Mitra Kazemi

Mitra Kazemi studies the art, visual and material culture of the early modern Mediterranean. She is broadly interested in the politics of art, image-making, and representation, and particularly in how images functioned as vehicles of heterodox expression in areas under Inquisitorial oversight. She has also worked on topics ranging from historical prison graffiti, early modern armor and dress, the influence of Egyptian antiquity and Islamic culture in early modern Italy, and the historiography of Persian art.

Mitra received her MA in Art History from McGill University, where her thesis examined the graffiti and wall-writings produced by prisoners of the Spanish Inquisition at the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri in Palermo, which served as the religious tribunal’s main prison in Sicily throughout the seventeenth century. At Columbia, she has served as a Coordinator for the Art History Graduate Colloquium since Fall 2024. She is the department’s 2025-2026 Lead Teaching Fellow through the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning.