Amanda Phillips

About

Amanda Phillips is an Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Material Culture in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia, where she also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in Art & Architectural History. She joined the department in 2015 after positions at the University of Birmingham and the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. Her scholarly work focuses on the circulation and consumption of art and objects in the Ottoman Empire, particularly Istanbul, between 1600 and 1800. Her first book, Everyday Luxuries, explores how the habits of men and women in Istanbul influenced the production of textiles, ceramics, metalware, woodwork, and arts of the book, emphasizing a broader view of Islamic art history beyond traditional elite focus. Her second monograph, Sea Change, published in 2021, examines Ottoman textiles from a global and interdisciplinary perspective, integrating social and economic history with art history and technical studies, and highlighting the agency of artisans in the textile sector. Her ongoing research involves analyzing collections across museums in Greece, Turkey, the UK, and the US, with a forthcoming project on the global language of flowers in textiles and crafts from the Ottoman court to vernacular decoration, especially focusing on textiles made and used by women. Her scholarship relies on close object analysis and has been supported by numerous prestigious foundations and institutions. At UVa, she offers courses on Islamic art and…

Research topics

• Sociology
• Art
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Media studies
• Anthropology
• Gender studies
• Communication
• Literature
• Multimedia

Selected publications

• Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016

  Debates in the digital humanities · 2016-06-01 · 44 citations

  book

  Pairing full-length scholarly essays with shorter pieces drawn from scholarly blogs and conference presentations, as well as commissioned interviews and position statements, *Debates in the Digital Humanities* 2016 reveals a dynamic view of a field in negotiation with its identity, methods, and reach.

  PublisherDOI

• Negg(at)ing the Game Studies Subject

  Feminist Media Histories · 2020 · 43 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  This article traces a limited affective history of game studies in order to understand why marginalized scholars frequently feel unwelcome and uncomfortable in the field. Following the work of Clare Hemmings and Sara Ahmed, it digs into the inaugural issue of the journal Game Studies as well as the infamous narratology-versus-ludology debate to understand how the anxious and emotional rhetoric of the early game studies field imaginary created an environment hostile to the political perspectives…

  PublisherDOI

• Gamer Trouble: Feminist Confrontations in Digital Culture

  2020 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Complicating perspectives on diversity in video gamesGamers have been troublemakers as long as games have existed. As our popular understanding of "gamer" shifts beyond its historical construction as a white, straight, adolescent, cisgender male, the troubles that emerge both confirm and challenge our understanding of identity politics. In Gamer Trouble, Amanda Phillips excavates the turbulent relationships between surface and depth in contemporary gaming culture, taking readers under the hood o…

  Publisher

• Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities

  American Quarterly · 2018-01-01 · 15 citations

  articleSenior author

  Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities Christina Boyles (bio), Anne Cong-Huyen (bio), Carrie Johnston (bio), Jim McGrath (bio), and Amanda Phillips (bio) We want to believe that we can be agile and innovative, like Silicon Valley says it is, by making DH run with short-term grants, app contests, and temporary labor. We want to have a sort of Uber-style sharing economy for DH-research. But this is not how one supports careful, enduring scholarship and teaching. —Miriam Posner, "Money and Tim…

  PublisherDOI

• Reflections on a Movement:

  University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2016-05-18 · 11 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hamish Simpson

  University of Edinburgh

  3 shared

• Alexis Lothian

  University of Maryland, College Park

  3 shared

• Pankaj Pankaj

  3 shared

• Anne Cong-Huyen

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  3 shared

• Keith B. Woodford

  Lincoln University

  2 shared

• F.A. Beeson

  2 shared

• C. Perrone

  2 shared

• John Greer

  DairyNZ

  2 shared

Education

• PhD, English

  University of California Santa Barbara

  2014

• MA, English

  University of California Santa Barbara

  2009

• BA, English

  Rice University

  2007

Awards & honors

• Fulbright Commission
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• Max Planck Foundation
• Marie Curie Foundation
• Gerda Henkel Stiftung

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