Dr. Radha Dalal

Specialization

Islamic Art and Architecture

Education

PhD, University of Minnesota, 2011
M.A., University of Minnesota, 2003
B.A., University of Maryland, 1999
B.S., University of Maryland, 1999

Biography

Professor Radha Dalal is Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture and Director of Art History at VCUarts Qatar. She researches visual cultures of mobility and urbanism with a particular emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and its socio-political interactions with other European and Asian polities during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Her research projects have received funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Qatar National Research Fund, and VCUarts Qatar. She continues to work on a VCU Presidential Research Quest Fund supported monograph project titled The Khilafat Movement and Print Media in British India and Ottoman Turkey, 1919–1924. Currently, she serves as the vice-president (2021–2023) of the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, a geographically and disciplinarily diverse network of scholars who share an interest in the world’s connectedness between 1780 and 1914.

Research Interests

Visual cultures of mobility within the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries; the visual propaganda of the Khilafat movement in India; cultural heritage and museum studies; theories of collective memory; histories of photography and urbanism.

Publications

• Dalal, Radha. “19th-Century French Photography and European Impressions of Ottoman Lands.” In Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, 1800-1900, Volume 38, ed. Charles Tieszen. Leiden: Brill. (Forthcoming 2022)
• Dalal, Radha. “Scroll, Firman with a Tughra of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent,” “Iznik Flask,” and “Iznik Dish” catalogue entries for the Museum of Islamic Art catalogue, Doha, Qatar. (Forthcoming 2022)
• Dalal, Radha, Sean Roberts, and Jochen Sokoly eds. The Seas and the Mobility of Islamic Art. Yale University Press, 2021
• Dalal, Radha. “The Public Space of the Bakewell Ottoman Garden.” In Travelers in Ottoman Lands: The Botanical Legacy, edited by Ines Asceric-Todd, Sabina Knees, Janet Starkey, and Paul Starkey, 69-88. Oxford: ASTENE and Archaeopress Publishing, 2018.
• Dalal, Radha. Review of Imperial Threads: Motifs and Artisans from Turkey, Iran, and India curated by MouniaChekhab-Abudaya and Julia Tugwell, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 7, no. 2 (2018): 391-394.
• Dalal, Radha. Review of Printing Arab Modernity: Book Culture and the American Press in Nineteenth-Century Beirut by HalaAuji, Printing History 24 (July 2018): 56-58.
• Dalal, Radha, et. al. Global Art History, Visual Cultures of the Islamic World, and Museum Studies Educational Modules. Website developed for the QNRF NPRP grant “Museums in the 21st Century and Global Art History: Building Knowledge Base through Online Resources in Qatar.” http://vcuqatar.rampages.us/, (2018)
• Presentations
• Dalal, Radha. “Ottoman Gardens in the Present.” Institute of Historical Research: History of Gardens and Landscapes Seminar, University of London, School of Advanced Study, Spring 2022. (invited)
• Dalal, Radha. “The Khilafat Movement and the Satirical Press,” Globalizing Islam panel, Middle East Studies Association, New Orleans, November 16, 2019.
• Dalal, Radha. “In Travelers’ Dreams: The Public Space of the Bakewell Ottoman Garden” Travelers in Ottoman Lands: The Botanical Legacy, Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) Annual Conference, Edinburgh, May 14, 2017.

Funded Research Projects and Grants

Presidential Research Quest Fund Grant, “The Khilafat Movement and Print Media in British India and Ottoman Turkey, 1919-1924,” VCUarts Qatar, 2017-2020

Qatar National Research Fund’s (QNRF) National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) Grant, “Museums in the 21st Century and Global Art History: Building Knowledge Base through Online Resources in Qatar,” Lead Principal Investigator, VCUarts Qatar, 2017-2018