Dede Ruggles Wins Essay Prize
The judges for the competition—William L. Coleman (Olana), Prof. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid (Indiana), and Prof. Bianca Maria Rinaldi (Torino)—issued the following citation to explain their decision:
“In a major contribution to the field, this essay theorizes the turn toward multisensory analysis in architecture and landscape history in a broad and imaginative synthesis. Written in compelling, elegant, and accessible prose, Ruggles uses disparate lines of evidence to interrogate the sensory relationship between Islamic society and nature. Writing from a transregional scope and framed against the historiographic backdrop of art historical approaches to the senses, Ruggles explores the embodied sensory experience of Islamic landscapes in ways that revisit classic approaches to perception, representation, and subjectivity. In doing so, she probes the cultural significance of these spaces and pushes beyond visually privileged epistemologies that anchor visual culture studies. Ruggles weaves together close readings of poetry, murals, sculpture, and illustrated manuscripts, demonstrating the potential of phenomenological inquiries into long-dormant and destroyed gardens to recapture the experience of the sensate body. Illustrated with stunning color plates and well-chosen images that advance the argument, this chapter outlines a clear approach for the study of landscape and the senses that ‘stitch the world of the self to the exterior experience of the world.’”