Arts and Crafts in the Late Ottoman Empire: Rethinking Practices and Concepts of Material Culture in Syria and Beyond (18th - early 20th c.).

The conference "Arts and Crafts in the Late Ottoman Empire" aims to advance art historical and interdisciplinary research on practices and concepts of material culture in Ottoman lands between the 18th and the early 20th centuries. While inviting contributions on all geographies of the Empire, our call for papers foregrounds late Ottoman Syria as a case through which to expand the analytical and historical horizons of Islamic art and architecture studies and to contribute to broader debates in Ottoman and Arab historiographies of modernity. We encourage authors to consider the analytical frameworks—temporalities, epistemes, and materialities—that underpin the conference’s critical inquiry into the entangled modernities of Ottoman arts and crafts.

Venue: Lebanese American University (Beirut, Lebanon)
Convenors: May Farhat and Sarah Sabban

We invite abstracts of up to 300 words, along with a short biography (max. 100 words), to be sent to MAIA.eventslau.edu.lb by January 15, 2026. Papers may be delivered in English or Arabic.

Decisions will be communicated by February 1, 2026.

Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication in an edited volume or a special issue of a journal.

For the full call for papers, please visit this link: https://sard.lau.edu.lb/news-events/news/2025/conference-on-the-arts-and-craft.php.