Archive for December, 2020
- December 31, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
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Shii News – Academic Items
1.ONLINE 4th International Conference on “Arabs’ and Muslims’ History of Sciences: Scientific Legacy and its Contemporary Impacts”, University of Sharjah, 4-6 April 2021
Scholars, researchers in higher educational institutions and research centers, museums and heritage foundations, and postgraduate students are cordially invited to submit their recent research findings to be presented and published at this conference.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2021. Information: https://www.sharjah.ac.ae/en/Media/Conferences/ICHS21/Pages/default.aspx
2. ONLINE Doctoral Workshop of the “Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies (SeSaMO)”, Bologna, 20-21 April 2021
The workshop is open to PhD students in Italian universities and working on research projects dealing with the MENA region and the Muslim population in other countries. Italian PhD students working abroad and foreign doctoral candidates enrolled in double-degree programmes between foreign and Italian Universities are also encouraged to participate.
Information: http://www.sesamoitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Workshop-Dottorale-SeSaMO-2021-CfPs-It-En-Fr.pdf
- December 29, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
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- December 28, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
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Shii News – Academic Items
1.Call for Papers: Translation & Literary Studies February issue 2021 Extended
Arab World English Journal for Translation and Literary Studies welcomes submissions for the February issue 2021. The deadline for manuscript submission has been extended till January 4. 2021. The issue publication date is February issue 2020. For more information, visit the Submission page. The papers can address but are not limited to the following ..Read More
Calls for Papers March 2021
Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) welcomes the submission of papers for March 2021. The deadline for manuscript submission is December 30, 2020. The issue publication date is March 2021. For more information, visit the Arab World English Journal on www.awej.org. Before sending your paper, please read the submission and Manuscript Guidelines for Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) ... Read More
Kind Regard,
Arab Society of English Language Studies
2. Post-Doctoral Research Assistants in History
Northumbria University
Northumbria University seeks to appoint two Post-Doctoral Research Assistants in History, for three years fixed term, from 1 September 2021. These opportunities arise through the successful award of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to Dr Felicia Gottmann, entitled ‘Migration, Adaptation, Innovation: A Comparative Global History, 1500-1800’. One of the PDRAs should have specialist historical and linguistic skills appropriate for the study of the Islamic World in the period 1500-1800, with reading ability in at least one of the following: Arabic OR Ottoman Turkish OR Persian OR South Asian languages.
Closing date for applications | 21 January 2021
Further information
3. Associate Professor in Middle East Politics
Durham University
The School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University seeks to appoint an exceptional scholar as an Associate Professor with research and teaching expertise in Middle East Politics. Applicants with research and teaching expertise in any of the following, Geopolitics of the sub-regions of the Middle East (which includes North Africa and Turkey); the politics of Gender and Identity; and the Political Economy of Middle East will be at an advantage.
Closing date for applications | 25 January 2021
Further information
4. Associate Professorship in Politics or International Relations with specialisation in the Middle East
University of Oxford
The Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), in association with St Antony’s College, seek jointly to appoint an inspirational teacher and accomplished research scholar to an Associate Professorship in Politics or International Relations with specialization in the Middle East. The post will be held in conjunction with a Governing Body Fellowship at St Antony’s College. The post-holder will have a room for teaching and research in the Department of Politics of International Relations as well as at the Middle East Centre of St Antony’s.
Closing date for applications | 8 February 2021
Further information
- December 26, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- December 24, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – ‘Shi’i Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century’ – R Masterton
Twenty lectures and two articles reflecting upon definitions of truth and existence in light of the Shi’i tradition, and critiquing some accepted ‘norms’ of the world in which we live today.
- December 23, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.ONLINE Symposium: “Muslim Philanthropy in a Canadian Context”, University of Toronto, 27 March 2021
This symposium addresses a simple, yet underexplored, question: How is Muslim philanthropy developing in a secular liberal democracy such as Canada? The symposium will be a pioneering event bringing together scholars from a variety of disciplines and practitioners working in the non-profit/charitable sector.
Deadline for abstracts: 24 December 2020. Information: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JsKqeAMvTUuQN7RtVsVSEPPJaGxaHCpEvDKPihpEmi1UN0I2TUxKMVNMWE04MlI5MEg5S0xOUTBEQy4u
2. ONLINE Seminar on “National and Regional Dimension of Mediterranean Studies” at the Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, 8-11 April 2021
This seminar engages with literary texts from diverse Mediterranean literary traditions, periods, and genres in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, while being theoretically aware of their potential to challenge canonical interpretations of critical artistic, political, religious, and linguistic issues relevant to their and/or other national traditions in the region.
3. ONLINE “Seminar for Arabian Studies”, International Association for the Study of Arabia (IASA), Summer 2021 (Dates to be announced)
This is the only international forum that meets annually for the presentation of the latest academic research in the humanities on the Arabian Peninsula from the earliest times to the present day or, in the case of political and social history, to the end of the Ottoman Empire (1922).
Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2021. Information: https://www.theiasa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2021CallforPapers.pdf
4. “4th Congress of Studies on the Middle East and Muslim Worlds”, Aix-en-Provence, 28-30 June 2021
This event is organized by GIS Moyen Orient et mondes musulmans (MOMM) in collaboration with IREMAM, IDEMEC, CHERPA, IMAF, and SEMOMM. The themes fall under anthropology, archaeology and history of art, law, economics, geography, history, islamology and religious sciences, linguistics, literature, philosophy, sociology, political science, in a global or regional perspective. As in previous years, the congress is an invitation to move beyond disciplinary and institutional compartmentalization, by bringing together contributors from diverse backgrounds, working in France and around the world.
Information: http://majlis-remomm.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Appel_4e%CC%80meCongre%CC%80s_en.pdf
5. Tenure-track Assistant Professorship in History and Society in the Modern Middle East, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, Copenhagen University (UCPH), Denmark
The successful applicant is expected to teach and conduct research in the field of modern Middle Eastern history and the dynamics that characterize the developments of the regional societies. She or he must have a command of the Arabic language. Insight into classical Arabic history will be an advantage.
Deadline for applications: 20 January 2021. Information: https://employment.ku.dk/tenure-track/?show=153184
6. Visiting Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern History, History Department, Oberlin College (OH)
Requirements: PhD (in hand or expected by August 2021). The incumbent will teach courses in the general area of Middle East and North African History, including a two-semester survey sequence, one or two intermediate-level classes, and at least one advanced class in her/his area of specialization. We are particularly interested in hiring a specialist in the history of the modern Middle East.
Deadline for application: 1 February 2021. Information: https://jobs.oberlin.edu/postings/9679
7. Grant for a Visiting Research Fellowship in Omani Studies (3 Months), Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) Berlin
We are seeking an outstanding postdoctoral scholar who is engaged in projects in research fields related to Omani Studies.
Deadline for application extended to 6 January 2021. Information: https://www.zmo.de/fileadmin/Karriere/CfP_TheOmanResearchGrant_ZMO_2021.pdf
8. Articles for the “Australian Journal of Islamic Studies”
The open access, double-blind peer-reviewed journal invites original research articles, essays and book reviews related to Islamic sciences from academics in Islamic theology, philosophy, sociology, jurisprudence, contemporary studies, comparative religion, spirituality, Qur’anic and Sunnah studies, history and art.
Information: https://ajis.com.au/index.php/ajis/about
9. Articles on “Islamic Constitutions: Managing Religion and Politics” for Special Issue of Journal “Religions”
Papers are invited that examine the ways in which constitutions, constitutional articles, and the writing and abolition of constitutions manage the relationship between religion and politics. Of particular interest are papers which highlight the specific legal, social, and political consequences of how religion is altered by the state’s management of it through constitutional articles especially in Muslim-majority countries.
Deadline for submissions: 15 April 2021. Information: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/Religion_Politics
10. Chapters for Edited Volume on “Creative Processes, Patrimonial Practices: Art and Heritage in the Middle East and North Africa”
Contributors seek to examine how artists, architects, curators and digital content producers engage with various elements of aesthetic practice to produce, re-produce an challenge cultural representations and narratives. This volume analyses current artistic and heritage practices within the region, questioning the appropriateness of existing methods and providing suggestions for future research.
Deadline for abstracts: 20 January 2021. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/6974299/call-chapter-creative-processes-patrimonial-practices-art-and
The British Library
12. ONLINE WORKSHOP: Unspoken memories, unwritten histories: Eastern Mediterranean pluralism in oral history and memory studies (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul)
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
A series of workshops devoted to theories and practices in academia and civil society in Turkey and beyond
Less than a hundred years ago, most Eastern Mediterranean cities were marked by a high degree of ethnic, linguistic and religious pluralism. Whereas the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of states based on modern concepts of nationhood heralded its end, some of the most important cities of the empire retained their cosmopolitan nature well until the Second World War and its aftermath. Oral histories and communicative memories of ethnoreligious groups that constituted vital parts of these cities are still living, often wound up with unhealed and suppressed traumas of displacement, ethnic cleansing and genocide. At the same time, simplified and nostalgic visions of a pluralist past are sometimes held up as role models for present-day Eastern Mediterranean societies without questioning its implications and meaning, or without regard for the challenges that they entail. Local academics and civil society organizations alike play vital roles in researching, highlighting and supporting pluralism and pluralist heritage, sometimes in defiance of nationalist historiographies and policies, sometimes supported by states and institutions that embrace pluralism.
The following series of online panels, arranged by the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII), operates at a cross-section of academic research and civil society activism. It aims to bring together young scholars of history, minorities and human rights with representatives of academia and civil society in a number of Eastern Mediterranean cities outside of Turkey. The panels will discuss what cultural pluralism meant in the past and what it means today, survey how different Eastern Mediterranean countries have struggled to either sustain or suppress cultural pluralism and pluralist heritage, and debate what academics can learn from civil society organizations and human rights discourses when they deal with the questions it brings up. The series will begin with cases of cultural loss that lie further back in the past and conclude with cases that have a bearing on the present and future. Focusing on the vision and memory of pluralism in times of globalization and homogenization the panels will use these case studies as points of departure for a wider exploration of what cultural pluralism means and why it matters, both in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond.
The initial workshop that will launch the series, is entitled How can we talk about cultural pluralism in the Eastern Mediterranean? will take place via Zoom on January 28, 2021. The Workshop aims to create an interdisciplinary space for discussion among theoretically informed researchers and civil society actors working on memory studies and oral history in Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean at large. We welcome young scholars and motivated graduate students in the humanities who aim to further their studies in this domain as well as workers in civil society who wish to attain a higher perspective in the state of memory studies and oral history in the region. The content of this first workshop will focus on central methodological questions in the field, such as:
– Modern and Post-modern approaches to cultural pluralism: is there a common basis of understanding?
– How have Eastern Mediterranean countries dealt with cultural pluralism in the past? How do they deal with it – and the loss of it – today?
– How should academics in the Eastern Mediterranean area approach cultural pluralism and the loss of cultural pluralism?
Speakers of the first panel, January 28 at 13:00 (UTC+3):
Asena Günal, director of Anadolu Kültür
Bülent Bilmez, professor at Bilgi University
Noémi Lévy-Aksu, Hafıza Merkezi
Following this initial virtual workshop bimensal meetings are planned that will concentrate on multicultural cities of the Eastern Mediterranean beyond Turkey, such as Thessaloniki, Alexandria and Jerusalem. The goal being to offer a critical overview of the state of memory studies and oral history in the region through panel presentations by academic and civil society professionals, followed by an informal participatory Q&A between veterans in the field and young participants interested in specializing in these domains. New CFAs will be issued for each upcoming event.
Contact Info:
Eligible for participation are advanced students with a background in Turkish, Eastern Mediterranean or Ottoman culture and history, cultural and minority studies, or political, social and Human Rights studies. They should send their CV, together with a letter of interest outlining their interest in the topic and the ways in which it connects with their own research, no later than December 31, 2020, to sriiapplication@gmail.com. Participants will be notified by January 11, 2021.
Contact Email:
sriiapplication@gmail.com
URL:
https://rem-em.com/
13. Remaking Muslim Lives
Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina
David Henig, University of Illinois Press, 2020
https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9780252085215/remaking-muslim-lives/
14. The Bloomsbury Colleges group, University of London, is offering a PhD studentship for an Islamic visuality project entitled ‘Recording the invisible: Islamic architecture and its photographic archives’, beginning in the academic year 2021/22. The studentship is awarded for UK and EU citizens, and covers tuition fees (at the home fee rate) plus a stipend (the stipend rate was £17,285 per annum for 2020/21) for up to 3 years. Details are available here: http://www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/studentships/2021/recording-the-invisible-islamic-architecture-and-its-photographic-archives
The closing date for applications is: 28 February 2021
- December 22, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- December 21, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Short Course
Decolonisation: Power, Politics, and Knowledge
12, 19, and 26 February 2021
Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations
Full info at:
2. International Conference:
Arabic Historiography,
Narratives of Order, and Discourses of Sovereignty
in late medieval Egypt and Syria
(Closing conference of the ERC project MMS-II, UGent, Belgium, 2017-21)
Cairo, November, 28-30, 2021
in cooperation with:
Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO)
American University in Cairo (AUC)
Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut in Caïro (NVIC)
Keynote speaker: Konrad Hirschler (FUBerlin)
The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate-II (MMS-II): Historiography,
Political Order and State Formation in Fifteenth-Century Egypt and Syria’
(www.mms.ugent.be) (European Research Council ‘Consolidator Grant’ Project) is
a collaborative research program on fifteenth-century Arabic historiography
that runs at Ghent University (Belgium) from January 2017 to December 2021
The ERC project MMS-II invites contributions to its three-day closing
conference in Cairo (Egypt) in November 2021. We welcome papers that engage
with the rich Arabic historiographical traditions of the ‘Mamluk’ Sultanate of
Cairo (seventh/thirteenth-tenth/sixteenth centuries), and that question in
particular the complex contextual, textual or semiotic layers which connect
texts of history in diverse ways to the social, cultural and above all
political environments of their production, reception and circulation.
In November 2021 (November, 28-30) the MMS-II team will organize its closing
conference to present the main results from its research and reach out to the
wider academic community. This three-day conference will be organized in
Cairo, Egypt, to maximize the potential involvement of colleagues and students
from the MENA region. It will consist of individual paper sessions with
respondents, presentations of MMS-II research results, and a keynote. We will
work together with international academic partners in Cairo (AUC, IFAO, NVIC)
for this closing conference’s organization.
We welcome submissions of paper proposals that tackle the many contextual,
textual and semiotic dimensions of the production and construction of social
memories in the Arabic historiographical traditions of the seventh/thirteenth
to the tenth/sixteenth centuries. We particularly seek contributions that
critically engage with one or more of the following three themes:
Contexts: what are a historiographical text’s, or textual corpus’, relevant
socio-economic, cultural and political contexts, and what can be said about an
author’s positioning within these contexts, his engagement with them through
social practices such as competition and patronage, and the studied texts’
relations with these practices?
Texts: how are a historiographical text and its narratives organized and
structured; how have textual strategies such as narrative modes, time,
narrator and focalization been deployed, and to what effect; what do inter-
and para-textual relations reveal?
Meanings: what textual themes, didactic purposes and layers of meaning are
being communicated in a historiographical text, or set of texts; how does a
text, or set of texts, represent a communicative act, or even a social
performance, in complex discursive contexts of power relations; what semantic
and discursive fields is a text, or set of texts, operating in, and to what
effect?
A maximum of 18 individual paper proposals will be selected for presentation
and discussion at this 3-day conference. The conference languages will be
English and Arabic, and facilities for simultaneous translation will be
foreseen to ensure communication and discussion across linguistic barriers.
Papers (max. 8,000 words, in English or Arabic) will be pre-circulated
(deadline for draft paper submission: October, 31, 2021) and their summary
presentations at the conference (max. 15 minutes) will be followed by
responses from invited specialists as well as further discussion with other
participants. Participants are also expected to commit to revise their papers
for inclusion in a future peer-reviewed conference publication.
The MMS-II project will be able to cover most of the travel and accommodation
expenses for selected participants.
Paper proposals should include: name, short CV, paper title, related
conference theme (contexts, texts, meanings), paper abstract (max. 250 words,
briefly stating subject, rationale, methodology, main argument and/or expected
results). They should be sent to mamluk@ugent.be , before April, 1, 2021.
3. Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice: Processes of Canonization Subversion and Change – Y Amin, N. Reda, eds. McGill, 2020
4. Polymaths of Islam, Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia – J Pickett Cornell U Press, 2020
https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781501750243/polymaths-of-islam/
5. The Khalili Research Centre is offering a fully-funded graduate scholarship to study Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Oxford from the beginning of the academic year 2021–2022. The Scholarship is awarded on the basis of academic merit and potential. It will cover full course fees, and maintenance costs equivalent to the UK national minimum doctoral stipend. It may be either for a DPhil or a combined four-year programme consisting of a Master’s course in Islamic Art and Architecture proceeding to a DPhil. The application deadline is 11 January but it is recommended to approach your potential supervisor by 22 December. For further details, please visit: https://krc.web.ox.ac.uk/article/i.m.-pei-scholarship
6. Seeking chapters for the edited volume, Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa. Please submit proposals to avmiller@umich.edu by January 15, 2021.
This publication examines the status of Muslim visual and expressive cultures in the wake of decolonization in Africa. It asks, in the years leading up to and following struggles for independence from colonial regimes across the continent, how was “Islamic art” mobilized, interpreted, transformed, or even erased in relation to projects of nation-building and in the context of new cultural and religious identities emerging across Africa and its diasporas? It will consider the different strategies through which diverse actors–political leaders, architects, artists, museum curators, members of local religious communities, and others–approached the social and conceptual structures upheld by previous colonial regimes and explore the consequences of such processes of negotiation for the visual, spatial, and intellectual parameters framing Muslim institutions, practices, and cultural works in “postcolonial” Africa.
We also approach the topic of decolonizing Islamic art in Africa from a historiographical perspective, presenting case studies that disrupt and interrogate the colonial-era geographical and conceptual boundaries shaping the disciplines of Islamic and African art history. In recent years, the history of Islamic art in Africa has been subject to reevaluation through critical attention to the continent’s position within global networks of trade and the subsequent influence of African actors in shaping Muslim visual and material cultures within and beyond the continent, particularly during Europe’s medieval period. Less attention, however, has been given to the African continent’s dynamic relationship with Islam and Muslim culture during the course of the twentieth century, a period no less marked by escalating global interest in Africa’s material and cultural resources and by the active participation of Muslim Africans in new cross-regional and cross-continental religious and cultural communities. This publication contends that attention to this longer history of African agency within a global Muslim community is crucial for speaking back to colonial frameworks that continue to distort our understanding of both “Islamic” and “African” art today.
The volume’s case studies will ideally represent a broad geographical scope and may address a range of expressive practices and objects, including architecture, landscape, urban design, painting, decorative arts, ritual objects, domestic display, music, performance, etc. While the publication is envisioned to focus on the years directly leading up to and following African independence movements, contributions exploring the continuing “decolonization” of Muslim cultural expression in Africa and the field of art history into the twenty-first century are also welcome.
Please submit a 500-word abstract, title, and bio by January 15, 2021 to avmiller@umich.edu. First drafts of accepted contributions due June 1, 2021. Contributions to the volume will be approximately 6,000-8,000 words. All essays will undergo a double-blind, peer-review process before final acceptance.
Ashley Miller, Ph.D.
Forsyth Postdoctoral Fellow
History of Art Department
University of Michigan
7. The 10th anniversary issue from the International Journal of Islamic Architecture is out now!
Special Issue: ‘Islamic Architecture: Reflections on the Field’
For more information about the special issue and journal, click here >> https://www.intellectbooks.com/international-journal-of-islamic-architecture
Aims & Scopes
The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) publishes peer-reviewed articles on the urban design, architecture and landscape architecture of the historic Islamic world, encompassing the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, but also the more recent geographies of Islam in its global dimensions. The main emphasis is on the detailed analysis of the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of architecture.
8. Jafar and Shokoh Farzaneh Prize for Best Article on Persian Literature
The University of Oklahoma’s Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies is pleased to announce a competition for the Jafar and Shokoh Farzaneh Prize for Best Article on Persian Literature. This $2000 prize will be awarded to the best published article on any topic relating to Persian literature. The winner will also be invited to present a public lecture at the University of Oklahoma and to serve on the award selection committee for the following year. All relevant articles or book chapters published in English or Persian in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals or edited volumes between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020 are eligible for consideration.
Submissions should be emailed to Marjan Seirafi-Pour (marjan@ou.edu) by April 30, 2021. Results will be announced at the Association for Iranian Studies general meeting at the Middle East Studies Association conference in 2021.
- December 19, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Editor’s Note: Subscriber Update
Dear Subscriber
In August of this year, the Shii News mail server – which is separate from the WordPress Shii News site itself – underwent an update.
We are still checking, but it appears that some or all subscribers may have been sent an email from the mailing system – not from my own personal email address – asking subscribers to reconfirm their status.
In any case, at some point the mail server stopped sending emails to a large number of subscribers.
I do apologise for this problem. It was brought to my attention today and we were able to move quickly to discover the cause.
All those who stopped receiving emails have today had their status updated. You should start to receive mailings again.
May I remind all subscribers that you can unsubscribe from the emails at any time. Follow the directions at the bottom of your email.
Yours with very best wishes!
Andrew Newman
- December 17, 2020
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment