Xinyu Liang
Xinyu Liang specializes in premodern Islamic art and architecture, with a particular focus on the visual and material cultures of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Ilkhanid Iran and their transcultural connections across Mongol Eurasia. Her research interests encompass book arts and visual transculturation, material culture and economic history, as well as mosque architecture and Muslim’s historical settlements in non-Muslim-majority societies.
Xinyu’s current book project, Framing Time and Space in Transcultural Dialogue: The Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh and the “Pictorial Turn” in Ilkhanid Mongol Book Art, examines the illustrations of the Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (Compendium of Chronicles), the first extensively illustrated world history book produced in Ilkhanid Iran (1260–1335) under Mongol rule. The project approaches the manuscript’s illustrations as products of intellectual dialogue with diverse pictorial traditions—especially Yuan China and medieval Europe—created by anonymous Ilkhanid artists. Through close visual analysis and close engagement with textual sources from literature, philosophy, etymology, and the sciences, it investigates how Ilkhanid concepts of “vision,” “image,” and “painting” were cultivated through transcultural exchange. It also re-evaluates Ilkhanid understandings of history and their conceptions of the world by examining how these ideas are visually articulated and interpreted through the interweaving of text and image.
Before joining AKPIA as a postdoctoral fellow, Xinyu was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow of Islamic art and architecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At The Met, her research explored how Ghazan Khan’s monetary reforms reshaped artistic uses of gold and what this reveals about the socio-political and transcultural dynamics of the Pax Mongolica. In addition to her work on Ilkhanid visual and material culture, she has also written on Sino-Islamic art, with particular attention to mosque architecture and the historical settlement of Muslim communities in heartland China.
Her article on a mosque in central China is forthcoming in the conference proceedings of the 8th Biennial Symposium of the Historians of Islamic Art Association. Her work on Ilkhanid book art received the Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize for the best unpublished paper.