Archive for February, 2019

1.The Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) is pleased to announce that it will be offering its intensive summer Arabic programs in Beirut between June 19 and August 7, 2019. CAMES offers two separate programs:

1. A seven-week program in Arabic Language and Culture that is designed for students interested in developing overall proficiency in Arabic in both its Standard and Lebanese varieties. Emphasis is placed on the development of the various skills within a communicative, proficiency-based framework that perceives Arabic in all its varieties as “one language” and thus integrates standard Arabic and Lebanese colloquial within the same course, and that gives special attention to the development of intercultural competence in Arabic. The program provides instruction at different levels of proficiency from Elementary to Advanced High and students receive 9 credit hours that can be transferred to their home institutions.

2. A seven-week program in Lebanese Arabic (LA) that offers intensive instruction in LA at the elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. The program is designed for those learners who want to devote their attention to the development of proficiency in LA and thus places heavy emphasis on the speaking and listening skills and on building/enhancing intercultural competence in LA. The program offers students 9 credit hours that can be transferred to their home institutions.

Both programs provide intensive instruction and immersion in the language and culture through a rigorous academic program that is complemented by an integrated series of films, lectures, clubs, and community service activities.

The Summer 2019 CAMES Arabic Programs will be directed by Dr. Mahmoud Al-Batal, Professor of Arabic at AUB, and will feature an outstanding team of instructors from AUB and other educational institutions in Lebanon, Europe, the US, and the Arab world.

The application deadline is March 29, 2019.

For detailed information about the academic content of the programs, application forms, cost, and financial support available, please visit our website:  http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/cames/sap/

For questions, contact  cames@aub.edu.lb.

2. Funded PhD studentship (UK): Islamic Architecture and the Modern Museum

Here is the link: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/assc/2019/01/20/funded-phd-studentship-islamic-architecture-and-the-modern-museum/

3. The “Religion in Pre-modern Europe and the Mediterranean” Unit within AAR is soliciting papers for the 2019 AAR Annual Meeting which will take place in San Diego on November 23-26, 2019. See the CFP below:

Religion in Premodern Europe and the Mediterranean Unit
Statement of Purpose:
This Unit aims to bring together scholars working on premodern Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam in order to create a venue in which religious
phenomena can be considered comparatively. Individual papers may be embedded
in a single tradition, but presenters should be interested in engaging this
material comparatively during the discussion period.

Call for Papers:
We welcome proposals on all topics related to the Unit’s subject matter,
broadly conceived. Proposals that are themselves comparative in nature or that
present novel approaches to the study of premodern religion are particularly
welcome. We encourage the submission of preformed panel proposals suitable for
90-minute time slots. We also encourage the submission of individual paper
proposals for panels on the following subjects:

● Author-Meets-Critics –
John Tolan, Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam
from the Middle Ages to Today (Princeton Univ. Press, June 2019). We seek
proposals from scholars in related fields who wish to respond to, engage with,
or offer a critique of the book, whose French edition has already been
published as Mohamet l’européen(Albin Michel, 2018). The author will respond.
To submit a proposal for this session, please include your name, describe your
scholarly background that relates to this text, and explain why you are
interested in responding to this text. In the abstract field, put “N/A.” (Co-
sponsored with the Religion in Europe program Unit)

● Material Cultural and Textual Representation of the Silk Road –
Papers might explore religious art, texts, or other objects of material
culture that come to Europe and the Mediterranean from geographic regions
along the so-called Silk Road. We are also interested in representations of
the route, the experience, history or expectations of traveling or living on
the route. Proposals that engage with theory relating to religious experience,
community, pilgrimage, economic exchange or religio-cultural interchange are
particularly welcome. (Co-sponsored with the Traditions of the East in Late
Antiquity Unit)

● Gendered negotiations of identity and authority in medieval cultures. We are
interested in all aspects of gender roles in relation to authority and
identity, particularly in and between various social and ethnic groups.
Potential areas of exploration include: How did medieval women negotiate
authority within and outside the family or, for Christian women, within and
outside the monastery? What roles did gender switching or gender ambiguity
play in these negotiations? How did interactions between social and ethnic
groups affect the dynamics of gender-based authority and identity?

● Religion, Medicine, and Healing Practices in Premodern Europe and the
Mediterranean – Papers might explore such topics as miraculous healings and
healing miracles; interpretations or adaptations of scriptural healing
narratives; religiously inflected healing magic, charms, or talismans; or
religiously specific approaches to medical training, practices, and/or
licensure. (Co-sponsored with the Religion, Medicine & Healing Unit)

Method of submission:
PAPERS – through the AAR website

Process:
Proposer names are visible to chairs but anonymous to steering committee
members

Leadership:
Chair
Brian Catlos, brian.catlos@gmail.com
David Freidenreich, dfreiden@colby.edu

Steering Committee
Claire Fanger, claire@celestiscuria.org
Fadi Ragheb, fadi.ragheb@mail.utoronto.ca
Nicole Archambeau, nicole.archambeau@colostate.edu
Wendy Love Anderson, andersonwl@wustl.edu

4. OpenEdition books of the French Institute of the Near East

https://books.openedition.org/ifpo/?page=allbooks

5. Cambridge Muslim College (UK)

February Events

https://mailchi.mp/cambridgemuslimcollege.ac.uk/events-feb2109?e=92080e26fe

6. A FIVE-WEEK COURSE

The Islamic City, Spirit and Identity, Past and Present

Time and Venue
Tuesdays 5 March-2 April 2019, 18.30-20.30
Aga Khan Centre,
10 Handyside Street,
London N1C 4DN

Booking
This course is free but booking is essential

For more information and to book a place, see:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-five-week-course-the-islamic-city-spirit-and-identity-past-and-present-tickets-55026596030

7. Call for Papers: “Religion as a Changing Category of Muslim Practice”

One-day workshop on 24th May 2019 at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

Deadline for proposals: 28th February 2019.

Organisers: Dr Alex Henley (alex.henley@theology.ox.ac.uk) and Nabeelah Jaffer (nabeelah.jaffer@pmb.ox.ac.uk).

This workshop will focus on ‘religion’ as a changing category in modern Muslim practice.  Participants are invited to share case studies from their research as a basis for discussion of the possible insights to be gained by bringing critical approaches to the category ‘religion’ to bear on our study of Islam.

The aim of the meeting is to support and encourage such fledgling studies, sharing both methods and findings in order to identify: effective methodologies; a useful conceptual vocabulary; common patterns among diverse case studies; degrees of variation across contexts; and potential new avenues for research. To this end, participation will be open both to researchers already focusing on these themes and those interested in exploring these aspects of their empirical work further.  The workshop is co-sponsored by the British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS) and Pembroke College, Oxford.

For further details and submission guidelines, see here:

https://www.pmb.ox.ac.uk/content/religion-changing-category-muslim-practice-one-day-work-shop

8. Cultural Complexity and Academic Clarity:
MA Programme in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the LMU Munich
(Deutscher Text oben)

The MA programme starts:
In the winter term. Applications are accepted until June 15th, 2019.

For further information:
on the programme: www.naher-osten.lm.de/ma
on the application process: www.naher-osten.lmu.de/ma_bewerbung

Call for papers

Bodies Matter
Death and Shiite Muslim Migrants

Conveners
Emel Akçalı (Swansea University, U.K.)
Pedram Khosronejad (Oklahoma State University, U.S.A.)

This is a call for a one-day brainstorming meeting regarding Death and Shiite Muslim Migrants which will be held in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Swansea University, in the United Kingdom from July 8-13, 2019 (the precise day will be announced later).

The aim of this international and interdisciplinary meeting is to bring together scholars of different fields in social and human sciences (anthropology, sociology, religion, politics, international law, international relations, refugee studies), NGOs and GOs, policymakers, journalists, and religious leaders to discuss how Shiite Muslim migrants (including refugees and asylum-seekers) deal with the phenomenon of death and its related matters once they are no longer in their mother country, and how the host countries, their governments and institutions, and consequently local communities respond to this.

The main aim of this gathering is to ascertain who is who in the field of research and encourage participants to collaborate in an international research project within a new research network.

Based on information from the Missing Migrants Project (https://missingmigrants.iom.int), since 2014, more than 4,000 fatalities have been recorded annually on migratory routes worldwide and this is why death and dying in the context of migration will become a key issue for the specialists of the field.

Since the past two centuries, Shiite Muslims of different countries, for different reasons, and at different points in time have migrated to other continents and countries. Therefore, Shiite migrants, their religion, related ceremonies and traditions have been brought into close proximity with others, in most cases, Western Christian host countries.

By studying the beliefs, customs and practical actions surrounding the death of Shiite Muslim migrants, we can gain access to deeply held values and also to the assumptions, worldviews and reactions of the host countries. Dying as a Shiite migrant in a Western country should be considered a particularly intense experience, and certainly people are challenged and forced to deal with legal, political, and socio-cultural problems, which may not be compatible with their original needs and values.

In this international program, we are interested in exploring and discussing legal, religious, political, socio-cultural and economic aspects of the death and dying of Shiite migrants and also the institutionalization of Shiite Islam in this regard among Western societies. Even though our focus will be on Shiite Muslims migrants in the United Kingdom, European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, other researchers working on the same topics but in a non-western context and also those who are working on other Muslim groups are welcome to submit their proposals.

Following this general framework, some of our main sub-topics of interest will be:
– Death at the borders
– Death on the high seas
– Death in refugee camps and detention facilities
– Death during deportation or forced return to the homeland
– Burial rituals and ceremonies as sign and expression of identity
– Treatment of corpses
– Legal death organizations, cemeteries and burial plots
– Tombstones and funerary epitaphs

You are invited to send the title and abstract of your paper (500 words) including your official affiliation and e-mail address by March 25th, 2019 to (pedram.khosronejad@okstate.edu).
Draft papers must be pre-circulated to participants by May 10th, 2019.
All participants will be responsible for their travel, accommodation and related costs.