Contact Information
101 Temple Buell Hall
611 E Lorado Taft Dr
M/C 620
Champaign, IL 61820
Biography
An historian of Islamic art and architecture, Dr. Ruggles’ research examines the medieval landscape of Islamic Spain and South Asia and the complex interrelationship of Islamic culture with Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism and the precise ways that religion and culture are often conflated in the study of these. She is the author of two award-winning books on gardens: Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (2000), and Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (2008). Additionally she has edited or co-edited numerous works, including Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies (2000), the award-winning Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision (2007), Cultural Heritage and Human Rights (2007), Intangible Heritage Embodied (2009), On Location (2012), and Islamic Art and Visual Culture: An Anthology of Sources (2011). Her recent book Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar al-Durr (2020) won the Nancy Lapp Popular Book Award from the American Schools of Oriental Research. Her latest publication is Islamicate Environments: Water, Land, Plants, and Society (2025).
Education
University of Pennsylvania, History of Art, M.A., and PhD.
Harvard University, Visual and Environmental Studies, A.B, cum laude.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Presidential Humanities and Social Science Chair, Landscape Architecture
Professor, Landscape Architecture
Professor, School of Architecture
Professor, School of Art and Design
Director, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Professor, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Professor, Program in Medieval Studies
Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
Professor, Gender and Women's Studies
Professor, Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity
Professor, European Union Center
Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Ruggles, D. F. (Ed.) (2011). Islamic art and visual culture: An Anthology of Sources. Wiley-Blackwell. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405154020.html
Ruggles, D. F. (2016). Islamic Gardens and Landscapes. Koç University Press.
Recent Publications
Ruggles, D. F. (2025). Islamicate Environments: Water, Land, Plants, and Society. Cambridge University Press.
Symes, C. L., Trilling, R. R., & Ruggles, D. F. (2025). Medievalists in the Mirror: Looking Back to the World of 1925 and Its Legacy. Speculum, 100(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.1086/733202
Habibullah, A., & Ruggles, D. F. (2024). The 21st-Century Islamic Garden: Connecting the Present to the Past. Landscape Journal, 43(2), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3368/lj.43.2.1
Ruggles, D. F. (2023). Cultivars and Catastrophes in al-Andalus: On Nature and Human Will. In The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture (pp. 61-71). Yale University Press.
Ruggles, D. F., & Stohr, F. (2023). Ein Gespräch über die Blume als Symbol in Mythologie, Religion, Literatur und Politik mit Isabel Kranz, Randy Malamud und D. Fairchild Ruggles, modiert von Franziska Stöhr. In Flowers Forever (pp. 82-110). Prestel.