Position:
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
Email Address:
jaimee.comstock-skipp@ames.ox.ac.uk
Biography:
Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies with a specialty in Islamic civilizations, and the Arabic and Persian languages. She obtained a first MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art (Massachusetts, USA), and a second MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art (London, UK), where she studied Mongol through Safavid book arts predominantly from Iran. She completed her PhD at Leiden University’s Institute for Area Studies: Persian & Iranian Studies (2022) writing a dissertation on illustrated epic and biographical manuscripts of the Abu’l-Khairids, and their diplomatic exchanges between courts within Central Asia and the broader Turco-Persianate sphere encompassing Safavids, Ottomans, and Mughals. She has held visiting fellowships at the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre (Oxford, UK) and the Warburg Institute (London, UK). She is currently a Junior Research Fellow at New College, and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies between 2024—2027.
Publications:
From the Khan to the Sultan: the Abū’l-Khairid Shāhnāma in the Topkapı (H.1488) and manuscript production and presentation under ʿAbdullāh bin Iskandar Khan. To be published in Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World (Volume 40, 2024).
“Design transfers and working methods (design process, kitabkhana)” in the section “Knowledge exchanges in technologies and materials” in the volume Exchanges along the Silk Roads – Architecture, Monuments, and Urbanism of the UNESCO Thematic Collection of Cultural Exchanges along the Silk Roads series to be published by UNESCO (Paris, spring 2024).
“The Samarqand Shāhnāma in Cambridge’s Ancient India and Iran Trust: Echoes from Khurasan and Whispers of Bukhara.” To be published in Central Asian Manuscripts in the Collections of Cambridge University, vol. XXVIII, Zamon Publishers, Tashkent (in press).
Turk amongst Tajiks: the Turkic Shahnama translation located in Tajikistan and manuscript production during the Abu’l-Khairid annexation of Khurasan (1588–1598). Published in Memory and Commemoration across Central Asia, edited by Gabrielle van den Berg and Elena Paskaleva, 53-89 (Leiden: Brill, 2023).
The ‘Iran’ Curtain: the Historiography of Abu’l-Khairid (Shaybanid) Arts of the Book and the ‘Bukhara School’ during the Cold War. Journal of Art Historiography, edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati (Issue 28, June 2023). <http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/comstock-skipp.pdf>
Liberating the ‘Turkoman Prisoner’: An Assessment of Bound Captives in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Persianate Works on Paper. In Iranian/Persianate Subalterns in the Safavid Period: Their Role and Depiction. Recovering ‘Lost Voices’, edited by Andrew J. Newman, 1-63. Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2022.
“To be an Infidel or an Unbeliever…” Five Wise Men: Edmund Dulac, W.B. Yeats, and the Magi. Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 3, no. 2 (2013): 307-28. Issue “Intuiting the Past: New Age and Neopagan Medievalisms”, ed. Karolyn Kinane. <https://relegere.org/relegere/article/viewFile/582/676>
From the World's Fair to Disneyland: Pavilions as Temples. The Open Arts Journal 2 (Winter 2013). Issue What is a Pavilion?, ed. Joel Robinson. <http://openartsjournal.org/issue-2/2013w05jkcs/>
“Sartorientalism” and “Temples” entries in Theorizing Visual Studies: Writing Through the Discipline, 1st Edition, edited by James Elkins, Kristi McGuire, Maureen Burns, Alicia Chester, and Joel Kuennen. (New York and London: Routledge, 2012).
Blogs, Podcasts, Popular Media
Lording over the Centre of Asia: Manuscript Arts of the Abu’l-Khayrid (Uzbek) Khans. International Institute for Asian Studies, The Newsletter No. 95 (Summer 2023): pp. 28-29.
Blog—“From Georgian Slave to Safavid Master: Some Possible Additions to the Corpus of Siyavush Beg Gurji.” British Library Asian and African Studies Blog 09 May 2022
Podcast—The Barakat Trust: The Epics of Heroes. Arts in Isolation: S02. Episode 4. 28 October 2020
Blog—“Loose pages and lacquer covers: illustrations to Shahnama manuscripts in the National Museum of World Cultures, Netherlands.” Research Center for Material Culture—Volkenkunde Museum, 2019
“Art Deco Sartorientalism in America: Persian Urban Turbans and Other Versions.” Chitrolekha International Magazine on Art and Design 1, no. 3 (2011).
