Publication details
Inventing Medieval Caucasus: Between Colonialism and Orientalism
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
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| Citation | |
| Description | This paper wishes to present and analyse a series of historiographical layers defining our understanding of the medieval cultures of the Caucasian and Sub-Caucasian regions. They have had, indeed, a complex and contested history throughout the period of modern art history’s existence. Its historical situation has furthermore led to multiple colonial interests. In the 19th century – the period this paper will focus on – the region was divided between the Russian Empire and its Ottoman counterpart. Furthermore, Eastern Anatolia was from 1915 to 1921 the setting of an event that is considered generally as a genocide. During the whole of this period the “western” historiography was presenting the region as a provincial, peripheric and still very charming space, corresponding to all the orientalist stereotypes. The core question of this paper will thus be how this political environment impacted the construction of the art historical narrative. |
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