Art History PhD candidate Maryam Athari wins Rhonda A. Saad Prize

After the Trump administration introduced the controversial “Muslim ban” in 2017, Art History PhD candidate Maryam Athari knew she would not be able to join her PhD cohort on their research trip to Lebanon. As an Iranian, Athari said if she had left the U.S., she would likely not have been able to return.

Despite this obstacle, Athari still had to find a way to complete her summer research requirement. Her advisor suggested she explore the Rifat and Kamil Chadirji archive in the MIT Aga Khan Documentation Center — advice that would later earn Athari the Rhonda A. Saad Prize from the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art.

According to the AMCA website, the Rhonda A. Saad Prize recognizes excellence in graduate work at universities in the U.S. and abroad. The prize was named for the late Rhonda A. Saad, who passed away while researching her doctoral dissertation at Northwestern.

“Even though the travel ban aimed to impede the mobility and scholarly growth of people like me, I am so grateful to my advisor, Chadirji’s exceptional archive, and AMCA’s recognition of this paper, which turned this obstacle into a platform for me to further expand my knowledge and more firmly situate my work within the field,” Athari said.

Rifat Chadirji was an Iraqi architect, photographer, author, and activist, and his collection includes more than 90,000 photographs that remain largely intact. Athari was particularly drawn to Chadirji’s photos of everyday life, which depicted the “intense interaction” between people and their surrounding environment.

“These binders holding the photographs of everyday activities of Iraqi people that Chadirji took in the 1960s through early 1980s were brimming with life,” Athari said.

Athari is currently researching Iranian art from the 1950s through the 1970s, and she said she still draws on Chadirji’s collection to explore the dialectic of the local and global.

Read the full interview here.