Irene Bierman-McKinney was a leading scholar in the field of Islamic art and architecture and treasured mentor to nearly a dozen Ph.D. students during her three decades at UCLA. In addition to her active membership in many academic organizations, she served as both Director of the Middle East Center and Chair of the Department of Art History at UCLA and produced a broad range of publications including Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text (University of California Press, 1998), Napoleon in Egypt (ed., Ithaca Press, 2003), and Text and Context in Islamic Societies (co-ed., Ithaca Press, 2004).
