Dr. Nancy Demerdash
Associate Professor
Associate Professor of Art History
Ph.D., Art & Archaeology, Princeton University (2012-2016)
M.A., Art & Archaeology, Princeton University (2009-2012)
S.M.Arch.S. (Master of Science in Architecture Studies), Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007-2009)
B.A. (Art History, Religious Studies), Honors, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2002-2006)
Dr. Demerdash’s intellectual and scholarly interests are wide-ranging: modern and contemporary art and architecture of the Middle East and Africa; diaspora studies; colonial and postcolonial studies; critical museology and decolonial curation; memory studies; heritage studies and architectural preservation; cultural histories of fashion and design.
Professional Experience
Dr. Demerdash comes to the College for Creatives Studies from Albion College, where she taught since 2018, and where she received tenure within its Department of Art & Art History. As a liberal arts-oriented pedagogue, Dr. Demerdash is a generalist offering a range of courses across multiple subfields of art historical inquiry. In her research and scholarship, she is trained as a specialist of art and architectural traditions of North Africa, with an emphasis on the modern period. She also publishes on contemporary arts of Southwest Asia and North Africa. Her current book project, The Architectural Politics of Tunisian Modernity: Reconstruction, Decolonization, and Development, is contracted with the University of Nebraska Press (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization series).
Significant Publications, Presentations and Exhibitions
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES/BOOK CHAPTERS IN EDITED VOLUMES:
“‘La Formation de l’architecte’: American Interventionism, Interdisciplinarity, and Development in Postcolonial Tunisian Architectural Curricula,” [book chapter in progress for Farhan Karim and Mohammad Gharipour eds., Establishment of a Field: Architectural Pedagogy in the Middle East and North Africa (Edinburgh University Press)], 2024.
“The Art of Material Recovery: Deconstructing the Archival Impulse in Contemporary Maghrebi Diasporic Praxis” [book chapter in Eddie Chambers ed., Routledge Companion to African Diaspora Art History (Routledge)], 2024.
“Architecte du soleil (Architect of the Sun): Olivier-Clément Cacoub and the Architecture of Postcolonial Tunisian Development” [book chapter in Nadi Abusaada and Wesam Asali eds., Architects and Architecture in the Modern Middle East (gta Verlag, publisher of the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH)-Zürich, Switzerland)], 2024.
“Integration through Conversion: Discourses of Islam and the musulman laïc in Contemporary French Cinema,” in Kristian Petersen ed., Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology, Cambridge, MA: Mizan Project, Ilex Foundation and Harvard University Press, 2021.
“Border Crossings at the Museum: Interpretation, Integration and Empathic Curatorial Strategies in an Era of Trauma and Displacement” in Jenny Norton-Wright ed., Curating Islamic Art Collections Worldwide: From Malacca to Manchester, Springer: “Heritage Studies in the Muslim World” series, 2020.
“The Riad’s Resurgence: Questioning the Historical Legacy and Neocolonial Currency of the Maghrebi Courtyard House,” in Daniel Coslett ed., Neocolonialism and Built Heritage: Echoes of Empire in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, Routledge: “Architext” series, 2019.
“Constructing Dignity: Primitivist Discourses and the Spatial Economies of Development in Postcolonial Tunisia,” in Kıvanç Kılınç and Mohammad Gharipour eds., Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity, Indiana University Press, 2019.
“The Aesthetics of Tastemaking in (and out of) the Algerian Salon,” in Nadia von Maltzahn and Monique Bellan eds., The Art Salon in the Arab Region: Politics of Taste Making, Beirut: Orient Institut Beirut and the Max Weber Stiftung, 2018. [ISBN: 978- 3-95650-527-0]
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES IN ACADEMIC JOURNALS:
“Mipsterz’ Visual Constructions of Cool: Muslim Hipsters and the Sartorial Self-Fashioning of Modest Subcultures in Transnational Digital Diasporas” in Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies, published by the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, January 2024.
“The Problem of Informality in Modernist Discourses of Tunisian Architecture,” in International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE) Working Paper Series, vol. 318, 2022.
“The Fabric of Diaspora: Memory, Portraiture, and Empowerment in the Quilts of Bisa Butler,” in a special issue on “African Textiles,” in the Textile Museum Journal, published by the George Washington University Museum, guest edited by Dr. Sarah Fee (Chief Curator of Global Fashion and Textiles, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto), vol. 48, Fall 2021.
“Archival Critique and Activism: Memory, Preservation, and Digital Visual Cultures in Post- Revolutionary Egyptian Heterotopias,” in Journal of the African Literature Association, volume 15, no. 3, special issue on “Egypt in Focus: Creativity in Adversarial Contexts,” guest edited by Dr. Nevine El Nossery (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Dr. Shereen Abouelnaga (Cairo University), 2021.
“Experiential Approaches to Teaching African Culture and the Politics of Representation: Building the ‘Documenting Africa’ Project with StoryMapJS,” co-authored with Dr. Mary Anne Lewis Cusato (Ohio Wesleyan University), Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, published by City University of New York, 2021.
“L’Habitation tunisienne de Victor Valensi (1928): Visions d’un architecte de culture juive sur le pluralisme des modernités vernaculaires en Tunisie [English title: Victor Valensi’s L’Habitation Tunisienne (1928): Jewish Perspectives on Pluralist Vernacular Modernities in Tunisia],” in Perspective: actualité en histoire de l’art (Maghreb issue), vol.2 (2017), published by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Paris.
“Of ‘Gray Lists’ and Whitewash: The Aesthetics and Artistic Strategies of Censorship and Circumvention in the GCC,” in special volume, Art and Cultural Production in the Gulf, edited by Drs. Mehran Kamrava and Zahra Babar (Georgetown University-Doha, Qatar), Journal of Arabian Studies, 7 (September 2017): 28-48. [Honorarium] Reprinted in Suzi Mirgani ed., Art and Cultural Production in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Routledge, 2018) [ISBN: 9780815350798]
“Bordering Nowhere: Migration and the Politics of Placelessness in Contemporary Art of the Maghrebi Diaspora,” Journal of North African Studies, Special Issue on “Maghrebi Art, Cinema and Literature in the 21st Century,” 21:2 (March 2016): 258-272.
“Consuming Revolution: Ethics, Art, and Ambivalence in the Arab Spring,” New Middle Eastern Studies 2 (2012): 1-17. [referenced on BBC’s HARDtalk interview with Shurooq Amin, November 2014]
