Archive for August, 2020
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Modern Hadith Studies
Continuing Debates and New Approaches
Edited by Belal Abu-Alabbas, Christopher Melchert, Michael Dann
Edinburgh University Press, 2020
2. The Department of History and the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at Amherst College invite applications for a joint tenure-track appointment at the rank of assistant professor in South Asian history, broadly defined.
Amherst College is one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges in the country. Forty-five percent of our students identify as domestic students of color, and another 9 percent are international, with non-U.S. citizenship; 14 percent are the first members of their families to attend college. Amherst is committed to providing financial aid that meets 100 percent of every student’s demonstrated need, and 57 percent of our students receive financial aid. Our expectation is that the successful candidate will excel at teaching and mentoring students who are broadly diverse with regard to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and religion.
We welcome applications from candidates in any specialization who are prepared to teach courses in both pre-modern and modern South Asian history, and who have strong commitments to scholarship and to teaching a diverse undergraduate student body. The teaching load is two courses per semester. The successful candidate will also be expected to advise senior thesis projects in both departments and to participate in the life of the college. Candidates must have the Ph.D. in history or a related field in hand, or all requirements for the degree must be fulfilled by the start of the appointment on July 1, 2021.
See: https://apply.interfolio.com/77685
Candidates who progress beyond the initial review will be asked to submit three letters of recommendation, a writing sample, and syllabi for two proposed courses. Review of applications will begin on October 15, 2020, and continue until the position is filled. Questions may be directed to Professor Trent Maxey, chair of the Asian Languages and Civilizations Department, at tmaxey@amherst.edu.
Amherst College is an equal opportunity employer and encourages persons of all genders, persons of color, and persons with disabilities to apply. The college is committed to enriching its educational experience and its culture through the diversity of its faculty, administration, and staff.
3. Silsila: Center for Material Histories, New York University
Fall 2020 Series
Islam in Africa: Material Histories
Dear colleagues and friends,
We are delighted to announce below the lineup for our fall lecture series Islam in Africa: Material Histories. Due to the ongoing restrictions imposed by the pandemic, this will be an online series in the form of Webinars. We are extremely grateful to our speakers for agreeing to participate in this format.
To accommodate audiences in the US and abroad, for this semester we are changing the timing of our lectures to 12.30-2.30 ET (New York time).
Each event will take place as a live Webinar at 12.30 ET New York (equivalent to 17.30 Abuja & London; 18.30 Berlin & Cape Town; 19.30 Addis & Beirut; 21.30 Islamabad; 22.00 Delhi; 23.30 Jakarta). Links to register are posted on the web pages for each event (https://as.nyu.edu/silsila/events.html). You will then receive a link enabling you to access the event as an attendee. Only registered attendees will be able to access the event.
We look forward to welcoming you back to Silsila, virtually.
Silsila Fall 2020 Lecture Series, “Islam in Africa: Material Histories”
Sep 9th “THE LOST ARCHIVE – TRACES OF A CALIPHATE IN A CAIRO SYNAGOGUE” Marina Rustow, Princeton University
Sep 16th “SWAHILI MOSQUES BETWEEN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA AND THE INDIAN OCEAN” Stéphane Pradines, Aga Khan University, London
Sep 23rd “CONTINUITIES AND CROSSINGS – EAST AFRICAN ILLUMINATED QUR’ANS FROM FAZA AND SIYU” Zulfikar Hirji, York University, Toronto
Sep 30th “ITEMS OF VALUE IN THE WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN” Stephanie Wynne-Jones, University of York
Oct 7th “BROKER STATES & THE ARTICULATION OF MEDIEVAL AFRICA WITH THE ISLAMIC WORLD” François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France
Oct 14th “THE PALACE OF KING NJOYA – COLONIALISM, MODERNITY, AND ISLAM” Mark DeLancey, DePaul University
Oct 20th “RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MAGHREB AND THE BILAD AL-SUDAN AT THE TIME OF THE BERBER EMPIRES” Mehdi Ghouirgate, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne
Oct 22nd “TRANS-SAHARAN SLAVERY AND GNAWA GUINBRI – FROM CONCEALMENT TO EXHIBITION” Cynthia Becker, Boston University
Oct 28th “THE TARIKH AL-FATTASH AND THE MAKING OF THE CALIPHATE OF HAMDALLAHI” Mauro Nobili, University of Illinois
Nov 4th “BECOMING MUSLIM. THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ISLAMISATION AND TRADE IN EASTERN ETHIOPIA” Timothy Insoll, University of Exeter
Nov 11th “DETERMINANT INDETERMINACIES – ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHS OF A SENEGALESE SUFI SAINT” Allen F. Roberts, UCLA
Nov 18th “PAPERS OF ISLAMIC MANUSCRIPTS AS GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATORS” Anne Regourd, CNRS, Paris
Nov 24th “TIMBUKTU, THE SCHOLARS, AND RULERS: AHMAD BABA TINBUKTI’s Jalb al–ni‘ma wa daf‘ al-niqma bi mujānabat al-wulāt al-ẓalama (How to obtain blessing and avoid divine anger by avoiding unjust rulers)” Shamil Jeppie, University of Cape Town
Dec 2nd “GOLD WORK: TECHNIQUES AND EXCHANGE ACROSS THE SAHARA” Sarah Guérin, University of Pennsylvania
Dec 9th “AFRICA IN THE INDIAN OCEAN WORLD – THE PROBLEM OF MARGINS IN ART HISTORY” Prita Meier, NYU
4. “Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online” is an emerging platform of digital resources to aid the teaching of the history of Islamic art and architecture. In its initial stage, the platform provides original multimedia content developed by scholars from across the field of Islamic art, which is intended to aid educators in the creation of an interactive learning environment and to contribute to new ways of teaching in general, bringing new voices, perspectives, and materials into our classrooms. The project is spearheaded by Prof. Christiane Gruber at the University of Michigan and a team of six collaborators. Team Khamseen will make this material available to public audiences, with the aim to establish and expand a website with additional resources over the coming months.
Currently available mini-multimedia files include the following presentations, which were kindly (and very swiftly) provided by international experts. We hope these will prove useful to those teaching remotely this fall semester:
Water and Sound in Islamic Architecture
The Egyptian Tentmakers and the Art of Khayamiya
Islamic Art at the Walters Art Museum
İbrahim Müteferrika and the First Printed Books of the Islamic World
Touching Mecca & Medina: The Dalā’il al-Khayrāt and Devotional Practices
Gruber, Christiane and Paroma Chaterjee.
[available online with closed captions here]
A Safavid Painting of the Prophet Muhammad’s Mi‘raj
[available online with closed captions here]
Persian Painting in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century: Farangi Sâzi Safavid Paintings
Dome of the Rock: Original Mosaics
The Paintings of Osman Hamdi Bey
The Khanqah of Baybar al-Jashinkir, 1306-1310
Islamic Arms and Armor: A Look at Dhu’l Fiqar, ‘Ali’s Miraculous Sword
Mahmoud Mukhtar’s Khamasin: Scuplture in Modern Egypt
The Stuart Cary Welch Islamic & South Asian Photograph Collection
Contextualizing the Hünername (Book of Talents)
Monumental Mosques in Latin America
Khamseen is an ongoing project and more material will be included on a rolling basis. For any questions, or if you are interested in contributing a mini multi-media file, please contact Sandy Williams (University of Michigan) at sswill@umich.edu.
5. ONLINE: International eConference on Interreligious Dialogue, Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), 4-6 December 2020
The conference will bring together religion scholars, specialists, and practitioners of different faith traditions (from all over the world) to discuss the various complexities, problems, and solutions resulting from interreligious dialogue.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2020. Information: https://www.gcrr.org/2020interreligiousdialogue
6. 3rd ANU Religion Conference: “Religion and Migration: Culture and Policy”, Australian National University, Canberra, 8-10 December 2020 – POSTPONED to 8-10 December 2021
The aim of this conference is to explore the various phenomena related to religion and migration; the political and social transitions impacting upon the transnational religiosity of contemporary communities.
Deadline for abstracts: 21 May 2021. Information: https://hrc.cass.anu.edu.au/events/religion-and-migration-culture-and-policy-0#acton-tabs-link–tabs-0-middle-1
7. British Academy Postdoc Fellowships (3 Years) for Outstanding Early Career Researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Any nationals from the European Economic Area are eligible, regardless of where their doctorate was obtained. Eligible applicants are expected to be at an early stage of their career. This is defined as being within three years from the date of your successful Viva Voce examination.
Deadline for application: 14 October 2020.
Information: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/postdoctoral-fellowships/
8. Postdoctoral Fellowship (11 Months) for Research on Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian Sources on Religion in the Ottoman Empire (15th -18th Centuries), Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
Application requirements: PhD degree in history, Islamic Studies, or a related field; near-native fluency in English and an excellent command of Ottoman Turkish, Persian and Arabic; experience in translating primary sources.
Deadline for applications: 4 September 2020. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/11419/discussions/6348878/cfa-postdoc-opportunity-bogazici-university-early-modern-ottoman
9. Up to 40 Scholarships (3 or 6 Months) for Historical Research on Near Eastern Civilizations and the Islamic World, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton University
Requirements: Substantial record of publications and a PhD awarded by no later than 31 December 2019.
Deadline for applications: 15 October 2020. Information: https://www.hs.ias.edu/mem_announcement
10. Up to 40 Residential Fellowships at the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Dakota
Mid-career and senior scholars from all over the world are encouraged to apply. Emerging scholars with a strong record of peer-reviewed work may also apply. In addition to scholars from all fields of the humanities, the Center accepts individuals from the natural and social sciences, the arts, the professions, and public life who are engaged in humanistic projects.
Deadline for applications: 8 October 2020.
Information: https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/become-a-fellow/
11. Articles on “Islamic Theologies of Disasters: Between Science, Religion and Messianism” for Special Issue of “MIDEO” 38 (2023)
This issue of MIDEO is devoted to the Islamic theology of catastrophes at different periods of history, in ancient, modern and contemporary theological thought.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2021.
Information: https://www.ideo-cairo.org/en/2020/07/call-for-papers-islamic-theologies-of-disasters/
12. Articles on “Historizing Islamophobia” for Special Issue of “Journal of the Contemporary Study of Islam”
We seek articles that present counter-hegemonic analyses, approaches and concepts, examining Islamophobia as a longer and more complex phenomenon. We are especially interested in papers which examine how settler-colonial projects against Indigenous communities and colonized communities have informed Islamophobia formations across varying national, social and political contexts.
Deadline for submissions: 20 February 2021. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/6142269/special-issue-%E2%80%9Chistorizing-islamophobia%E2%80%9D
13. Editors and Contributors on Middle Eastern, Persian and Iranian Studies for “The Digital Orientalist”
This is the digital magazine and arm the “American Oriental Society”. Editors will be expected to contribute 5-6 posts between September 2020 and June 2021. We are also looking for people who contribute guest posts or series of guests posts on the Digital Humanities in General, Islamic Studies, Syriac Studies etc.
Information: https://digitalorientalist.com/2020/06/30/open-call-for-editors-and-contributiors/
- August 31, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Police in Ashoura Clashes in Indian Kashmir
Police fire pellet guns on Kashmir Muharram procession: Witnesses
Government forces have fired shotgun pellets and tear gas to disperse hundreds of mainly Shia Muslims participating in a Muharram procession in Indian-administered Kashmir, injuring dozens, witnesses have said. The violence came as the disputed Himalayan region – where nearly 97 percent of residents are Muslims – observed Ashoura on Saturday, the 10th day of the Muharram month in the Islamic lunar calendar.
- August 31, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – CfP: Safavid Art and Architecture, Baku, 17-19 March 2021
- August 26, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. International Conference on Gender Studies: “Mapping Gender”, Cambridge, UK, 5-6 December 2020
The conference seeks to explore the past and current status of gender identity around the world, to examine the ways in which society is shaped by gender and to situate gender in relation to the full scope of human affairs. Online participation is available. Presented papers will be published in a post-conference volume.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 September 2020. Information: https://genderstudies.lcir.co.uk/home/
2. Doctoral Contract for Research on “History: Places and Uses of Popular Arabic Tales in the Contemporary Levant (19th – 21st Century)”, Université Jean Moulin, Lyon
Applicants should hold a MA in Middle Eastern studies, the humanities, or social sciences, as well art history and architecture, at the time of submission of their project. The selected candidate will have to register in doctoral studies in Modern and Contemporary History at the Université Lyon 3 before the beginning of the contract.
Deadline for applications: 15 September 2020.
Information: https://www.ifporient.org/offre-de-contrat-doctoral-anr-lipol/
3. Fellowship in Turkish Studies for Research Visit (1-3 Months) at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna
The fellowship is open to advanced doctoral candidates and postdoctoral/early stage researchers studying a specific subject in Turkish studies. We particularly welcome applications that expand the current research focus of the Department (i.e. environmental history, history of technology, digital humanities, consumption history, history of tourism, and cultural heritage).
Deadline for applications: 1 October 2020.
Information: https://orientalistik.univie.ac.at/forschung/fellowships/andreas-tietze-memorial-fellowship/
4. Winter School: “The State in Flux”, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Doha, 3-13 January 2021
This program is open to advanced graduate students/early career researchers in the social sciences and humanities in the US, UK, Canada, and Europe. The objective is to provide an in-depth and critical look at specifically selected topics in the broader study of the Middle East.
Deadline for applications: 30 September 2020. Information: https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/Events/The-Second-Graduate-Winter-School-program/Pages/index.aspx
5. Articles on “Media Reporting of COVID19 and the Challenges of the Digital Environment” for Special Issue of “Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research”
Topics include: Media representation of the COVID19 pandemic; Serious journalism versus sensational reporting; Ethics and fake news in COVID19 reporting; Media coverage of the pandemic as ideological manipulation; Contested narratives: comparing global media’s case studies; etc.
Deadlines for abstracts: 30 August 2020.
Information: http://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-arab-muslim-media-research
6. Chapters for Edited Volume on “The Gendered Arab”
Topics include: The criteria of cisheteronormative masculinity in the Arab world; the unparalleled perceptions of the Arabian male figure in comparison to the traditional Non-Arab patriarchal archetype; conceptualizing the role of the domesticated Arab mother in terms of comparative individuality with the Western notion of motherness; etc.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2020.
Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/6345674/gendered-arab
7. Call for papers: “Gather Up Fragments” – Digital Philology
We are calling for short case studies on individual fragments or dismembered manuscripts for a special issue of Digital Philology (https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/digital-philology-journal-medieval-cultures) for 2022. We are eager to encourage a global perspective on the dispersal, re-use, and fragmentation of non-Western manuscripts in this issue and we welcome submissions from colleagues working on global fragments, such as African, Asian, and Middle Eastern materials, and in particular from Islamic traditions.
We have extended the deadline of the abstract submission to 31 August 2020. Please send us your abstracts of 200-300 words.
Many thanks,
and best wishes,
Shiva Mihan
—
Shiva Mihan
Schroeder Curatorial Fellow of Islamic Art
617-495-9250
8. The UNC-Chapel Hill Persian Studies Program Presents:
Revisiting Discourses of Love, Sex, and Desire in Modern Iran and Diaspora: A Symposium in a Series of Virtual Panels
September 5 – October 3, 2020
For more information:
9. University of Edinburgh – Persian post
The department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, part of School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, seeks to appoint a Persian language assistant. This is a part time (17.5 hpw), fixed-term post available from September 2020 to August 2021. Closing date: 5 September, 2020.
Further details can be found here:
https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/pls/corehrrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=052871
- August 25, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Salafism and Shi`ism in Mindanao
The Growing Influence of Salafism in Muslim Mindanao | Insurgencies | Types of Conflict | IPAC
Marawi Muslims rallied against the 2016 shooting of a Saudi cleric in Zamboanga. The Growing Influence of Salafism in Muslim Mindanao (Jakarta, 8 January 2020) The puritanical stream of Islam known as Salafism is making major inroads in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the southern Philippines, in a way that could foster greater social conservatism in areas such as education, freedom of religion and women’s rights.
- August 24, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Call for Proposals, CAA 2021
The Classical is Political
109TH CAA (College Art Association of America, Inc.) ANNUAL CONFERENCE
New York City, February 10–13, 2021
Since the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the modern nation has defined state identity in the present by redefining its ties to the distant past. No longer an historical—or art historical—given, the temporal, geographic, and ethnic construction of “the classical” became a function of the particular geo-political ambitions of the nation state. Throughout the late modern period, the territorial claims of imperialist nations were motivated by notions of ethnic and cultural lineage connecting occupying powers to the classical pasts of occupied lands. Meanwhile, some countries looked to notions of local classical history to define their distinct cultural identities as defense against the incursions of imperialist powers. The classical remains the subject of contestation in the contemporary. Whereas the right mobilizes classical aesthetics as the language of reactionary nostalgia, the left appropriates these forms as a vehicle for staging progressive positions on discourses on race, gender, religion and disability.
We solicit papers, focusing on a range of geographic and cultural localities, which examine the conflicts surrounding the construction of the classical. How and when did definitions of “the classical” take hold? How are claims on the classical past mobilized and what role has art and architecture played in these claims? What types of trans-cultural influences and hybrid cultural forms do definitions of the classical aim to distill or purify? How has the rise of post-colonial theory de-centered hegemonic constructs of the classical?
Please send your proposal, including the completed proposal form, title, 250 words (max.) abstract, 2-page CV, as well as a short statement explaining why your proposal would be a good fit for this panel: titrand@buffalo.edu and beringol@buffalo.edu. We encourage early submissions, and we can only consider proposals received on or before Sept. 16, 2020. Please note that panel participants must be active CAA members at the time of selection.
2. Islamic Manuscripts of Late Medieval Rum, 1270s-1370s: Production, Patronage and the Arts of the Book (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) – C. Jackson
3. The Armenian School of Languages and Cultures – ASPIRANTUM is inviting you to apply and participate in the “Learn Persian through the Shahname” online course.
You may find the details about this course and apply through this link: https://aspirantum.com/courses/learn-persian-through-shahname
The syllabus of the course is available here: https://aspirantum.com/curriculum/learning-persian-through-shahname-syllabus
4. Association for Iranian Studies 2020 awardees:
AIS Lifetime Achievement Award:
Emerita Professor Erika Friedl, Western Michigan University
*****
Mehrdad Mashayekhi Dissertation Award
Winner: Dr. Peyman Jafari.
Thesis: “Oil, Labor and Revolution in Iran; A Social History of Labor in the Iranian Oil Industry, 1973-83.” University of Leiden, October 2018
Advisors: Prof. Touraj Atabaki and Prof. Marcel van der Linden
Honorable Mention: Dr. Sheida Dayani.
Thesis: “Juggling Revolutionaries: A Theatrical History of Indigenous Theatre and Early Playwriting in Iran.” New York University, 2018
Advisors: Prof. Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami and Prof. Arnold Aronson
*****
Keiji Yamamoto (ed) and Charles Burnett (ed), The Great Introduction to Astrology by Abu Ma’sar (2 vols.), Volume 106 Herausgeber: Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019.
*****
Dominic Brookshaw (Associate Professor of Persian Literature, and Senior Research
Fellow in Persian at Wadham College, Oxford University), Hafiz and His
Contemporaries – Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran. London: I.B. Tauris / Bloomsbury, 2019).
******
Nazanin Shahrokni (Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalization at the London School of Economics and Political Science), Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran. University of California Press, 2019.
*****
Winner: Rika Gyselen (Directrice de Recherche émérite, CNRS: Histoire ancienne – Iran), La géograghie administrative de l’Émpire Sassanide. Les témoignages épigraphiques en moyen-perse. Res Orientales XXV, Groupe pour l’Étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 2019.
Honorable Mention: Matthew Canepa (University of California-Irvine), The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity through Architecture, Landscape, and the Built Environment, 550 BCE-642 CE.University of California Press, 2020.
Normally, we would celebrate them in person at a lovely reception at our conference. And we will certainly do that at the next available opportunity. This year, however, the award committee chairs have agreed to share proper appreciations of their awardees in the 2020 Virtual Workshop on August 22nd . If you are looking for another reason to visit the Virtual Workshop, you now have it! In the interim, I am sure you will join me congratulating these fine scholars who inspire us to do our best, as they have done their best, for the field.
My thanks also to our colleagues serving on the award committees (Please follow the links above to learn more about the awards and the committees). Let me add an additional presidential “thank you” to Dr. Canepa, Dr. Jafari, and Dr. Brookshaw for their service on AIS Council, AIS Nominating Committee and the Iranian Studies Editorial Board, respectively. We need scholarship and service both.
All best,
Camron Michael Amin
AIS President
5. Appended below is the Call for Papers for the next volume (32) of the Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (RSSSR) which I co-edit with Professor Ralph Hood – https://brill.com/view/serial/RSSR . RSSSR 32 will have special section on Cultural Blindness in Psychology and Religion of Belief in HE. It will also have its regular open section for papers on any subject within the socio-scientific study of religion. We welcome your proposals .
Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (RSSSR) is an interdisciplinary, international peer-viewed annual series, which publishes new and innovative research within the social scientific study of religion or belief. Contributions span a range of theoretical orientations, geographic contexts and research methods, though most articles are reports of original quantitative or qualitative research related mainly to the sociology and/or psychology of religion.
RSSR usually includes one or more guest-edited special sections that allows networks of researchers to report studies in areas that are or current interest or which are innovative and expanding the discipline into new areas. For 2021, RSSR will include the following special sections
Special section 1: Cultural Blindness in Psychology. Guest Editor Dr. Louise Sundararajan, has collected several papers documenting cultural blindness in psychology beginning with her own paper, “Cultural blindness in psychology: Implications for studies of religion.”
Special section 2: Religion or Belief in Higher Education. In this section, we will explore religious and non-religious identities on university campuses anywhere in the world. Chapter may interrogate how these identities are ‘lived’ on campus and how these are dealt with in university policy, practice, management and curricula. This section will explore the diversity of ways in which religious and non-religious identities are experienced, encountered and catered for on higher education campuses. We invite proposals for papers that explore any dimension of religion or non-religion on campuses in any geographical context, focussing on a particular tradition, group or movement or on the interactions between different parties, or on broader cultural or political changes impacting upon how religion is expressed within campus contexts. We hope that the special section will attract a range of epistemological positions and disciplinary standpoints.
Submitting Proposals
We invite proposals for the next edition of the RSSSR – RSSSR 32. This will be published by autumn 2021. We welcome proposals from academics at all levels of their career, including early career researchers and final year PhD students.
For Book Chapters
Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 300 words together with names and short biographies (150 words), institutional affiliation/s (if relevant), and contact details.
- Deadline for abstracts: 5pm on Friday 30th October 2020
- Notification of acceptance of paper: 5pm on Friday 13th November 2020
- If accepted full papers will be due by 5pm Friday 12th March 2021
Proposals for both the main and special sections should be send to the editors, Ralph Hood (ralph-hood@utc.edu) and Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (ac0967@coventry.ac.uk).
For Special Section Proposals
We welcome enquiries for guest edited special sections for RSSSR 32 and also for future editions. Special section proposals can emerge from conference proceedings or from other forms of academic collaboration around a specific subject area. To suggest a special proposal please contact the editors Ralph Hood (ralph-hood@utc.edu) and Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (ac0967@coventry.ac.uk) in the first instance, with the following information:
- Theme / Title of the special section
- Short rationale of the special section (no more than 500 words)
- Guest editor/s name and short bio (150 words) for each editor
- List of potential contributors
- If accepted timelines for special sections will be discussed with editors
For more information and submission guidelines please check the author guidelines (https://brill.com/fileasset/downloads_products/RSSR_Author%20Guidelines.pdf) or contact the editors.
We look forward to receiving your work.
Professor Ralph Hood and Dr Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
Dr Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
Assistant Professor | Research Group Lead | Faith and Peaceful Relations
Series Editor | Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion
Chair (2020-2023) | Muslims in Britain Research Network
Principal Investigator | AHRC GCRF Minorities on Campus in India (2020-2022)
Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University
- August 22, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – SRW: ‘Muharram 2020: Individual and Community Guides Against Covid-19’
Muharram 2020: Individual and Community Guides Against Covid-19 – Shia Rights Watch
While millions of dollars have been spent on COVID-19 vaccinations, not much has been done to address mental health dilemmas related to the pandemic. As necessary as public health actions such as social distancing are, they leave people feeling isolated and alone. The lack of face-to-face communication and reduced social interactions add on financial and …
- August 21, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – The Taliban and the Shia (April-May, 2020)
Taliban reaches out to Shias
The Taliban insurgency seems to be pulling all the stops it can to gain political legitimacy in Afghanistan ahead of the intra-Afghan peace talks. In a new video message from the Taliban, released on April 22, the group seeks the support of the Hazara Shias and wants to recruit from the long persecuted minority.
See also:The New Arab
- August 18, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.The Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London, is organising online short course on “Decolonisation: Knowledge, Power, and Politics” by Dr Sanaa Alimia.
Decolonisation: Knowledge, Power, and Politics (Short Course)
In the twentieth century, anti-colonial and anti-racist movements in Asia, Africa, and the Americas appeared to be radically remaking the modern world. Yet the creation of new and politically independent nation-states was only one stage of decolonisation. The configuration of global power is still unequal. The ways in which we think and engage in the world continue to be marked by a colonial past and present. Yet alternative possibilities have been and are being imagined and practiced.
Situated across the disciplines of Politics, History, and Sociology this introductory course examines the unfinished business of decolonisation. The course will:
- Introduce students to key ideas in decoloniality, post-colonialism, Marxism, gender, and ecological studies.
- Analyse the historic contexts of political decolonisation.
- Ask how are our everyday lives impacted by colonial legacies using the example of race, gender, and desire?
Download the Course Structure.
Learning Outcome
To understand how the current world system has developed over a period of 500 years of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation, making modernity and coloniality two sides of the same coin.
Course Convenor
Dr Sanaa Alimia is interested in analysing structures of power and how they play out in our everyday lives. Her first manuscript reconstructs microhistories of refugees, undocumented migrants, and low-income groups in Pakistan. An Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Sanaa Alimia holds a PhD from the Department of Politics and International Relations at SOAS, London where she also taught (2011-2014). She was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Peshawar (2013-2017) and a Research Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Societies, Freie Universität, Berlin (2014-2016) and Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin (2014-2019).
Some of the courses she has taught include:
- Understanding Frantz Fanon
- Global Racialised Migration in the 20th-to-21st Centuries
- The Politics of Modern Muslim Mobility
- Social Movements and Political Protest
- Urban Housing in the Global South
- Comparative Politics
- International Relations
One-on-one Sessions
Interested participants are invited to arrange two individual one-on-one online sessions (each for 45 minutes). These can be used up to 8 weeks after the course has been delivered. They can discuss key texts, pieces of writing, or reflections in those sessions. These sessions must be booked in advance.
Course Preparation
Participants will be asked to listen to a 10-minute pre-recorded lecture before attending each session. They will also be asked to read a mixture of academic texts, poetry, political speeches, and news articles, and to listen to and/or watch songs, performances, and short visual clips.
Time
28, 29 and 30 September 2020, 9.00-11.30
Tickets and Booking
£75.00 for professionals | £45.00 for students, AKU alumni, and AKU staff. Register as soon as possible.
*The course will be delivered via Zoom. Further details will be provided later upon registration.
2. The HIAA-sponsored discussion of online resources for the teaching of Islamic art is now freely available at this URL:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSpDdDx7kmGgOEJy8WaNyv7LHI-zm-CA/view?usp=sharing
The discussion includes a synthesis of online resources by Christiane Gruber (University of Michigan), an exploration of museum online collections of Islamic art by Ruba Kana’an (University of Toronto, Mississauga), and an overview of Archnet by Michael Toler and Matt Saba (Archnet/MIT).
3. International Conference “Mapping South-South Connections: Networks, Alliances and New Actors on the International Scene during the Decolonization Process and Cold War in Latin America, Asia and Africa (1810–1990)”, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, 21–22 November 2020
This conference is organized in collaboration with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and aims to explore historical, political and cultural South-South connections from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Deadline for abstracts: 10 September 2020. Information: https://southsouthconnections.atu.ac.ir
4. Three Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships in Art and Humanities, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (2021-2023)
These fellowships foster the academic careers of scholars who have recently (since January 2020) received their Ph.D. degrees by permitting them to pursue their research while gaining mentored experience as teachers and members of the departments and/or programs in which they are housed, including Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies.
Deadline for applications: 15 September 2020.
Information: https://leslie.dartmouth.edu/opportunities/post-docs/mellon-postdoctoral-fellowships
5. Research Papers and Project Demos on “Jews, Christians, and Muslims as Colleagues and Collaborators in the Abbasid Near East” for Special Issue of “Medieval Worlds: Comparative & Interdisciplinary Studies”
Relevant topics: Surveys of trends in dynamics between scholars of different religious communities, illustrated by case studies or by quantitative approaches; Comparative studies of attitudes among different linguistic or religious communities (Arabic, Syriac, Greek; Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Samaritan); Network analysis involving relationships among people, places, or books; etc.
Abstract Deadline: 28 August 2020– Information: http://t.usaybia.net/forum2020/index.html
6. Resource: Academic Search-Engine of Free eJournals: JURN
JURN is a curated academic search-engine, which helps you find free academic articles and books. JURN harnesses all the power of Google, but focusses your search through a hand-crafted and curated index covering Social Sciences and Humanities, including Middle East Studies and selected university fulltext repositories as well as many additional ejournals in science, business and law.
Search millions of free academic articles, chapters and theses at www.jurn.org
7. New Methods in the Study of Islam
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Methods play a notable role in the scholarly cognition of available data and shape (and even direct) scholarly productions. In the study of religions, methods also highlight possible connections between various traditions by utilizing a multitude of socio-cultural, anthropological, legal, textual and other disciplinary approaches. When it comes to disclosing methods and methodologies, the study of Islam remains no exception. However, many in Islamic studies tend to employ established or classic methods that seemingly echo (neo-)orientalist and political inclinations. This volume seeks to offer an alternative, and we welcome new, innovative, and inter-/multi-disciplinary approaches. Framed boldly, we want to encourage new ways to think about and study Islam.
This call asks a set of broad questions: What are (the) new methods in the study of Islam? Can newer approaches to methods and methodologies provide different lenses to examine Islam and Islamic Studies? Can technology revolutionize our method and methodological preferences? Can textuality, once the dominant method, be replaced by non-textual methods to understand Islam and its relations with other religions? Can one theorize the ethics of method application in the study of Islam?
New Methods in the Study of Islam offers a modest proposal to discover new methods, methodologies and approaches that can be applied, utilized and conceived in the study of Islam and Islamic Studies. The volume also seeks to show how such methods and approaches help us understand Islam’s relationship to other religious traditions.
Potential themes in the volume include (but are not limited to) the following,
- The concept of New Method in the Study of Islam
- Method vs. Methodology in the Study of Islam
- Existing Paradigms in Methodological Study of Islam
- Decolonizing Methods/Methodologies in Islamic Studies
- Easternism, Westernism and Centrality in Methods
- Historicizing and Universalizing Methods in Islamic Studies
- Ethics of method production and application in the Study of Islam
- Evaluating and Assessing Established or Emerging Methods
- New Methods for Comparative Study of Islam and Other Religions
Scholars, researchers, and instructors are invited to send an abstract of their proposed chapters (max. 200 words) and a short bio-note to the editors, Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes before November 30, 2020.
Abstracts and subsequent chapters should be submitted in English.
Notification of abstract acceptance will be communicated by January 15, 2021. Following the notification, authors will be invited to submit their full chapter by April 30, 2021. Chapters would then undergo a review by the editors, at which point authors will be notified if revisions are required.
We plan to publish the volume in Brill’s Supplements to Theory and Method in the Study of Religion (SMTR).
Please, circulate this call. For any general queries, feel free to contact us at (aghdassi@um.ac.ir).
Editors Abbas Aghdassi, Ed., (aghdassi@um.ac.ir)
Aaron W. Hughes, Ed. (aaron.hughes@rochester.edu)
Abstract submission Nov 30, 2020
Acceptance note Jan 15, 2021
Chapter submission Apr 30, 2021
Initial reviews May 30, 2021
Revised chapter June 30, 2021
CHAPTER FORMAT
The following format will help ensure coherence. A full chapter should be 6000-8000 words (approx.) including, reference, tables, figures etc.
| TITLE | Clearly defined and relevant to the text |
| ABSTRACT | 200 words |
| INTRODUCTION | 750 words (approx.) |
| LITERATURE (context, concepts, methods) | 1500 words (approx.) |
| DISCUSSION | 3000 words (approx.) |
| CONCLUSION | 500 words (approx.) |
| REFERENCES/CITATIONS | CHICAGO 17TH ed. (notes and bibliography***) |
| KEYWORDS | 3-6 (required for indexing) |
| LANGUAGE | English U.S. |
*** See this for some examples: https://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/c.php?g=508212&p=5426978
8. What’s wrong with talking about maps that we want to consider historically as “historical maps”?
https://www.mappingasprocess.net/blog/2020/8/13/rehabilitating-historica…
9. The Great Lakes Adiban Workshop will take place on Zoom on September 5-6, 2020. The workshop will feature two roundtable discussions and eight presentations by both veterans of our workshops and newcomers, ranging across Arabic, Persian, and Urdu literature, from the 3rd/9th century to the 14th/20th. The schedule is available on our website (https://greatlakesadiban.github.io/), along with further information about GLAS.
Attendance is free and open, but we do ask that all participants register through this link: https://forms.gle/pDV2V59N1Mn9nHmG9. Please register by Friday, August 21st so that we can ensure full participation, and please contact the organizers if you require accommodations or have further questions.
- August 18, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – ‘Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World’ – R. Tabandeh, L. Lewisohn, eds.
Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World
Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World [Tabandeh, Reza, Lewisohn, Leonard] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Sufis and Their Opponents in the Persianate World
- August 13, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment