Architecture and Conviviality: The Emergence and Spread of Coffeehouse Culture

Member Events
Ottoman coffeehouse. Dublin, Chester Beatty Library T 439.9.

Architecture and Conviviality: The Emergence and Spread of Coffeehouse Culture

Instructor: 
Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh
When: 
September 20, 2023
Time: 
10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Pacific Time
Place: 
Zoom Webinar
Fee: 
$15 per person Society members; $20 per person non-members Advance registration must be received by SAA by Sept. 13, 2023.

Due to an unforeseen conflict, the date of this Member Event webinar has been changed from Wed., Sept. 6 to Wed., Sept. 20, but still at the same time of 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

The advance registration deadline Sept. 17, 2023 has now passed.


The coffeehouse emerged as a new urban institution in the Islamic realm by the 15th century. It accompanied the spread of the beverage coffee, from the shores of the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, carried by transnational networks of trade, religion, and taste. Once transplanted into Europe, the coffeehouse emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries as the forum central to the rise of the “bourgeois public sphere” and the development of modern political culture. This lecture introduces the emergence of coffeehouse culture through architecture, urban context and as a social gathering place in the early modern period.


Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh is Professor of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Davis. She teaches and researches the visual cultures of the Middle East, including architectural preservation and history of cultural heritage. Her scholarly publications have won many awards and accolades. She was recently a speaker for the spring Arts of Asia lecture series.

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