Archive for January 21st, 2020

1.Postcolonial Questions and Performances Presents:

Christiane Gruber and Shahzia Sikander at Rutgers-Newark

Friday, January 31 | Dana Room, Dana Library

185 University Ave | Newark, NJ

4 p.m. book talk | 5:30 p.m. conversation 

*rescheduled from 2019 due to weather*

“The Praiseworthy One: Devotional Images of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Traditions”

Christiane Gruber, University of Michigan
This presentation explores a number of paintings of the Prophet Muhammad produced in Persian and Turkish lands from the fourteenth century to the modern day. Ranging from veristic to abstract, these images represent Muhammad’s individual traits, primordial luminosity, and veiled essence. Their pictorial motifs reveal that artists engaged in abstract thought and turned to symbolic motifs in order to imagine Muhammad’s primordial origins and prophetic standing. In creating and gazing upon such images, artists and viewers also were inspired by various mystical beliefs and practices, including devotional invocation, in the process seeking to express their piety through both verbal and pictorial language. Within a variety of Islamic expressive cultures, paintings thus have functioned as a powerful means for devotional engagement with Muhammad, the “praiseworthy” Prophet and Messenger of Islam.

Followed by a conversation between
Shahzia Sikander, Artist & Christiane Gruber, University of Michigan
Moderated by, Alex Dika Seggerman, Rutgers-Newark

Shahzia Sikander is a Pakistani-American artist who uses South Asian, American, Feminist and Muslim perspectives to highlight the mercurial nature of transnational identity. Sikander’s pioneering practices takes historical Indian and Persian painting as a point of departure and challenges the strict formal tropes of Indo-Persian miniature genre by experimenting with scale and various forms of new media to interrogate ideas of language, empire and migration. A Mac Arthur Grant recipient (2006) her artwork has been exhibited globally.

Christiane Gruber is Professor of Islamic Art and Associate Chair in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research interests span medieval Islamic art to contemporary visual culture. She has authored three books and has edited a dozen volumes on Islamic book arts, ascension texts and images, images of the Prophet Muhammad, and modern visual and material culture.

Sponsored by Office of the Chancellor, Department of English, Arts, Culture and Media Department, and Honors College

Free and open to all, organized by Alex Dika Seggerman and Amir Moosavi
Part of the 2019-2020 Islam and the Humanities Lecture Series at Rutgers University-Newark
 

2. Ernst Herzfeld Award for Master Theses in Islamic Art History and Archaeology

Call for Applications

Deadline March 1, 2020

The Ernst Herzfeld-Gesellschaft für Islamische Kunst und Archäologie | Ernst Herzfeld Society for Studies in Islamic Art and Archaeology is pleased to introduce the Ernst Herzfeld Award for Master Theses in Islamic Art History and Archaeology. The aim of the award is to encourage and support young scholars in Europe who are working on visual and material culture of Islamic countries in the fields of Art History, Archeology, and Historical Building Research. The Ernst Herzfeld Award highlights the diversity and innovation of current research in these growing fields. The successful candidate is honored at the annual colloquium of the Ernst Herzfeld Society, offered a full travel grant to present her/his master thesis at the colloquium, and is granted publication of the presented paper in the series of the Society, Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie (BIKA).

Eligibility:

• Outstanding master thesis (MA, Master, M.phil., and similar) on a topic situated within the research fields of History of Islamic Art and Architecture, Islamic Archeology, or Historical Building Research on Islamic Architecture.
• The thesis must have been written and supervised at a European university within the last two years (since January 1, 2018, date of official review/evaluation or acceptance).
• Accepted languages of the thesis are: German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Application procedure:

• Applicants are proposed by the supervisor of the MA thesis.
• Applications include 1) the complete MA thesis as it was submitted, as a PDF document; 2) a summary in English (3 pages); 3) a letter of recommendation in English by the proposing supervisor; and 4) the original official review/evaluation of the thesis for/by the university, at which it was submitted.

Review Procedure:

• The review procedure is jointly organized by the award and steering committees and the advisory board of the Ernst Herzfeld Society.
• Proposing supervisors are excluded from the review procedure and the peer-review.
• Applications fulfilling the criteria of eligibility will go through a double-blind peer-review by the joint committees and by external reviewers.

Submission:

Please send the complete application by March 1, 2020 to award@ernst-herzfeld-gesellschaft.com

3. Conference: “Islam, Peace, and Justice”, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, 21-22 September 2020

Papers are invited that challenge stereotypes about Muslims, their relationship with cultural and religious pluralism, and the connection between Islam and violent extremism. We are looking for critical articulations of how Islam and Muslims draw on faith-inspired principles and energies to fostering resilient cultures of peace and justice.

Deadline for abstracts: 6 April 2020. Information: Christopher Hrynkow (chrynkow@stmcollege.ca)

5. British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize

A prize or prizes will be awarded each year to the value of up to £10,000 for the best scholarly work in English on the Middle East which has been published in its first edition in the United Kingdom. We will shortly be accepting submissions for books published during the calendar year 2020 and listed in Whitaker’s Books in Print. The year will be taken as the copyright year listed within the book.  Particular consideration will be given to books of sound scholarship which enhance understanding of the Middle East among a wider readership in the English speaking world. Translations of work published in other modern languages are not eligible.

The judges welcome entries on any aspect of Middle East studies. Normally the chronological remit of the prize will be from the rise of Islam until the present day, but outstanding scholarly entries from the pre-Islamic era may also be considered.

The award of the prize is the sole responsibility of the judges, whose decision is final. If the judges so decide, the prize may be divided.

Further information at: https://www.bkfsprize.com/what-we-do

6. The University of Edinburgh

Call for applications (deadline 28 February) for an IASH-Alwaleed Postdoctoral Fellowship (early career researchers) and an IASH-Alwaleed Research Fellowship (senior scholars).

All information at: https://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/news/new-fellowships-2020-21