Profile
Haneen Rabie studies modern and contemporary decorative art and design. She is a Fulbright scholar who earned her B.A. at Harvard University and holds M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Material Culture. Rabie has held internships and research positions at The Textile Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Princeton University Art Museum.
Current Research
Rabie's current research focuses on a group of objects she has defined as Reuse Design—a category in which makers incorporate existing (waste) objects. Reuse carries broad implications within design history: for the relationship between design and society, for the meaning of authorship in design, and for a particular set of artistic values including contingency, humility, and an engagement with both the design-historical and everyday past.
“Workplace Gratification Analysis,” in Reception Rooms: An Anthology of Recent Responses to Brian Dillon’s “I am Sitting in a Room,” ed. K. Collins, S. Galson, T. Herion, and E. Vasiliauskas (Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities [IHUM], 2011).
“The Philadelphia Centennial and the Material Culture of Popular Horticulture,” Nineteenth Century 30.2 (Winter 2010).
Conference Papers
“Reuse and Utopia,” Design History Society Annual Conference, “How we live, and How we might live”: Design and the Spirit of Critical Utopianism, San Francisco, Ca., September 2015.
“Re-Materialization in Recent Reuse Design,” Savannah College of Art and Design Fifth Biennial Art History Symposium, “Palimpsest: The Layered Object,” Savannah, Ga., February 2014.
“Patina as Ornament in Reuse Design,” College Art Association 102nd Annual Conference, Chicago, February 2014.
“Dazzling Pastiche: Decorative Art and Design in Second Empire Paris,” Furniture History Society–Metropolitan Museum of Art Annual Research Seminar, New York, February 2014.
“Village Craft, National Symbol, Global Style: Palestinian Embroidery in its Post-1948 Socio-Political Contexts, University of California Berkeley History of Art Graduate Student Symposium, “The Many Lives of an Object,” March 2010.
“The Political Geography of Palestinian Embroidery,” Bard Graduate Center Student Symposium, April 2007.
Conference Session Chair
“Guerilla Approaches to Decorative Art and Design,” College Art Association 103rd Annual Conference, New York, February 2015.