Focusing on icons, Badamo investigates how the Islamic concept of wonder was a transformative force in the Christian-Muslim encounter in medieval Egypt. By considering how both faiths employed the concept to mediate cross-cultural relationships, it demonstrates the co-constitution of Islamic and Coptic intellectual cultures, implicitly arguing for rethinking disciplinary boundaries that separate the two cultures.

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Heather Badamo specializes in the arts of Byzantium and the East Christian world. Her research focuses on the intersection of Christian and Islamic visual culture, in particular the circulation of objects across the frontier zones of the eastern Mediterranean, with the related dissemination and transformation of artistic forms, ideas, and beliefs. Primary academic interests include theories of cultural exchange, philosophies of religious violence, art in war, and visual strategies for communal self-fashioning. Other interests are medieval image theory and the urban development of Cairo. She conducts research in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Georgia, and Turkey.

Reem Taha (PhD Candidate, Comparative Literature,UCSB)