"Premodern Slave Clocks: On Art, Time, and Dependency."
4:45 PM on Tuesday, October 17th, 2023
Goldwin Smith Hall G22
Abstract
Connections between slavery and technology have received increased scholarly attention for the modern and ancient worlds, especially in relation to automation and robotics, as well as Aristotle’s definition of the slave as “animate equipment.” In particular, the desire for useful, efficient technology has been shown to manifest a position of mastery, reinforcing the modern binaries of master and slave, subject and object. Lesser known, however, is slavery’s impact on technology in the medieval Islamicate world. Focusing on clocks that included self-moving, figurative effigies representing slaves, this talk will delve into the question of timekeeping technology in particular, as a way of discussing and historicizing the manifold linkages between coerced labor and the work of keeping time.
Speaker Biography
Lamia Balafrej is associate professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in the arts of the Islamic world. Her current book project explores the intersected histories of technology and slavery in the medieval Middle East and North Africa. This research has been supported by a 2023 Rome Prize Fellowship in Medieval Studies and a 2023 Getty Scholar Grant. In her first book, The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), she examined the work of intricacy in Persian painting in relation to Persianate notions of authorship, medium, and representation.
