Archive for November 19th, 2015
Shii News – Academic Items
1.PhD Scholarship in Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh
The Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh is delighted to invite applications for a fees only PhD scholarship in any area within its expertise.
The scholarship will be funded by IMES and will cover tuition fees at the Home/EU rate (currently £3,996 p.a. for 2015-2016).
Applications for both the Scholarship and the PhD must be made by 1st February 2016.
Applications for the PhD can be made via the online admissions portal at the url address given below.
Informal enquiries are welcome and should be directed to Dr Nacim Pak-Shiraz:
Award
The award will cover:
- the UK/EU rate of tuition fee
- A successful non-EU/overseas applicant will be liable for the difference between the UK/EU and overseas tuition fee rate each year.
- Subject to satisfactory progress, the scholarship will be awarded for a maximum of three years.
Eligibility
The award is open to UK, EU and overseas students commencing a PhD degree in the academic year 2016-2017.
Only applications to year one of a PhD programme of study will be considered.
Among the areas of supervision we cover are:
- Shiism, pre-modern Islamic and Iranian history, history of Islamic science.
- The history and historiography of late antiquity, early Islam, and the early medieval Mediterranean.
- The biography of Muhammad; the Quranic exegesis, and the Hadith
- Middle Eastern and especially Iranian Cinema; cinematic representations of gender and religious themes; Persian literature
- Modern history of the Middle East and especially Egypt; Cosmopolitan societies: Greeks of the Middle East
- Politics of eastern Arab countries; civil wars in the Arab world; the politics and sociology of modern Islam.
- Gender and sexuality in contemporary Middle Eastern media
Applying
The deadline for the application is 1 February 2016.
PhD Scholarship in IMES Application Form (40.5 KB)
Applications should be emailed to:
LLC Postgraduate Admissions
- Work: +44 (0)131 650 4465
- Email: llc.pgadmissions@ed.ac.uk
Related Links
2. Report for the Middle East Library Partnership Project :
http://melib.web.unc.edu/files/2015/10/Kurzman_Mellon_Project_Report_2015_10_16.pdf
The survey reports on the 237 respondents in Arab countries, plus an additional 20 respondents in North America responding to challenges and opportunities for collaboration between libraries in Arab countries and the United States.
The Middle East Library Partnership Project grew out of the Task Force on Global Dimensions of Scholarship and Research Libraries, convened by Duke University and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) and supported by the Mellon Foundation.
3. Call for Papers for the Zeitschrift für Recht und Islam (ZRI, previously: GAIR-Mitteilungen) of the Gesellschaft für Arabisches und Islamisches Recht (GAIR, Association for Arabic and Islamic Law).
GAIR is a non-profit scientific association established in 1997. Its aim is the furthering of mutual understanding of law, legal systems and legal practice between European scholars and those of the Arabic and wider Islamic region. The annual scientific journal contributes to this aim by publishing contributions on the legal developments in this field, covering theoretical legal debate as well as the practical application of both secular and Islamic laws. The journal gives space to a wide range of perspectives and takes regard of the historical development as well as the interaction of “secular” and Islamic laws in different contexts. Its analyses and debates go beyond the basic principles and outlines of those legal systems, but also address the actual developments, both in aspiration and reality. In addition, it covers key phenomena affecting – or even determining – scientific discourse, legislation and legal practice in the relevant states. This focus does however not confine itself to topics of specific or general regional interest, but also addresses the influence of global developments and tendencies, as well as the legal relations among states.
Accordingly, we invite well-known and junior scholars as well as practitioners to help furthering this mutual understanding and dialogue by submitting publishable manuscripts. In view of implementing the aims of our association in a full and broad manner, the editors welcome contributions from specific disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary contributions that address the aspects above. We highly welcome the submission of articles, reports and reviews as well as case reports and comments on cases and legislation to the editorial double peer review process. Submissions must, however, not have been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.
The editors accept submissions in German and English. Please send your contributions:
until 29 February 2016 to zri@gair.de
enclosing a brief personal description (no detailed curriculum vitae required). We kindly ask you to provide your submissions in the following format:
_Font size: 12pt;
_Line spacing: single;
_Font: Times New Roman, Times, Arial Unicode MS, Gentium;
_Length: maximum 15 pages;
_References: footnotes, but no separate literature list.
Quotes from the Arabic language that go beyond technical terms or short phrases should, in addition to the Arabic original, be provided in transcribed form (using an accepted scientific transcription system such as DMG or Encyclopaedia of Islam) and in translation.
Each submission will be subject to a double peer review procedure by two anonymous colleagues in the relevant area. Once their reports on a submission have been received, the authors will be notified whether their submission is accepted, accepted subject to changes, or rejected. The editors will be overseeing this process and make the final decision on publication. All authors will receive their contribution with editorial changes for a final review prior to publication.
For any queries please contact Sina Nikolajew from the editorial team (mitteilungen@gair.de ), as well as the editors Beate Backe (beate.backe@googlemail.com ), Hatem Elliesie (hatem.elliesie@gmail.com ), Kai Kreutzberger (kai.kreutzberger@gmail.com ) and Prof Dr Dr Peter Scholz (peter.scholz@fu-berlin.de ).
4. Collection of the non-hoard numismatic material in the Egyptian National Library
is now on-line.
Enl.numismatics.org
Our catalog of 6,500 numismatic pieces – coins, glass weights, dies, medals, etc.
– is the third major catalog of Islamic numismatic material held in the Egyptian
National Library, formerly the Khedivial Library, Egypt’s most important library.
Our catalog differs from its predecessors in a number of ways. First, it is a new
catalog in that we had to read the inscriptions from the digital images which were
taken under difficult and rushed conditions and not from the actual objects for
reasons which are explained in the section entitled Introduction. Second, we
included in this electronic catalog inscriptions in Arabic as Dr. Sherif Anwar
read them, which was never possible in the previous studies because of costs.
Inscriptions in European languages and references are the work of Dr. Norman D.
Nicol from the 1982 catalog of the collection.
Third, images of every piece are part of this catalog, which was financially
impossible when the earlier catalogues were published. Fourth, the images are in
color which modern technology permits at no additional cost. On the other hand the
Egyptian National Library required that all images used on this webpage carry a
watermark. Images without watermarks of specific items can be acquired by
contacting the Egyptian National Library citing the 1982 catalog number, which is
the last number in the title listing for each item. Fifth, whenever a mint was
named and could be located, an accompanying map is included on the webpage.
Finally, as far as possible, all the data and search tools are available in both
Arabic and English for the first time in a catalog. Electronic searches in Arabic
and English can by undertaken by going to the category “browse” and then using the
various lists to narrow the search. In order to find a specific piece based upon
its 1982 catalog number go to the heading “search” and under “keyword” go to “recordId” and type in the
appropriate number.
This project is a result of the cooperation of the Egyptian National Library and
Archives and the American Numismatic Society with funding from USAID through the
American Research Center in Egypt. This electronic catalog is made available under
the Open Database License. It is powered by Numishare and numismatic concepts
defined on Nomisma.org.
For more information, please contact:
Jere L. Bacharach Sherif Anwar
Department of History College of Archaeology
University of Washington Cairo University
Seattle, WA USA Cairo, Egypt
jere@uw.edu sherifcoins@yahoo.com
5. Research Grants by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Herndon, VA
IIIT invites applications for short-term research grants (maximum $2,500) for Spring 2016. The grants are meant to support research and writing by individual scholars. Grants could include funding for travel, research support, publication and dissemination of results.
Deadline for application: 7 December 2015. Information: http://iiit.org/Research/ResearchGrants/CallforGrantApplications/tabid/400/Default.aspx
6. Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought ht in Africa (ISITA) and the Program of African Studies, Northwestern University Center for African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Call for Papers
Sacred Word:
The Changing Meanings in Textual Cultures of Islamic Africa
A Symposium dedicated to the memory of Professor John O. Hunwick (1936-2015)
Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA) and the Program of African Studies (PAS) at Northwestern University and the Center for African Studies (CAS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this symposium will take place at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) from April 21-22, 2016.
This meeting is the first in a series of collaborative programs on Islam in Africa organized under the auspices of the newly established Illinois-Northwestern Consortium for African Studies (funded by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant). It is being planned in anticipation of the ISITA-led workshops, projected for summer 2017 in Evanston and Africa, on aspects of the codicology of West African Arabic manuscripts, and also in preparation for PAS and CAS’s collaboration with the University of Birmingham on its 2016 Thirteenth Cadbury Workshop on “Bodies of Text: Learning to be Muslim in West Africa.”
A special evening reception Thursday April 21st is planned to honor Professor John O. Hunwick, in whose memory the conference is dedicated. This will involve members of his family, his students, and additional community friends and associates in a time for remembering his many contributions.
For full information, see:
http://www.isita.northwestern.edu/documents/CFP%20Sacred%20Word%20ISITA%202016%20symposium.pdf
7. Open Access Journal
The Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Bulletin (ISSN 2410-0951, since 2015) has succeeded the Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Newsletter as the main organ of the European network in Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies.
It is a biannual peer-reviewed international journal, published on-line (under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license) and on paper as print-on-demand.
It is dedicated to the vast variety of issues concerned with the research into the oriental manuscript traditions, from instrumental analysis, to codicology and palaeography, to critical text editing, to manuscript preservation, to the application of digital tools to manuscript research. The geographical focus is the Mediterranean Near East, with its wide array of language traditions including, though not limiting to, Arabic, Armenian, Avestan, Caucasian Albanian, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Slavonic, Syriac, and Turkish.
http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/COMST/bulletin.html
8. University of California – Irvine – Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=52094
9. Societas Iranologica Europaea
Outstanding European PhD in Iranian Studies
Award Winners 2015
In 2015 the prize was divided in equal parts between Agnès Lenepveu-Hotz and Arash Zeini.
Agnès Lenepveu-Hotz, Étude diachronique du système verbal persan (Xe-XVIe siècles): d’un équilibre à l’autre (EPHE, Paris 2012).
The dissertation of Agnès Lenepveu-Hotz on “Étude diachronique du système verbal persan (Xe-XVIe siècles): d’un équilibre à l’autre” was carried out at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) under the supervision of Professor Philip Huyse and submitted in 2012.
The work, which was published as a volume of the Collection linguistique de la Société de Linguistique de Paris (Peeters Press, Leuven) in 2014, is a diachronic study of the Persian verbal system and traces its development from Middle to New Persian. Based on ten texts representative for the different chronological stages between the 10th and 16th century, the work provides a minute and philologically sound study of representative text material, including early Judeo-Persian.
This precise, comprehensive and systematic analysis of certain well-known phenomena and forms is a great step forward towards a better understanding of the diachronic development of New Persian and will be an important and very useful reference work.
Arash Zeini, The Pahlavi Version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (SOAS, London 2014).
The work of Arash Zeini is a dissertation on ” The Pahlavi Version of the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti” under the supervision of Almut Hintze, for which he was awarded a PhD in 2014 at SOAS, University of London.
In this excellent work on a very complicated Sasanian religious text, the author displays masterful knowledge of Book Pahlavi and other relevant languages, and has produced a very careful and thorough critical text edition with an extensive commentary. The work also includes important studies of Zoroastrian exegetical literature and scholastics, and of fire worship in Gathas, displaying profound knowledge of modern theoretical literature. Zeini sees the PYH as a text in its own right, and substantiates this view with considerable implications for the study of Zoroastrianism in particular and religion in general.
Read more on http://www.societasiranologicaeu.org/content/sie_award.html
10. HISTORIANS OF ISLAMIC ART ASSOCIATION
2016 Biennial Conference
The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
October 20-22, 2016
Regionality: looking for the local in the arts of Islam
The Fifth Biennial Conference of the Historians of Islamic Art Association will take
place at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, from October 20th to
October 22nd, 2016. The Courtauld Institute of Art is one of the world’s preeminent
centres for the study of art history and conservation. The introduction in 2013 of a
dedicated teaching position for Islamic art history marks the enormous strides taken in
our field in recent decades, and recognizes the fact that the study of the arts of Islam have
become an integral part of the broader art historical discipline and have made important
contributions to cross-cultural studies, trans-disciplinary approaches, and the general
widening of the scope of art history.
The London venue celebrates the European ‘roots’ of the study of the arts that fall under
the cultural umbrella of Islam, and the formation of the important early collections and
exhibitions that launched its scholarship. Those early, mostly connoisseurial categories of
regional types and styles – the “Moresque”, Persian painting, Turkish tiles, Indian
decorative arts – formed the foundations from which universalizing narratives of
“Islamic” arts emerged, especially in the period after the Second World War. Some fifty
years later, we are witnessing a resurgence of the study of regional specificities,
augmented with deeper research into the diverse facets of any given locality or artistic
form, and a greater commitment to the linguistic and cultural particularities that shaped
the arts, architecture and archaeology in a specific locale. Rigorous application of trans-
disciplinary research strategies have contributed to the deepening of our understanding of
the arts of Islam in local terms, and have allowed us to embrace broader historical
trajectories to include the modern and contemporary in our field.
The conference organizers believe that this is a time to celebrate the diversity within
HIAA’s specialist remit and to take stock of our field’s capacity for extending beyond
nationalistic formulations of history, and for breaking out of Euro-centred identities and
perspectives. As such we invite proposals for papers and pre-organized panels that take
regionality as their principal theme, that complicate simplistic assumptions about ethno-
national labels, and that highlight the local. Paper proposals from all parts of the field,
from the late antique to the contemporary, from Spain to Southeast Asia, are welcome.
The conference program will feature guided object-handling sessions at the Victoria and
Albert Museum and the British Museum, allowing direct access to a wide range of media
from these two remarkable survey collections. On October 19th, there will be an
opportunity to preview the exhibition Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the
Supernatural, at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford (travel to
Oxford not provided). On October 23rd, the Sarikhani Collection of Persian Art in
Oxfordshire has generously invited conference participants to a daylong visit to the
collection (travel by coach will be provided).
Graduate students and early career scholars will be considered for travel and lodging
grants. We urge our senior colleagues to seek funding in their home institutions.
The conference schedule will be finalized by August 2016. There will be three keynote
talks marking each day of the conference and a special dinner on October 22nd for all
speakers, session chairs and discussants. Tea, coffee, and some lunches will be provided.
The guided handling sessions – in small groups and focused by media – take place on the
morning of Friday 21st October at the V&A and British Museum. Advance registration
required. Details forthcoming.
Abstracts and Panel Proposals
Proposals may be submitted either for individual papers or for pre-arranged panels.
Paper proposals should include your name, contact information, affiliated institution,
professional/academic position, paper title, and the abstract.
Panel proposals should include a panel description of no more than 300 words and the
names, contacts, and proposal abstracts of all participants.
The abstracts should be no longer than 300 words and should indicate the original
contribution of the paper and/or panel.
Proposals should be submitted by Monday 4th January 2016 to Sussan Babaie, HIAA
President-elect, at HIAABiennial2016@gmail.com.
Selected speakers will be given 20 minutes for their presentation followed by a short
Q&A. Time will be allotted for panel discussions at the end of each panel.
All Symposium participants must be HIAA members in good standing. To join or renew
your membership in HIAA, please follow the instructions on the HIAA website:
http://www.historiansofislamicart.org
Program Committee for HIAA Biennial 2016:
Mariam Rosser-Owen, Victoria and Albert Museum
Scott Redford, SOAS, University of London
Sussan Babaie, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London
Key dates:
Deadline for submission of abstracts and panel proposals: 4 January 2016
Accepted papers and panels announced via email: 28 February 2016
Deadline for draft paper submission: 1 September 2016
Conference dates: 20-22 October 2016
For further details please contact Sussan Babaie at HIAABiennial2016@gmail.com
11. POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP IN ISLAMIC STUDIES
The Alwaleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh (www.alwaleed.ed.ac.uk) seeks to appoint a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, on a fixed-term non-renewable three-year basis, to assist the development of its interdisciplinary research and teaching activities, to commence on 1st February 2016 or as soon as possible thereafter. The successful candidate will have expertise in any aspect of Islamic Studies (broadly understood, so that it could include such sub-disciplines as Art, Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Science or Theology). Applications would be particularly welcome from candidates with expertise on Christian-Muslim Relations.
Closing date: 5 pm on Tuesday 15 December 2015
Further details: https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/pls/corehrrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=034833 or
or http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AML229/post-doctoral-research-fellow-in-islamic-studies/
12. Research Associate
The University of Manchester – School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
| Location: | Manchester |
| Salary: | £30,738 to £37,768 per annum |
| Hours: | Full Time |
| Contract Type: | Contract / Temporary |
| Placed on: | 19th November 2015 |
| Closes: | 20th December 2015 |
| Job Ref: | HUM-07417 |
| ★ View Employer Profile | |
Closing date : 20/12/2015
Reference : HUM-07417
Faculty / Organisational unit : Humanities
School / Directorate : School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
Division : –
Employment type : Fixed Term
Duration : From 1 February 2016 until 31 January 2017
Location : Oxford Road, Manchester
Salary : £30,738 to £37,768 per annum
Hours per week : Full time
The Hippocratic Aphorisms have exerted a singular influence over generations of physicians both in the East and in the West. Galen (d. c. 216) produced an extensive commentary on this text, as did other medical authors writing in Greek, Latin, Arabic and Hebrew. The Arabic tradition is particularly rich, with more than a dozen commentaries extant in over a hundred manuscripts. The present project breaks new ground by conducting an in-depth study of this tradition through a highly innovative methodology: it approaches the available evidence as a corpus, to be consulted electronically, and to be analysed in an interdisciplinary way. Professor Peter E Pormann has obtained €1.5m from the European Research Council, and he will be the project head.
Your main tasks will be to edit and proof the corpus of Arabic commentaries on the HippocraticAphorisms; to conduct high-level research on it, aided by a variety of IT tools.
You will have a good command of classical Arabic, a Doctorate on a topic related to the project and previous research experience involving either medieval Arabic manuscripts or Graeco-Arabic studies. In addition, we expect you to be able to transcribe medieval Arabic manuscripts from a wide variety of origins and scripts (eg nasḫ, maġrībī, nasta’līq) and be familiar with standard IT packages, with a willingness to work with Macs and Mellel.
As an equal opportunities employer, we welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons. However, as black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates are currently under-represented at this level in this area, we would particularly welcome applications from BME applicants. All appointments will be made on merit.
Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:
Professor Peter E Pormann, Director of the John Rylands Research Institute and Professor of Classics and Graeco-Arabic Studies
Email: peter.pormann@manchester.ac.uk
General enquiries:
Email: hrservices@manchester.ac.uk
Tel: 0161 275 4499
Technical support:
Email: universityofmanchester@helpmeapply.co.uk
Tel: 01565 818 234
This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.
- November 19, 2015
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment