Yasmine Al-Saleh, a student in CMES’s joint PhD program in History of Art and Architecture & Middle East Studies, has written a thematic essay on “Amulets and Talismans from the Islamic World” for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Al-Saleh selected the images of objects from the museum’s collection to accompany the essay, which she wrote as part of her fall 2009 fellowship with the museum.
The Heilbrunn Timeline is an online resource providing “a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world” using artwork and objects from the museum’s collection as illustration. Thematic essays such as Al-Saleh’s accompany the chronological timeline to provide focus on particular movements, periods, regions, and themes.
Al-Saleh’s fellowship was for work on talismanic scrolls, also the subject of her dissertation. Al-Saleh said, “I loved working with the museum objects, and would encourage people to apply to the fellowship program.” In addition to writing the timeline essay, Al-Saleh enjoyed meeting with different departments across the museum, and a morning the fellows spent with the museum’s director, Thomas P. Campbell.