Theodore Van Loan Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History

Wilson Hall 3015
540-458-8858
tvanloan@wlu.edu

Education

University of Pennsylvania
August 2018- Ph.D. in History of Art
Dissertation title: “Umayyad Visions: Charting Early Islamic Attitudes toward Visual Perception”

Cornell University
May 2007- B.A. summa cum laude, History of Art and Near Eastern Studies

Research

Prof. Van Loan specializes in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, with a focus on the first 400 years of Islamic history. He is interested in how experiential, and reception theory-based approaches generate new art historical understandings of these visual traditions. He is also interested in how various types of post-structuralist discourses, deconstruction, postcolonial critique, and aesthetic theory give insight into the field of Islamic art and its historiography. His research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program of the U.S. Department of Education, and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

Teaching

Islamic Art and Architecture
Islamic Art: The First 400 Years
Colonialism/Postcolonialism/Neocolonialism and the study of Art in the Middle East
The Art History of the Qur'an

Selected Publications

“Multiple Temporalities and the Scene of Time: A Pair of Wooden Doors at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo” in Troelenberg, Eva-Maria, Schankweiler, Kerstin and Messner, Anna Sophia (Eds.): Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021 (Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality, Vol. 9).

“Signifying Visions in Early Islam: From Jāhiliyya Idols to the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus,” Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie 6, 2020.
“The Rome Mosque and Islamic Center: A Case Study of Diasporic Architecture in the Globalized Mediterranean,” (with Eva-Maria Troelenberg) International Journal of Islamic Architecture 8.2 (June 2019)