RIYAZ LATIF received a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Minnesota with a dissertation centered on the visual meaning of the fourteenth-century Marinid madrasas, primarily located in Fez in Morocco. A noteworthy poet in Urdu, with a collection of poems to his credit, he has published a number of critical essays on literature and has translated Urdu fiction and poetry. For the academic year beginning in Fall 2011 he will be in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a post-doctoral fellow with the MIT/Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture.