Assistant Professor Sylvia Wu joins the Department of Art and Art History as a historian of medieval and early modern Islamic art. She specializes in the architecture and material culture of the Indian Ocean world, with a focus on Muslim communities in coastal China and their multifaceted engagement with the region’s other Muslim societies. Her primary research interests include mosque and shrine architecture, pilgrimage and the idea of sacred geography, and the intersections of narrative building with material and spatial presentation. She is currently developing her first book project, which examines the capacious idea of mosque construction — as imitation, recreation and a form of history (re)writing — in the medieval Chinese port city of Quanzhou. Wu received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Tell us about the classes you’ll be teaching this year.
In the fall, I will be teaching an undergraduate course on mosque architecture and a graduate seminar on the arts and material cultures in the Indian Ocean world. I have planned another maritime-themed course for the spring semester but with a more focused attention on South China.
What attracted you to the Department of Art and Art History and The University of Texas at Austin?
The Art and Art History department here at UT is among the very few art history programs I know of to have searched for scholars working on Indian Ocean materials; even though the field has continued to develop in recent years, such faculty positions usually don’t align very well with the more established field divisions. Since this is exactly where my primary research interests lie, I naturally jumped at the opportunity. But it’s equally important to acknowledge both the department’s and COFA’s commitment to bringing in and supporting research and teaching in a field that is, institutionally, in its formative stage.
How did your professional pathway lead to your research focus?
I began my doctoral studies already knowing that I would research Muslim architecture and material culture in coastal China. The process of proposing and writing the dissertation then led me to discover an incredibly rich yet understudied maritime world where China and other coastal societies in the Indian Ocean closely engaged with each other but maintained their own identities. I’ve also grown as a scholar during this historical moment when the early optimism of global history has been increasingly challenged by the many severed connections in our contemporary world. I’d like to think that my research is both an academic pursuit and a tool to understand the present.
What’s something that students and colleagues should know about you?
I am very new to Austin and look forward to exploring the city.
What do you enjoy doing when you’re not teaching/researching/working?
I enjoy taking long walks to decompress. And I love comedy. Stand up, sketch, humor writing...