Political Landscapes of Capital Cities

Political Landscapes of Capital Cities investigates the processes of transformation of the natural landscape into the culturally constructed and ideologically defined political environments of capital cities. In this spatially inclusive, socially dynamic interpretation, an interdisciplinary group of authors including archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians uses the methodology put forth in Adam T. Smith’sThe Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities to expose the intimate associations between human-made environments and the natural landscape that accommodate the sociopolitical needs of governmental authority.

Political Landscapes of Capital Cities blends the historical, political, and cultural narratives of capital cities such as Bangkok, Cusco, Rome, and Tehran with a careful visual analysis, hinging on the methodological tools of not only architectural and urban design but also cultural, historiographical, and anthropological studies. The collection provides further ways to conceive of how processes of urbanization, monumentalization, ritualization, naturalization, and unification affected capitals differently without losing grasp of local distinctive architectural and spatial features. The essays also articulate the many complex political and ideological agendas of a diverse set of sovereign entities that planned, constructed, displayed, and performed their societal ideals in the spaces of their capitals, ultimately confirming that political authority is profoundly spatial.

Contributors: Jelena Bogdanovic, Jessica Joyce Christie, Talinn Grigor, Eulogio Guzman, Gregor Kalas, Stephanie Pilat, Melody Rod-ari, Anne Toxey, Alexei Vranich

Jessica Joyce Christie is associate professor in art history at East Carolina University. She specializes in the visual culture of the Maya and Inka as well as in the Southwest and Northwest of Native North America. Her research and resulting publications on palace architecture, landscapes of origin, and Inka sculpted outcrops have been supported by a summer fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, a Research/Creativity Award from East Carolina University, and several college and departmental funding sources.

Jelena Bogdanovic is assistant professor at Iowa State University. She specializes in the architectural history of Byzantine, Slavic, Western European, and Islamic cultures in the Balkans and the Mediterranean. She is coeditor ofOn the Very Edge: Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia (1918–1941). Her research has been supported by several grants including those from the International Center of Medieval Art and the Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities at Iowa State University.

Eulogio Guzman is lecturer in the Department of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and visiting scholar at Tufts University. Eulogio specializes in the art, architecture, and sociocultural history of preindustrial Amerindian societies and Spanish colonial territories.