Overview

Nada Shabout’s research and teaching address contemporary visual practices and problems of representation from a global perspective, with emphasis on questions of methodology and in relation to the cultural politics of the Middle East. She teaches art history at the University of North Texas and is the coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI).

She has curated Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art, Interventions: A dialogue between the Modern and the Contemporary (2010) and the travelling exhibition Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art (2005-2009) and, co-curated Modernism and Iraq, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University (2009).

Shabout has published numerous articles on modern and contemporary Arab and Iraqi art. She is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (University of Florida Press, 2007); co-editor (with Salwa Mikdadi) of New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century (Thames & Hudson, 2009); and co-editor (with Anneka Lenssen and Sarah Rogers) of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018).

She has received several awards and grants, including Writers Grant, Andy Warhol Foundation (2018); The Presidential Excellency Award, UNT (2018); The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq fellow (2006, 2007); MIT visiting Assistant Professor (2008); and Fulbright Senior Scholar Program Lecture/Research fellowship to Jordan (2008).

She earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Arts and a PhD in the Humanities from the University of Texas, Arlington (1984, 1988, 1991 and 1999 respectively).

Born in 1962 in Glasgow, Shabout currently lives and works in Texas.

SAF participation:
March Meeting 2009 and 2021

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