Sanja Savić

Sanja Savić is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, specializing in medieval Islamic art and visual culture, with a particular focus on the South Caucasus and the Caspian. Her research explores the relationship between ornament and figuration, the material and intellectual histories of images, and the historiographic categories through which Islamic art has been interpreted.

Her dissertation, Facing Ornament, Unmasking the Image: Sabayil and Anthropomorphic Ornament in the Medieval Caucasus, examines the thirteenth-century Sabayil Castle, a submerged architectural complex in the Caspian Sea near Baku, Azerbaijan. Drawing on underwater archaeology, archival research, and visual analysis, the project reconstructs the monument's ornamental program, particularly its enigmatic anthropomorphic carvings. Through these objects, she investigates the boundaries between image and ornament, portrait and mask, while reconsidering the place of the medieval Caucasus within the broader historiography of Islamic art.

Her research also extends to the material and representational practices of the medieval Islamic and Byzantine worlds, including talismanic textiles, bronze mirrors, and the relationship between images and the body. Her article, “Between Beholding and Holding: Flattening Talismanic Shirts and the Limits of Optical Knowledge,” is forthcoming in the Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World.

Before joining Columbia, Sanja earned a B.A. with distinction in Psychology and Slavic Studies and an M.A. in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University. She also holds an M.A. and M.Phil. in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia. Her earlier research examined corporeality in Middle Byzantine representations of Christ, particularly at Hosios Loukas, and sixteenth-century Ethiopian icons of the Virgin and Child.