mulder is Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a specialist in Islamic architectural history and archaeology and has worked at numerous archaeological sites throughout the Middle East. She worked for over ten years as the head ceramicist at Balis, a medieval Islamic city in Syria, and has also conducted extensive art historical fieldwork throughout Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and elsewhere in the region.Her research interests include the art and architecture of Shi’ism, the intersections between art, spatiality, and sectarianism in Islam, anthropological theories of art, material culture studies, theories of ornament and mimesis, and place and landscape studies. Dr. Mulder also writes on the contemporary aesthetics of the art of resistance in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Dr. Mulder works on the conservation of antiquities and cultural heritage sites endangered by war and illegal trafficking.Dr. Mulder’s publications include The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shi’is, and the Architecture of Coexistence (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), which was the recipient of the 2015 World Prize for Book of the Year from the Islamic Republic of Iran, The University of Texas Hamilton Book Award, the Syrian Studies Association Prize, and was selected as a 2015 ALA Choice Outstanding Academic Title.