The Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens produced around 1,500 artworks, and a new research project explores the Islamic themes in his art. Dr Adam Sammut discusses why the Ottoman Empire’s influence on Rubens has been at the periphery of research, and what it reveals about the early modern understanding of cultural identity. Dr Nil Palabiyik has been researching the artist, musician and linguist Ali Bey who was taken as a war captive from Poland and placed at the palace school in Constantinople. He became a key figure at court, bridging cultural differences between east and west through his collections of Ottoman music and translation of the bible. Dr Adam Sammut is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History of Art at the University of York. His current project is called ‘Rubens and Islam: Global exchange and European identity in early modern Antwerp. Dr Nil Palabiyik is Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary University of London. In 2023 she was awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize and is the author of ‘Silent Teachers: Turkish Books and Oriental Learning in Renaissance Europe, 1544-1680’. Dr Sarah Jilani is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London, looking at post-colonial world literatures and film and was a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio. This New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find more on BBC Sounds and in a collection on Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme website called New Research with discussions on topics ranging from disability in music and theatre to why we talk
Producer: Martha Owen
Narnia and CS Lewis
Humboldt, soil, gardens and Frank Walter
New Thinking: Disability in Music and Theatre
Kadare, Gospodinov, Kafka and Dickens
Libraries
Lorca
AS Byatt and The Children's Book
Post-War Germany
Sam Selvon and The Lonely Londoners
New Thinking: Rediscovering women making film and sculpture
Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Women, art and activism
Shakespeare as inspiration
New Thinking: The Box Office Bears project
New Thinking: How and why we talk
The Imperial War Museum Remembrance discussion 2023
New Thinking: Playhouses and opera-going
New Thinking: Food
New Thinking: Writing exile and overcoming statelessness
African identity via China and photography
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