I am an art historian of the visual and material cultures of the medieval Islamic world, with a special interest in Armenian, Byzantine, and Persian-Islamic artistic exchange and cultural encounters in medieval Anatolia, the South Caucasus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. As a pedagogue, I teach transregional and transhistorical courses on Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology, as well as visual and material cultures of the wider Mediterranean world, which provide students with visual literacy, critical thinking, and written expression. During the 2025–26 Searle Fellows Program, my goal was to redesign the learning activities for the first-year writing seminar to comprehend and practice key elements of college-level academic expression.