Podcasts about american qur

Artist Sandow Birk joins us to discuss his work on the Divine Comedy and the American Qur'an.

I've always struggled, since I went to art school, with the question of: What is the career of making paintings in the twenty-first century? Of sitting alone in a room and painting in a way people did 500 years ago, in the world of technology and movies and stuff. So I always wanted to make works that are about now, but then show that they're coming out of the history of art and are tied to art history… And to say, look, see how the history of art keeps moving forward, and it's still connected… It's sort of a way to try to prove that painting matters.Sandow Birk is an artist whose works have dealt with contemporary life in its entirety, exploring themes such as inner city violence, graffiti, political issues, travel, war, and prisons, as well as surfing and skateboarding. Some of his work specifically engages with the kinds of “great books” that we explore here at the Spouter-Inn, including an illustrated version of Dante's Divine Comedy, reworked with Marcus Sanders, from 2005, as well as the American Qur'an, published in 2016.Sandow joins us to discuss these two projects and the impulse of reading a centuries-old text and saying: What if this were here and now? What would that look like?SHOW NOTES.Sandow Birk's website includes illustrations from the Divine Comedy, the American Qur'an, and other works we discuss.The Divine Comedy. [Bookshop.]American Qur'an. [Bookshop.]A talk Sandow gave about the American Qur'an (introduced by Karla Mallette, who spoke with us about Purgatorio!)Gustave Doré's illustrations for the Divine Comedy.Matthew Collins, ed.: Reading Dante with Images.Dante's Inferno, the animated film.Kent Monkman.The Chester Beatty. Arion Press and their editions of The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde and Moby-Dick.Machado de Assis: The Posthumous Memories of Brás Cubas.Roberto Bolaño: 2666.Support The Spouter-Inn and our network, Megaphonic, on Patreon! Thanks.

Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artist Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an (Liveright, 2015) raises these questions and many more. The groundbreaking and subversive project draws on multiple English translations, which Birk synthesizes to produce his own hand-written American graffiti-style translation. On top of that, every single page of the over-sized coffee table book contains meticulous illustrations of everyday American life, ranging from celebration to tragedy. As a commentary on both the Qur’an as well as American culture, moreover, the provocative visuals offer the reader a way to connect a book from 7th-century Arabia to 21st-century American cities, landscapes, challenges, and humanity. Given the herculean task that Birk accomplishes, it perhaps comes as no surprise that it took him nearly a decade to complete. Beyond the illustrations and translation, American Qur’an also contains essays from Reza Aslan (UC Riverside), Zareena Grewal (Yale), and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell), which help to contextualize the project. As for Birk himself, he offers no commentary aside from a brief acknowledgements section; this lack of explanation thus challenges the reader to draw conclusions based on the primary source itself. Additionally, because many of the illustrations have no ostensibly straightforward connection to the text, readers have the opportunity to search for meaning in the pictures, which typical translations of the Qur’an cannot present. At the end of the day, American Qur’an is sure to spark conversations and make waves among a wide variety of people, including artists and academics (within Islamic studies and beyond), as well as other curious minds wishing to know more about the Qur’an. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artist Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an (Liveright, 2015) raises these questions and many more. The groundbreaking and subversive project draws on multiple English translations, which Birk synthesizes to produce his own hand-written American graffiti-style translation. On top of that, every single page of the over-sized coffee table book contains meticulous illustrations of everyday American life, ranging from celebration to tragedy. As a commentary on both the Qur’an as well as American culture, moreover, the provocative visuals offer the reader a way to connect a book from 7th-century Arabia to 21st-century American cities, landscapes, challenges, and humanity. Given the herculean task that Birk accomplishes, it perhaps comes as no surprise that it took him nearly a decade to complete. Beyond the illustrations and translation, American Qur’an also contains essays from Reza Aslan (UC Riverside), Zareena Grewal (Yale), and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell), which help to contextualize the project. As for Birk himself, he offers no commentary aside from a brief acknowledgements section; this lack of explanation thus challenges the reader to draw conclusions based on the primary source itself. Additionally, because many of the illustrations have no ostensibly straightforward connection to the text, readers have the opportunity to search for meaning in the pictures, which typical translations of the Qur’an cannot present. At the end of the day, American Qur’an is sure to spark conversations and make waves among a wide variety of people, including artists and academics (within Islamic studies and beyond), as well as other curious minds wishing to know more about the Qur’an. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artist Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an (Liveright, 2015) raises these questions and many more. The groundbreaking and subversive project draws on multiple English translations, which Birk synthesizes to produce his own hand-written American graffiti-style translation. On top of that, every single page of the over-sized coffee table book contains meticulous illustrations of everyday American life, ranging from celebration to tragedy. As a commentary on both the Qur’an as well as American culture, moreover, the provocative visuals offer the reader a way to connect a book from 7th-century Arabia to 21st-century American cities, landscapes, challenges, and humanity. Given the herculean task that Birk accomplishes, it perhaps comes as no surprise that it took him nearly a decade to complete. Beyond the illustrations and translation, American Qur’an also contains essays from Reza Aslan (UC Riverside), Zareena Grewal (Yale), and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell), which help to contextualize the project. As for Birk himself, he offers no commentary aside from a brief acknowledgements section; this lack of explanation thus challenges the reader to draw conclusions based on the primary source itself. Additionally, because many of the illustrations have no ostensibly straightforward connection to the text, readers have the opportunity to search for meaning in the pictures, which typical translations of the Qur’an cannot present. At the end of the day, American Qur’an is sure to spark conversations and make waves among a wide variety of people, including artists and academics (within Islamic studies and beyond), as well as other curious minds wishing to know more about the Qur’an. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artist Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an (Liveright, 2015) raises these questions and many more. The groundbreaking and subversive project draws on multiple English translations, which Birk synthesizes to produce his own hand-written American graffiti-style translation. On top of that, every single page of the over-sized coffee table book contains meticulous illustrations of everyday American life, ranging from celebration to tragedy. As a commentary on both the Qur’an as well as American culture, moreover, the provocative visuals offer the reader a way to connect a book from 7th-century Arabia to 21st-century American cities, landscapes, challenges, and humanity. Given the herculean task that Birk accomplishes, it perhaps comes as no surprise that it took him nearly a decade to complete. Beyond the illustrations and translation, American Qur’an also contains essays from Reza Aslan (UC Riverside), Zareena Grewal (Yale), and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell), which help to contextualize the project. As for Birk himself, he offers no commentary aside from a brief acknowledgements section; this lack of explanation thus challenges the reader to draw conclusions based on the primary source itself. Additionally, because many of the illustrations have no ostensibly straightforward connection to the text, readers have the opportunity to search for meaning in the pictures, which typical translations of the Qur’an cannot present. At the end of the day, American Qur’an is sure to spark conversations and make waves among a wide variety of people, including artists and academics (within Islamic studies and beyond), as well as other curious minds wishing to know more about the Qur’an. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could the Qur’an–understood, according to Muslims, as the verbatim word of God in Arabic–acquire a nationality? Specifically, could it be American? And written in English? Contemporary visual artist Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an (Liveright, 2015) raises these questions and many more. The groundbreaking and subversive project draws on multiple English translations, which Birk synthesizes to produce his own hand-written American graffiti-style translation. On top of that, every single page of the over-sized coffee table book contains meticulous illustrations of everyday American life, ranging from celebration to tragedy. As a commentary on both the Qur’an as well as American culture, moreover, the provocative visuals offer the reader a way to connect a book from 7th-century Arabia to 21st-century American cities, landscapes, challenges, and humanity. Given the herculean task that Birk accomplishes, it perhaps comes as no surprise that it took him nearly a decade to complete. Beyond the illustrations and translation, American Qur’an also contains essays from Reza Aslan (UC Riverside), Zareena Grewal (Yale), and Iftikhar Dadi (Cornell), which help to contextualize the project. As for Birk himself, he offers no commentary aside from a brief acknowledgements section; this lack of explanation thus challenges the reader to draw conclusions based on the primary source itself. Additionally, because many of the illustrations have no ostensibly straightforward connection to the text, readers have the opportunity to search for meaning in the pictures, which typical translations of the Qur’an cannot present. At the end of the day, American Qur’an is sure to spark conversations and make waves among a wide variety of people, including artists and academics (within Islamic studies and beyond), as well as other curious minds wishing to know more about the Qur’an. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices