Zainab Bahrani
Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology
Professor Zainab Bahrani is the author and editor of twelve books, including Women of Babylon (London: Routledge, 2001) The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), Rituals of War: the body and violence in Mesopotamia (New York: Zone Books, 2008) which was awarded the James Henry Breasted Book Prize by the American Historical Association for the best book in any field of history prior to 1000 CE. Her 2014 book, The Infinite Image: Art, Time and the Aesthetic Dimension in Antiquity (Reaktion/University of Chicago Press), based on her 2010-2011 Slade Lecture in the Fine Arts at Oxford, won the Lionel Trilling Book prize.
Bahrani’s books are investigations into the ontological relationship of the image, the monument, and the world in antiquity. She has been particularly fascinated by the Mesopotamian conception of the image as a form of infinite presence, an argument she expounded in The Graven Image. She writes on the status and meaning of images and of art in general, addressing both ancient and modern philosophies of representation. Her other areas of interest include intellectual history, antiquarianism and the politics of art and archaeology.
In addition to her books, Bahrani has written more than fifty articles and reviews on subjects ranging from ancient Near Eastern archaeology to contemporary art criticism. Another aspect of Bahrani’s work has been in the area of monument preservation, conservation and the politics of cultural heritage. Some of her academic publications focus on this subject from a theoretical perspective. Since 2003, Bahrani has also written widely on the destruction of the cultural heritage of Iraq in the popular press. She is the Director of a Columbia University survey project that covers Iraq, Syria and Turkey, Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments.