Abbey Stockstill

Art History

Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture

Email

astockstill@smu.edu

ON LEAVE FOR THE 2024-25 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abbey Stockstill received her B.A. in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University. Her most recent work focuses on the intersection of architecture, landscape, urbanism and identity in the medieval Mediterranean, particularly in the region of the Islamic West known as the Maghrib (comprising present-day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia). Her first book manuscript, addresses the way the landscape of Marrakesh helps define the ethnosocial identities of two medieval dynasties, the Almoravids and the Almohads. This research has been supported by a number of international institutions including the American Institute of Maghrib Studies, the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH), Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, and the École Nationale d’Architecture du Maroc. She is currently the Paul Mellon Senior Fellow for the 2024-25 academic year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C.

She welcomes applications from prospective M.A. and Ph.D. students with interests in Islamic art and architecture, especially those whose topics may fall under the research categories listed below.

Recent Work

Selected Publications

Marrakesh and the Mountains: Landscape, Urban Planning, and Identity in the Medieval Maghrib (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024)

“Capturing the Gaze,” Lumen: the Art and Science of Light, 800-1600, ed. by Kristen Collins and Nancy Turner (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2024)

“The Red Tent in the Red City: the Almohad Caliphal Qubba,” Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernism, ed. by Didem Ekici, Basile Baudez, & Patricia Blessing (Routledge, 2023)

“From the Kutubiyya to Tinmal: Sacred Space in Muʾminid Performance,” in Liminal Spaces from Sacred to Urban: the Friday Mosque and the City, ed. by Suzan Yalman and Hilal Ugurlu (Intellect, 2020)

“A Tale of Two Mosques: Marrakesh’s Masjid al-jamiÊ¿ al-Kutubiyya,” Muqarnas 35 (2018)

Research

Architecture and urbanism in the Arabic-speaking Islamic world, in particular the Islamic West; gardens and landscapes of the medieval Mediterranean; aesthetics and materiality in Islamic art; scientific and artistic intersections in medieval and Islamic art.

Course list

Catacombs, Cathedrals, & Flying Machines: Art & People of the Medieval and Early Modern World
ARHS 1301
Architecture of the Islamic World
ARHS 1319
The Art of Medieval Science and Magic
ARHS 3321
Heaven on Earth: Art, Order, and Environmentalism in the Islamic Garden ARHS 3322
The Art & Cutures of Medieval Spain
ARHS 3324
Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and the Invention of Islamic Art (Spring 2023) ARHS 5316
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