I n March 2018 the School of Architecture and Design at the Lebanese American University (LAU) hosted a one-day conference in Beirut titled “Modern Bodies: Dress, Nation, Empire, Sexuality, and Gender in the Modern Middle East.” The conference was jointly convened by Reina Lewis, professor of cultural studies at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, and Yasmine Nachabe Taan, associate professor of art and design at LAU. Participants examined gender and colonial pasts through the lens of sartorial subjects using various methodological approaches, such as social, cultural, and economic histories, along with the history of fine art, photography, archives, and visual culture. The guiding term modern bodies served as the primary conceptual theme through which to evaluate changing gender identities at a significant time in the Middle East, the late nineteenth to themid-twentieth century. During this period new nations were forming, which led to the creation of hybrid national and gendered identities. Within this context, representing the body after surgery, nude, or adorned in various genres of fashion emphasizes the different stages of body formation on both small and grand scales.The conference highlighted this crucial historical and cross-culturalmoment by addressing competing ideas about nationhood, personhood, gender, and cultural identity struggles that continue in the contemporary Middle East. The conferencebeganwith akeynote presentation byMaryRoberts, professor of art history and nineteenth-century studies at the University of Sydney. A specialist innineteenth-centuryBritish andOttomanart and in thehistory ofEuropean and Ottoman exchanges, Roberts focused on the visual representations of dress in modern paintings. Her talk, “Sartorial Space: Metaphors of Modernity in Ottoman and Orientalist Visual Culture,” highlighted how analyses of paintings have often taken an Orientalist standpoint that renders the East as locked out of modernity or

中文翻译：

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现代身体和不断变化的身份

2018 年 3 月，黎巴嫩美国大学 (LAU) 建筑与设计学院在贝鲁特举办了为期一天的会议，主题为“现代身体：现代中东的着装、国家、帝国、性和性别”。本次会议由伦敦艺术大学伦敦时装学院文化研究教授 Reina Lewis 和 LAU 艺术与设计副教授 Yasmine Nachabe Taan 共同召集。参与者使用各种方法论，如社会、文化和经济历史，以及美术、摄影、档案和视觉文化的历史，通过裁缝主题的镜头研究了性别和殖民历史。指导术语现代机构作为主要的概念主题，通过它来评估中东重要时期（19 世纪末至 20 世纪中叶）不断变化的性别认同。在此期间，新的国家正在形成，这导致了混合民族和性别身份的产生。在这种背景下，用各种时尚风格表现手术后的身体、裸体或装饰品，强调了身体形成的不同阶段，无论是小规模还是大尺度。会议通过解决关于国家的竞争观念，突出了这一重要的历史和跨文化时刻，人格、性别和文化认同的斗争在当代中东继续存在。会议以 Mary Roberts 的主题演讲开始，悉尼大学艺术史和十九世纪研究教授。作为 19 世纪英国和奥斯曼艺术以及欧洲和奥斯曼交流史的专家，罗伯茨专注于现代绘画中服饰的视觉表现。她的演讲“裁缝空间：奥斯曼帝国和东方主义视觉文化中的现代性隐喻”强调了对绘画的分析如何经常采取东方主义的立场，使东方被排除在现代性之外或