A Reward

This chapter presents Islamic theological and historical texts about the houri and argues that the houri is an ambiguous reward of paradise that has developed multiple meanings. The chapter introduces the concepts of paradise, or the Garden, and hell, or the Fire, in Islamic history and surveys Qurʾanic commentaries, hadith collections, dictionaries, eschatological manuals, and book arts from the eighth to the fifteenth century. The chapter argues that there are multiple functions of the houri, including pure companion, sensual being, cosmic bride, and singing slave girl. These many functions of the houri arise because she is an ambiguous reward in paradise.

The Decadent Book

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, decadent culture is manifest not only between the covers of a book, but also on them, with the book itself taking material form as an aesthetic artifact of the very culture the book describes. This essay considers this phenomenon in relation to the livres de luxe produced by French bibliophile societies of this era. Following an outline of French bibliophile culture and its promotion of a decadent trend in the French book, Huysmans’s À rebours (Against Nature, 1884) serves as case study to consider the decadent materiality of the book, in two senses: first, how decadent bibliophilia and the decadent book arts are represented in this novel; second, how the novel itself was subject to decadent embodiment in a 1903 edition produced for the society Les Cent Bibliophiles, and in a series of unique bindings commissioned by its bibliophile owners.

Making Mental Health through Open in Emergency

This epistolary essay chronicles the making of Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health (2016, 2019), an interdisciplinary, hybrid book arts project that is an antiracist and disability justice rethinking of mental health. Open in Emergency works to decolonize our approaches to un/wellness and radically expand our vocabularies through the arts and humanities. This essay, written in the form of love letters, journeys through the relationships, experiences, and curatorial processes that inform Open in Emergency’s interventions, particularly what the author dubs a “pedagogy of unwellness,” a crip temporality, epistemology, and ethics that rethink how we experience unwellness and the kinds of care our unwellness requires. The essay offers up Open in Emergency as an example of the kinds of intellectual and arts practices we might engage to develop new ways, and times, of care, for all of us.

The Crip Tarot Card

The Crip is one of thirty cards in the Asian American Tarot, an original deck of tarot cards I curated as part of my hybrid book arts project on mental health, Open in Emergency (first published in 2016 and then in an expanded second edition in 2019/2020). Each card names an archetype that structures the psychic and material life of Asian Americans, and draws upon knowledge production in Asian American studies and Asian American communities to theorize that archetype’s shape and reach. Each features original art and text, a collaboration between a visual artist and a scholar or literary writer. Each ends with guidance, a gentle directive to the reader for what to do now that they have drawn this card in a tarot reading. The Asian American Tarot is art-meets-scholarship-meets-wellness-practice-equals-magic-for-our-times. The Crip is the twenty-sixth card in the major arcana, and it is here welcoming us all on our disability journeys.

THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF MIRAJ (ASCENSION) IN NISABURI’S (SA’LEBI) KISAS-I ENBIYA MANUSCRIPTS

In this paper, five different illustrations with the theme of ‘Prophet Muhammed’s Miraj (Ascension)’ found in two illustrated copies of Nîsâbûrî's literary work titled Kısas-ı Enbiyâ dated 16th century, are examined in terms of composition and figures. Two of these illustrations are included in the Kısas-ı Enbiyâ, produced in Shiraz in the second half of the 16th century, registered in the 'Diez A fol.3' collection of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library). The other three illustrations are included in the Kısas-ı Enbiyâ, produced in Kazvin between 1570-1580, registered in the ‘Keir3’ collection of the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas Art Museum). In the Islamic tradition, the ‘Miraj’ (Ascension) narrates the journey of Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and from there to the skies. In Islamic book arts, manuscripts with Miraj depictions produced between the 15th and 19th centuries show that Miraj is a popular and accepted subject. In the illustrations examined within the scope of this study, the same composition setup was followed. Due to the subject of Miraj, the common figures seen in illustrations are Muhammed, Burak, Gabriel and other angels. These figures, which are defined as ‘Heavenly Servant Angels’ in the text of Kısas-ı Enbiyâ, can be classified as the ones carrying incense burners; carrying the bowl of light filled with fire; carrying the beverage bowls offered to Muhammad and the ones that prostrate and carry the Quran page. Accordingly, each figure is evaluated in terms of its place in the composition, features of form and style; comparisons are made about the common and different aspects of the figures. In addition, the figures are drawn individually, independent of the composition, in order to present a detailed analysis of their form. The aim of this paper is to investigate the formal features of figures and other visual elements in the depiction of the ‘Mi'raj’ and to evaluate the contribution of visual expression to cultural and symbolic repertoire through illustrations. Keywords: Nîsâbûrî (Sa’lebi), Qisas al-Anbiyâ, Miraj, sngel figure, srt of miniature painting

INSCRIBED FABRICS IN THE OZBEL COLLECTION

Apart from the use of inscribed arts directly in book arts; textile, architecture, stone carving, ceramics, glass works, leather works are used as an element of decoration in many handicrafts. Turkish fabrics with rich ornament motifs have an important place in the textiles due to their religious and political qualities. At the same time, the message in the other motifs can be make to the person's interpretation, while in the printed fabric this message is given directly. In the study, 4 textiles in the fabric collection of the Anatolian collector Prof. Dr. Kenan Ozbel will be discussed. The aim of the research is to examine four fabrics with self-patterned inscriptions on them. Scanning and description methods were applied in the research. In the first part of the study, information about inscribed fabrics were given. In the second part, the information about the width, weaving structure and raw materials of the four samples examined are presented in a table. In the conclusion part, a comparative evaluation of the samples in the Özbel collection were made with other written fabrics. Keywords: Written fabric, Kenan Ozbel, Beledi, Sevai

Meaning and ‘Material Reality’: Jane Morris’ Keepsake Books

Though long overshadowed by her socialist–designer husband, Jane Burden Morris, wife of arts and crafts pioneer William Morris, has begun to receive recognition for her contributions to the alternative art movements of the nineteenth century, including her work as a Pre-Raphaelite model and arts and crafts embroiderer. This article furthers this exploration by examining Jane Morris’ engagement with the book arts. Through an analysis of the textual, visual and material qualities of four keepsake volumes Morris made c.1880, this article considers how the books illuminate Morris’ material reality and emphasize their maker’s commitment to socialist ideals, artistic labour, and collaborative working. It further situates Morris’ keepsake volumes within the nineteenth-century reinvigoration of the book arts and the arts and crafts movement in order to consider the ways in which arts and crafts ideals penetrated amateur domestic production.