Dr. Thadeus Dowad

Biography

Thadeus Dowad specializes in art and architectural history, focusing on the Ottoman and French empires during the 18th and 19th centuries. His research is particularly interested in the history of French imperialism in the Ottoman Middle East and North Africa, examining the impacts of capitalism, slavery, revolutionary politics, and empire-building on metropolitan colonial artistic cultures in the Franco-Ottoman world. Dowad's scholarship draws from comparative literature, queer theory, and postcolonial studies, exploring transregional art histories that foreground processes of exchange, encounter, and translation amid inter-imperial competition. His research and teaching areas include global histories of portraiture, art and architecture of (post-)Revolutionary France, European Ottoman Orientalisms, Ottoman photography, the history of turquerie, and queerness in Islamic art. He is currently working on a book project titled "Empire Line & Pigment: Art, Ottomans, and the French Occupation of Egypt," which provides a comprehensive art and architectural history covering the years 1798–1801 during the French occupation of Egypt. This work engages with both French and Ottoman archives to explore the roles of French Revolutionary artists and Ottoman-Egyptian colonized actors in the context of France’s colonial possession of the Ottoman Empire. Dowad has received training and support from various esteemed institutions such as the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), among others.

Research Interests

Experience