Episode Fourteen: The Contemplation of Beauty in Andalusia with Professor Cynthia Robinson

What is the nature and significance of beauty in Islamic theology and intellectual thought? To what extent did theological, philosophical, and mystical ideas inform the production and reception of Islamic material culture? These and other questions will be the focus of the English interview series "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a series that explores the rich and diverse relationships between theology, art, and aesthetics in the Islamic world.
In this week’s conversation, Dr Bilal Badat talks to Professor Cynthia Robinson about art, aesthetics, and theology in Islamic Spain. Professor Robinson describes the contemplation of beauty in the context of Andalusian courts, key aspects of Nasrid aesthetics, and how the process of creative writing contributes to new ways of thinking about art.
Professor Robinson is Mary Donlon Alger Professor of Medieval and Islamic Art at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the relationships between religion, literature, and art, with a particular focus on Spain and the Mediterranean World, between 10 and 1500 AD.
Professor Robinson is also a published writer. Her debut novel, Birds of Wonder, was published by Standing Stone Books in 2018. Her short fiction has also been published by The Arkansas Review, Epoch, The Missouri Review, Slice, and others. Please see the description of this video for a link to her website.
The interview series concludes the one-year AIWG project workshop "Beauty and Islamic Theology", a joint research program of the Centre for Islamic Theology at the Eberhard-Karls-University Tübingen and the Chair of Islamic Religious Studies at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.