Ömür Harmanşah "Living in the Anthropocene: Landscape, Fieldwork, and Deep Time."

Ömür Harmanşah joins us with his lecture "Living in the Anthropocene: Landscape, Fieldwork, and Deep Time."  The lecture will be streamed live on Nov 26, 19:00 (GMT +3) at khasarch youtube channel: KHAUS 517 Lectures: Ömür Harmanşah "Living in the Anthropocene: Landscape, Fieldwork, and Deep Time"  (Should you want to join the conversation, please email for a link) Thanks again to Sarper Takkecioğlu and Nejat Emre Özen for technical support. 

Ömür Harmansah is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Art and Art History. His current research focuses on the history of landscapes in the Middle East and the politics of ecology, place, and heritage in the age of the Anthropocene. As an archaeologist and an architectural historian of the ancient Near East, Harmansah specializes in the art, architecture, and material culture of Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia during the Bronze and Iron Ages. He is the author of two monographs, Cities and the Shaping of Memory in the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Place, Memory, and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments (Routledge, 2015). Since 2010, Harmansah has been directing Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project, a diachronic regional survey project addressing questions of place and landscape in Konya Province of west-central Turkey. He is currently the Principal Investigator for the 2-year multi-institutional collaborative project entitled “Political Ecology as Practice: A Regional Approach to the Anthropocene,” supported by the Humanities Without Walls consortium, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Aesthetics of Architectural and Urban Research course led by Aslıhan Demirtaş investigates architectural production beyond buildings and explores research and design work of speculative and provocative nature.

The 2020-2021 semester critically explores the Anthropocene and climate change while problematizing the ‘museum of natural history.’ Students will reevaluate the what, how and why of a natural history museum of a damaged planet while considering the urgencies of today highlighted further by the pandemic. The course is enriched by guest lecturers of various disciplines.