Nada Shabout

Regents Professor, Art History

About

Areas of Expertise: The historiography of Arab art, the historiography of Iraqi art, cultural destruction and preservation, identity politics and art, global, postcolonial and feminist theory.

Nada Shabout's research and teaching address modern and contemporary visual practices and problems of representation from a global perspective, with emphasis on questions of methodology and the cultural politics of the Middle East. She teaches courses on modern Arab art, global modern art, contemporary Middle Eastern art and Islamic art. 

Nada Shabout is a professor of art history and coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, U.S. She is the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey and project director of the Modern Art Iraq Archive. Shabout is the Project Advisor for the Saudi National Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019. Shabout also is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics, University of Florida Press, 2007; co-editor with Salwa Mikdadi of New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century, Thames & Hudson, 2009; and co-editor with Anneka Lenssen and Sarah Rogers of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018.

She is the curator of Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art, Interventions: A dialogue between the Modern and the Contemporary, 2010; co-curator of Modernism and Iraq, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2009; and curator of the traveling exhibition, Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, 2005-2009. Her awards include the Writers Grant, Andy Warhol Foundation 2018; The Presidential Excellency Award, UNT 2018; The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq fellow 2006, 2007; MIT visiting Assistant Professor, spring 2008; and Fulbright Senior Scholar Program, 2008 Lecture/Research fellowship to Jordan.

Shabout holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in humanities, a B.F.A. in art and a B.S. in architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Nov. 3–5, 2022: "The 1980s: Representational Pressures, Departures and Beginnings," symposium organizer

Oct. 4, 2022: Curator, "A Banquet for Seaweed: Snapshots from the Arab 1980s," art exhibition, Gallery, UNT Art Building

Aug. 5, 2021: Marco Werman, host of The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, speaks with Nada Shabout, Regents Professor of art history and coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative at the University of North Texas. Listen to the broadcast titled "U.S. to return 17,000 artifacts and treasures to Iraq."

July 31, 2021: Washington Post Opinion by Nada Shabout: An ancient treasure may be returned to Iraq. Many others are still lost.

May 27, 2021: Nada Shabout receives a national award from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences

Feb. 11, 2021: Dorff, Packer and Shabout earn UNT Faculty Excellence Awards

Oct. 17, 2020: Dubai Art Jury includes CVAD Professor Shabout