Dr. Roxana Zenhari

Dr. Roxana Zenhari is a historian of Islamic art and visual culture with a focus on Persian art. Trained as a painter, she continued her study in History of Art and completed her Ph.D in Iranian Studies in Georg-August-University in 2012. Her main focus of study is on the fourteenth century Persian art of the book, particularly those which produced under Inju (1307–1353) dynasty. Through an intertextuality approach her investigation concentrates on the way of conveying meanings and the relationship of visual productions with power structures. Her recent project was a collaborative work on the early illustrated lithographed books as a continuation of manuscript tradition, printed in the Qajar period (1796–1925) in Iran.

Education

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• PhD, Philosophy, Iranian Studies, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany. Dissertation: “The Persian Medieval Romance Samak-e ʿayyār; Analysis of an Illustrated Inju Manuscript.” 2008–12

• MA, History of Islamic Art, University of Art, Tehran, Iran. Master’s thesis: “An Analysis of the St. Petersburg Illustrated Manuscript of the Shāhnāma.” 2005

Focus

• Interrelation of texts and images within the dominant cultural and political discourse in Islamic arts; visual art and arts of the book of the Ilkhanid, Inju and Timurid periods; popular art vs. royal art; classical literature and popular stories in lithographed illustrated books of the Qajar period

Employment

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Languages

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