Monsters, Dragons, and Other Hybrids
The future is necessarily monstrous: the figure of the future, that is, that which can only be surprising, that for which we are not prepared, you see, is heralded by species of monsters.
— Jacques Derrida
Recent
Ongoing book projects include a transhistorical study focusing on the riddle of hybridity and species-defying anatomies generally expressed either in mixed animal-human or mixed animal anatomical form in Western Asia, provisionally titled Monsters, Hybrids, and Deviants in Western Asia (2500 BCE to 650 CE).
A recent article also looked at “Conceptualisations de la Covid-19: les monstres coronavirus comme avertisseurs, révélateurs et explorateurs” (“Covid-19 Conceptualizations: Corona-Monsters as Warners, Revealers, and Explorers”). The virus itself is a constant presence in the media. Its well-known digital representation, a grey sphere with red-brown outgrowths, was created by medical illustrators for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Inspiring awe and anxiety, it has become an icon, a simple and instantly recognizable representation, and a symbol for the wildly contagious virus that has put the world on hold. Since this image first emerged in January 2020, hundreds of others inspired by it have proliferated in the media. The article asks “What do these monster-icons and -symbols tell us?”
Covid-19 Conceptualizations
Forthcoming Publications
“Mischwesen in der Kunst des Islam und des östlichen Christentums,” in: Monster, Chimären und anderen Mischwesen in den Text- und Bildwelten der Vormoderne, eds. Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein (Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann)
Recent Publications
The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art. With a Foreword by Robert Hillenbrand (Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts 86, Leiden: Brill 2011); doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004186637.i-390
This book is a pioneering work on a key iconographic motif, that of the dragon. It examines the perception of this complex, multifaceted motif within the overall intellectual and visual universe of the medieval Irano-Turkish world. Using a broadly comparative approach, the author explores the ever-shifting semantics of the dragon motif as it emerges in neighboring Muslim and non-Muslim cultures. The book will be of particular interest to those concerned with the relationship between the pre-Islamic, Islamic and Eastern Christian (especially Armenian) world.
Joint winner of 20th World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2013. Reviewed: Bulletin critique des Annales islamologiques 28, 2012, 118; Eastern Christian Art 9, 2012-2013, 119–24; Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 103, 2013, 499–501; The Journal of Oriental and African Studies 22, 2013, 330–333; The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society September 2015, 1–2
Monsters or Bearers of Life-Giving Powers? Trans-Religious Migrations of an Ancient Western Asian Symbolism. With a Foreword by Lokesh Chandra (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts 2016)
This volume seeks to explain an enigmatic and paradoxical symbolism common to many of the world religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic—that of the cavernous maw of a great monster. Drawing on a broad array of comparative evidence, including examples from Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions, it delves on the cross-cultural points of contact that may have contributed to the spread of such zoomorphic hybrids from Turkey, the Caucasus and Iran to the Indian subcontinent.
Straddling the boundaries between popular and textual traditions, the gaping jaws of a great monster is a mythical paradigm of the bivalence of a deep-seated historic force: the yawning orifice of all-consuming death can as well symbolize the power of life or generative power. This dual force can also be reflected in an abbreviated conceptualization visualized on opposite sides of a common axis. The outcome of the symbolic synthesis, which axiomatically unifies such vast, inexorably linked, seemingly irresistible potent forces, thus may suggest different shades of meaning—daunting, and yet again singularly attracting, humbling and at the same time exalting.
Chapters in books and journal articles
Kuehn, S., “Monster. Islam,” in: Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR), vol. 19, Midrash and Aggadah – Mourning, eds. C. M. Furey et al (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2021), 909–913
Kuehn, S., “Conceptualisations de la Covid-19: les monstres coronavirus comme avertisseurs, révélateurs et explorateurs,” in: Tour du monde de la Covid-19, eds. S. Kuriyama, O. de Leonardis, C. Sonnenschein and I. Thioub (Paris: Editions Manucius 2021), 130–131
Kuehn, S., “On the Transcultural and Transreligious Dimension of the so-called ‘Sēnmurw’,” in: Ein Hildesheimer Drachen-Aquamanile des 12. Jahrhunderts. Objekte und Eliten in Hildesheim, 1130 bis 1250, vol. 1, eds G. Lutz and J. Olchawa (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2017), 103−126; also published in Patrimonia 382 (Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder, 2017)
Kuehn, S., “Appendix,” in: Monsters or Bearers of Life-Giving Powers? Trans-Religious Migrations of an Ancient Western Asian Symbolism. With a Foreword by Lokesh Chandra (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts 2016), 75–80, 101–104
Kuehn, S., “The Eclipse Demons Rāhu and Ketu in Islamic Astral Sciences,” in: In Umbra: Demonology as a Semiotic System / ДЕМОНОЛОГИЯ КАК СЕМИОТИЧЕСКАЯ СИСТЕМА. АЛЬМАНАХ 5, eds D. Antonov and O. Khristoforova (Moscow: Indrik 2016), 211–244
Kuehn, S., “An Unusual Large Circular Compartmented ‘Stamp Seal’ of the Goddess with Animals: Some Thoughts on the Religious Symbol System of the Central Asian Bronze Age Culture of Bactria-Margiana,” in: Transactions of the Margiana Archaeological Expedition: In Memory of Professor Victor Sarianidi 6, eds N. Dubova, E.V. Antonova, P.M. Kozhin, M.F. Kosarev, R.G. Muradov, R.M. Sataev, A.A. Tishkin (Moscow: Staryi sad 2016), 492–508
Kuehn, S., “Vestiges of the Ourobóros in Medieval Islamic Visual Tradition,” in: Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2016), 169–182; doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc770z3.16
Kuehn, S., “The Dragon in Medieval Islamic Astrology and Its Indian and Iranian Influences,” in: Proceedings of the Indo-Mongol Colloquium, 01–04 February, 2012 (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts).
Kuehn, S., “The Dragon and the Theriaca as Illustrated in the Kitāb al-diryāq,” in: The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art (Leiden: Brill 2011), 171–176
Kuehn, S., “The Dragon Fighter: The Influence of Zoroastrian Ideas on Judaeo-Christian and Islamic Iconography,” in: Zoroastrianism in the Levant, ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies 26, 1/2 (2014), 65–101
Kuehn, S., “Ungeheuer als Träger lebensspendender Macht? Transreligiöse Migrationen einer alten Symbolik im Vorderen Orient (9.–14. Jh.),” in: EOTHEN VI (2014), 168–188
Kuehn, S., “‘Escaping the Jaws of Death’: Some Visual Conceptualisations in Late Medieval Islamic and Eastern Christian Art,” in: In Umbra: Demonology as a Semiotic System / ДЕМОНОЛОГИЯ КАК СЕМИОТИЧЕСКАЯ СИСТЕМА. АЛЬМАНАХ 3, eds D. Antonov and O. Khristoforova (Moscow: Indrik, 2014), 133–164
Kuehn, S., “The Dragon in Transcultural Skies: Its Celestial Aspect in the Medieval Islamic World,” in: Spirits in Transcultural Skies, Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context, eds N. Gutschow and K. Weiler (Heidelberg: Springer, 2014), 71–97
Kuehn, S., “On the Role of the Ophidian and the Quadruped Dragon within the Iconography of the Mythological Scheme of the Oxus Civilisation,” in: On the Track of Uncovering a Civilization. A Volume in Honor of the 80th Anniversary of Victor Sarianidi, Transactions of the Margiana Archaeological Expedition, vol. 3 (Moscow-St. Petersburg: Aleteia 2009), 43–67
Kuehn, S., “The Dragon and Astrology,” in: The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art (Leiden: Brill 2011), 133–144
Kuehn, S., “Towards the Dragon and the Mythical Bird: Tracing Possible Antecedents for some Elements of Khitan Iconography,” in: Arts of Asia 36/5 (2006), 67–88
Kuehn, S., “The Dragon as Symbol of Transformation,” in: The Dragon in Medieval East Christian and Islamic Art (Leiden: Brill 2011), 195–204