Art & Art History
Voices: Pamela Karimi
Gallery 400 Lecture Room
400 South Peoria
Pamela Karimi is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her primary field of research is art, architecture, and visual culture of the modern Middle East. Karimi presents “Design, Dominance, and the Art of Defiance in Contemporary Iran” and explores the Islamic Revolution of 1979, during which Iranian artists, architects, and designers flouted many aspects of the ruling regime s ideological initiatives. Karimi argues that Iranians subtle forms of resistance culminated in countless gradations of compliance and defiance, powerfulness and powerlessness.
Before joining the Art History faculty at UMass Dartmouth, Karimi taught at Brandeis University, NYU, Wellesley College, and Lawrenceville School. Her articles, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Persica, Perspecta, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, The Art Journal, Thresholds, Bidoun Projects, The Arab Studies Journal, CAA Reviews, and The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. A recipient of fellowships from the American Council of University Women, Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies, Karimi recently published her first monograph, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (Routledge, 2013). Karimi is the editor of H-AMCA, the online network of the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey, serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and is the co-editor of the special journal volume, Images of the Child and Childhood in Modern Muslim Contexts. Karimi earned her PhD in history and theory of art and architecture from MIT in 2009. </