Christiane Gruber is Professor of Islamic Art in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan. Her scholarly work explores medieval to contemporary Islamic art. Her field of expertise includes Islamic figural representation, devotional paintings of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islamic ascension texts and images, about which she has written three books and edited several volumes of articles. She also pursues research in Islamic book arts, codicology, and paleography, having authored the online catalogue of Islamic calligraphies in the Library of Congress as well as edited the volume of articles entitled The Islamic Manuscript Tradition. Her third field of specialization is modern and contemporary Islamic visual and material culture, about which she has edited several volumes and written over a dozen articles. Expanding upon her academic work, her public-facing essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Conversation, New Lines Magazine, Jadaliyya, Ajam, and Prospect Magazine. Last but not least, she founded and directs Khamseen, the world first and only digital platform dedicated to providing free and open access to scholarly talks, hands-on sessions, and pedagogical resources on Islamic art history.
