I Am a Shirt

In order to understand the technological developments and achievements of the Islamic world, it is important to highlight the different processes, practices, and techniques used in creating objects, whether artistic or otherwise. This paper follows a plausible journey for a single shirt, from its initial creation as a piece of cloth to the epigraphic designs that gave it its deeply religious and mystical power to whoever wore it in Mughal India

Fayyumi ware : variations, imitations, and importation of an early Islamic glazed ceramic type

A number of recent publications have shown that a small amount of Egyptian glazed table wares were imported throughout Palestine from the early centuries of Islam onwards. One of the oft-forgotten and least classifiable types is the problematically titled ‘Fayyumi’ ware, so-called for its supposed provenance in the Fayyum. ‘Fayyumi’ pottery was actually manufactured in Fustat (Old Cairo) and a reexamination of its many variations shows it was both influenced by Chinese-inspired Iraqi white wares and Coptic pottery traditions already extant in Egypt, warranting changes to both its name and variety of definitions. One of the issues which has plagued the discipline of Islamic Archaeology is the lack of useful typologies or published studies of Islamic ceramics. A gap in the methodological approaches and nomenclature used by art historians versus archaeologists has exacerbated this problem. Here the work of both groups is combined in order to create a comprehensive representation of the ‘Fayyumi’ material. The ceramics under study come from a range of archaeological sites from Nubia to northern Palestine, including the Mediterranean and Red Sea Coasts. This is combined with pieces in museums in Cairo and Athens, and bacini inset into the walls of churches in Italy. The result more clearly differentiates the variety of types often grouped together under the term ‘Fayyumi’, with implications for a reinterpretation of our understanding of the introduction and development of glazing techniques and styles in the early Islamic period

Measured and simulated performance of a ceramic micromechanical beam steering device at 94 GHz

We report the first experimental demonstration of a transmission-mode micromechanical beam steering device for use in standoff terahertz imaging and spectroscopy. The device was constructed by laminating laser-cut 96% alumina sheets to form two plates with interlocking rectangular gratings of 762 μm period and was characterized at 94 GHz in a free-space measurement setup with an automated elevation scan. Plate tilts as great as 6° deflected the transmitted beam by 6° for the transverse electric (TE) polarization and by 4° for the transverse magnetic polarization. Finite-difference time-domain simulations of the TE performance were in good agreement with the measurements

PSCI 100-001: United States National Government syllabus

The course is an introduction to American national politics. It surveys the founding of the government, major institutions, government-society relations, the federal judiciary, and foreign policy. By the end of the course, students should be able to develop critical perspectives on the fundamentals of U.S. national government