The graduate students at Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology, in collaboration with the Columbia Global Center, Istanbul, wish to announce the launch of The Ishtar Diaries.

The Ishtar Diaries is a podcast that intersects scholarship of the ancient world with contemporary art, social and political conditions and personal experiences. It revolves around Ishtar, a major ancient goddess of the region, who allows us to reimagine the arts of civilization as aspects of her all-encompassing nature and attributes, inscribed into the historical and archaeological record as if a diary. But these diaries are in a state of continuous becoming. Each time we engaged with them, we have come to redefine ourselves through them, reshape them, remember and forget some of their parts, and add new memories to them. These accumulating narratives are the biographies or diaries that we aim to explore in this podcast. Through this journey, we hope to challenge the colonial and patriarchal narratives and interpretations forced onto this heritage, to contribute to its preservation, to place it in the backdrop of original and often ethereal music produced by contemporary female musicians from the region, and to demonstrate that the ancient past is relevant beyond the realm of academia.

Episodes will be released bi-weekly.

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/uvTRCqHy9j86wKCH8

https://globalcenters.columbia.edu/events/ishtar-diaries-podcast-series