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Patricia Blessing

Associate Professor

Photo credit: Photo by LiPo Ching/Stanford University

Patricia Blessing specializes in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, with a focus on the eastern Mediterranean from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. In her current book project, Arches Like Rainbows and Floating Palaces: Ottoman Water Architectures, Blessing analyses how in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, buildings were designed in relationship to nature and climate, with an emphasis on water. Embracing eco-critical approaches, the project contends that indoor and outdoor water features are integral parts of the buildings’ design, and of the relationship between architecture, nature, and the world at large.

With Richard P. McClary (University of York), Blessing co-directs the project Reimagining Royal Space. The project aims to reimagine and digitally reconstruct the original appearance of the largely destroyed late twelfth-century Qilij Arslan II Kiosk in Konya, based on the close study historical photographs of the building, extant material remains in museums across the world, and the in-situ structural elements. At Stanford, the project is housed at the Center for Spatial and Digital Analysis (CESTA).

Blessing is the author of two books, Rebuilding Anatolia after the Mongol Conquest: Islamic Architecture in the Lands of Rūm, 1240–1330 (Ashgate, 2014; Turkish translation Koç University Press, 2018) and Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2022). With Eiren L. Shea (Grinnell College) and Elizabeth Dospel Williams (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Blessing co-authored Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300-1400 CE (Cambridge University Press, 2023), a brief introduction to the study of textiles in a born-digital format. She is the co-editor of Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100-1500, with Rachel Goshgarian (Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Textile in Architecture: From the Middle Ages to Modernity, with Didem Ekici and Basile Baudez (Routledge, 2023) and The Making of Modern Muslim Selves Through Architecture, with Farhan S. Karim (Intellect, 2023). Blessing’s articles on topics ranging from funerary architecture in medieval Anatolia to stucco and textiles in Islamic and Christian monuments in Spain have been published in journals such as Muqarnas, Gesta, Studies in Iconography, Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā, and many edited volumes.

Blessing has received fellowships from ANAMED Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, the Barakat Trust, the British Academy, the International Center of Medieval Art, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Society of Architectural Historians. She is the German and French Content Manager for Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, and the Managing Editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.

Teaching interests

Blessing’s teaching interests include the multi-sensory experience of spaces and objects; medieval and early modern Islamic architecture; the politics of urban space in the modern Middle East; heritage preservation and Islamic archaeology; and water architecture. 

Selected publications

Patricia Blessing, Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Patricia Blessing, Rebuilding Anatolia after the Mongol Conquest: Islamic Architecture in the Lands of Rūm, 1240-1330, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 17 (Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishers, 2014). Translated into Turkish as Moğol Fethinden Sonra Anadolu’nun Yeniden İnşası: Rum Diyarında İslami Mimari, 1240-1330 (Istanbul: Koç University Press, 2018).

Patricia Blessing, Elizabeth Dospel Williams, and Eiren L. Shea, Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300-1400 CE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Patricia Blessing, “Mail-order Mihrabs: Collaborative Labor in the Design of Tile Revetments in Iran and the Ottoman Empire,” Al- ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 32 (2024): 361-402, https://doi.org/10.52214/uw.v32i.12541 (open access).

Patricia Blessing, “Mediterranean Anatolia, Anatolian Mediterranean: A Landmass and its Sea(s),” Architectural Histories 12, no. 1 (2024): 1-19, https://doi.org/10.16995/ah.11575 (open access).

Patricia Blessing, “Between Cairo and China: Design, Paper, and Ottoman Metalwork c. 1500,” in Companion to Global Renaissance Art, ed. Stephen J. Campbell and Stephanie Porras (New York: Routledge, 2024), 21-38, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003294986 (open access).

Patricia Blessing and Richard P. McClary, “Reimagining Royal Space: The Qilij Arslan II Kiosk in Konya and its Lost Interior,” special issue on digital humanities, edited by Nora E. Barakat, Yunus Uğur, and Ali Yaycıoğlu, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 9.2 (September, 2022 [published summer 2023]): 153-58, https://doi.org/10.2979/tur.2022.a902178.

Patricia Blessing, “Fiber Fragments: The Divided Histories of Medieval Islamic Textiles,” in Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art, ed. Samuel Bowker, Xenia Gazi, and Onur Öztürk (New York: Routledge, 2022), 77-90.

Patricia Blessing, “Weaving on the Wall: Architecture and Textiles in the Monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos,” Studies in Iconography 40 (2019): 137-82.

Contact

Telephone
650-736-8458
Office
Room 339

Research Interests