Website, online exhibition, exhibition catalog, edited volume, multi-media production (2021–present):

Keelan Overton, dir. and ed. The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine. 33 Arches Productions, 2025. Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, https://khamseen-emamzadeh-yahya-varamin.hart.lsa.umich.edu.

  • Website
    • An online exhibition, exhibition catalog, academic edited volume, and multi-media production in one
    • About 70 scholarly contributions by over 40 contributors worldwide (Table of Contents)
    • A mirrored website in English and Persian (navigable in both languages)
    • Content in three languages (English, Persian, and French)
    • 15 contributions in translation
    • 6 galleries
    • 15 essays
    • 6 films
    • 10 digital interactives
    • A checklist of 50 physical things and ephemeral experiences
  • Research and Website Teams
  • International Contributors
  • Producer/Publisher: 33 Arches (my academic studio, which has overseen all aspects of the digital production and academic publication, including contents, editing, design, peer review, translation, permissions, staffing, and administration)
  • Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s LSA TS and ITS (responsible for the website’s technical support, including providing a secure hosting platform from 2023 to 2029)
  • Funding
    • Research fellowships supporting my work: Getty Research Institute, 2021; Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), 2024; Clark Art Institute, 2025
    • Grants supporting the production of the website/publication since 2023: University of Michigan (Department of the History of Art & Arts Research: Incubation & Acceleration), Persian Heritage Foundation, Gingko, The Barakat Trust, Soudavar Foundation
  • Launch date: January 15, 2025
    • The website launched at about 90% complete
    • Over the course of 2025 and 2026, we have continued to add remaining materials (see Post-launch Additions on the About page)
  • YouTube channel (our films in high resolution and with subtitles)
  • Instagram: eyvproject2025
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.17613/x35kf-tb838 (Knowledge Common Works)
  • WorldCat (OCLC: 1545796611)
  • My roles: creator, director, researcher, lead contributor, curator, editor, producer, publisher, English copyeditor, grant writer (securer of funding), project manager and administrator

For more information, click here


Print book/edited volume (2015-2020):

Keelan Overton, ed. Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture and Talent in Circulation, 1400-1700. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2020.

  • Print book
    • 14 essays, 18 contributors
    • 449 pages
    • 144 color illustrations
    • paperback only
    • ISBN 9780253048912
  • Publisher: Indiana University Press
  • Publication subventions: College Art Association (Millard Meiss Publication Fund), Persian Heritage Foundation
  • Publication date: June 2020
  • My roles: editor, author of two essays, grant writer for subventions

Book description

In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad.

Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Note to the Reader

List of Abbreviations

  1. Introduction to Iranian Mobilities and Persianate Mediations in the Deccan / Keelan Overton
  2. Iran and the Doors to the Deccan, ca. 1400–1650: Some Aspects / Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam
  3. Excerpt on Yusuf Beg ‘Adil Khan, from Rafi’ al-Din Shirazi’s Tazkirat al-Muluk / Translated by Wheeler Thackston
  4. Ghariban in the Deccan: Migration, Elite Mobility, and the Making and Unmaking of an Early Modern State / Roy S. Fischel
  5. Dynastic Self-Fashioning and the Arts of the Pen: Sufi and Calligraphy Networks between Fifteenth-Century Shiraz and Bidar / Peyvand Firouzeh
  6. From Iran to the Deccan: Architectural Transmission and the Madrasa of Mahmud Gavan at Bidar / Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom
  7. Qur’an Manuscript No. 106 Copied by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni al-Shirazi and Endowed to the Shrine of Imam Riza by Ibrahim Qutb Shah / Maryam Habibi, translated by Arash Khazeni
  8. Vaqfnama of Ibrahim Qutb Shah in the ‘Abd al-Qadir Qur’an Manuscript Endowed to the Shrine of Imam Riza / Translated by Jake Benson
  9. Faith and Fate: The Khalili Falnama and Shi’i Identity in Golconda / Rachel Parikh
  10. Indo-Persian Histories from the Object Out: The St Andrews Qur’an Manuscript between Timurid, Safavid, Mughal, and Deccani Worlds / Keelan Overton and Kristine Rose-Beers (with contributions by Bruce Wannell)
  11. The Qit’at-i Khushkhatt Album: Authenticity and Provenance / Jake Benson
  12. Khalilullah “Padishah of the Pen”: Royal Scribe and Ambassador of Shah ‘Abbas and Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II / Hamidreza Ghelichkhani, translated by Kimia Maleki and Jake Benson
  13. Forging a Canon of Dakhni Literature: Translations and Retellings from Persian / Sunil Sharma
  14. On Heroes and History: Responding to the Shahnama in the Deccan, 1500–1800 / Subah Dayal

Glossary-Index

Indiana University Press, Indiebound, Waterstones, Booktopia

Iran and the Deccan is distributed by Combined Academic Publishers