Archive for January 23rd, 2021
Shii News – Academic Items
1.As part of the webinar series Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa from Late Antiquity to the Ottoman period, the Ifpo is pleased to announce the first series of meetings that will focus on Lebanon and Jordan and will take place every two weeks during the year 2021 (January-July & September-December).
The goal of this series of conferences is to bring together specialists working on a broad region extending from North Africa to the Middle East and focusing on the period from Late Antiquity to Modern era. As the current pandemic is forcing us to reinvent ways of communicating and sharing our work, a webinar would be an opportunity to reconnect the academic community of researchers working on this field. It is open as widely as possible and aims to gather together archaeologists working on this large area as well as students.
While other regions will be addressed in the following cycles, this first series focuses on archaeology and material culture of Lebanon and Jordan. These meetings will present, on the one hand, ongoing projects and, on the other hand, comparative data and synthesis studies, which will allow to frame this region into a broader historical and geographical context.
https://www.ifporient.org/archaeology-mena/
2. The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, presents Honoring Esin Atılon Saturday, February 20, 2021, 9 am – 1 pm EST.
Scholar, curator, teacher, mentor, and trail blazer, Esin Atıl (1937–2019) was all of that and more. Her groundbreaking exhibitions and publications covered a wide range of topics and set new standards in the field of the arts of the Islamic world for their content, design, and presentation. This gathering of leading international art historians will reflect on the remarkable career of one of the first female curators in her field of expertise and assess her success in bringing unrivaled attention to the arts and cultures of the Islamic world.
Speakers include:
Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Professor Emeritus, SOAS University of London
Walter Denny, University Distinguished Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Oya Pancaroğlu, Professor, Boğaziçi University
Julian Raby, Director Emeritus, Freer and Sackler
Günsel Renda, Professor, Koç University
Marianna Shreve Simpson, Visiting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania
Zeynep Simavi, Director, Istanbul Branch at American Research Institute, Turkey
Zeren Tanındı, Professor, Uludağ University
Facilitator:
Massumeh Farhad, Senior Associate Director for Research, Chief Curator, and The Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab, and Turkish Art
Register for the event here: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xX6VJnoVTrSHZfpKLEWDgg
Find more information here: https://asia.si.edu/events-overview/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D150315890
Questions can be directed to:
Lizzie Stein, Scholarly Programs and Publications Specialist, AsiaScholarlyProgram@si.edu
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art
3. Near Eastern Studies and Digital Scholarship @IAS Joint Lecture
February 3, 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
THE HISTORY OF THE ARABIC BOOK: A NEW CHAPTER
Mathew Barber (The Aga Khan University, KITAB), Lorenz Nigst (The Aga Khan University, KITAB), Sarah Bowen Savant (The Aga Khan University-ISMC), Peter Verkinderen (The Aga Khan University, KITAB). Hosted by Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS) and María Mercedes Tuya (Digital Scholarship, IAS).
It is an exciting time to be thinking about Arabic book history, as many questions are now being re-framed and addressed in ways that speak to a wider field of scholarly investigation. These questions concern, for example, the arguably scant material evidence for books up until roughly the eleventh century C.E., the non-survival of books treating important topics, the great variability of witnesses to individual works, and the ways that recycling of parts of prior books operated across time and place. Such questions, which query the very nature of ‘the book’, are relevant for the first four Islamic centuries, but also for later periods. This jointly delivered lecture will present the KITAB project – a collaboration between historians and computer scientists that addresses these major questions. We have assembled a corpus of 1.7 billion words of Arabic texts, and are seeking specifically to understand transmission practices (ca. 700-1500), with a special focus on how authors recycled earlier works and how they cited their predecessors. Through this lecture, we hope to describe the frontiers of knowledge, the challenges and promises of our data, and what listeners themselves might now do with it. (KITAB is a European Research Council Consolidator Grant project funded under Horizon 2020 and also has received funding from the Qatar National Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.)
Register in advance for this webinar here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
Near Eastern Studies Lecture
February 10, 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
THE EUROPEAN QUR’AN: THE QUR’ĀN IN EUROPEAN RELIGIOUS AND
CULTURAL HISTORY
Mercedes García-Arenal (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas [CCHS-CSIC], Madrid), Jan Loop (Københavns Universitet), John Tolan (Université de Nantes) and Roberto Tottoli (Universita degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale). Hosted by Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS).
“The European Qur’ān” (EuQu: https://euqu.eu/) is an ongoing project funded by a Synergy Grant of the European Research Council (ERC), dedicated to the important place of the Muslim holy book in European cultural and religious history. From the 12th century to the 19th, European Christians read the Qur’ān in Arabic, translated it into Latin, Greek and various vernacular languages, refuted it in polemical treatises, and mined it for information about Islam and Arab history. The “European Qur’ān”, in its various manifestations (Arabic editions, Latin and vernacular translations) should be conceived as scholarly efforts to understand Islam; as weapons in polemical exchanges between divergent versions of Christianity; as financial ventures on the part of printers and publishers; and as tools for the understanding of Semitic languages, Arab history and culture, and the history of monotheism.
The team that leads the project—Mercedes García-Arenal, John Tolan, Roberto Tottoli, Jan Loop—with their respective units in Madrid, Nantes, Naples and Copenhagen, will be dealing with various aspects of the transmission, translation, uses and study of the Qur’ān in Europe, on the role the Qur’ān played in debates about European cultural and religious identities, and more broadly about the place of the Qur’ān in European culture.
Register in advance for this webinar here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
4. The latest issue of al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā, the open-access, peer-reviewed journal of Middle East Medievalists has been published. TOC and downloadable PDFs of the entire 485-page issue (and all back issues) can be found here: https://www.middleeastmedievalists.com/al-usur-al-wusta/current-issue/
Contents
- Introduction Leonardo Capezzone; 2. Ptolemy’s Place Names of Mesopotamia. Change and Persistence Lamberto Lesti – Cosimo Palagiano; 3. Manāzil Sulaymān: Solomonic Memory and the Islamic Empire in the Early Abbasid Period Michelina Di Cesare; 4. The Past before their own Past. Time, Otherness and the Remains of pre-Islamic Civilizations as seen by medieval Muslim authors Giovanna Calasso; 5. Tradition and re-elaboration of a Shiʿite account on the prophet Idrīs Laura Bottini; 6. Inscriptions and portraits from the past: a fictional temptation in al-Mas‘ūdī’s Murūj al-Dhahab Leonardo Capezzone; 7. The Last Years of the Sasanid Empire as Reflected in the Persian Romantic Narrative Tradition Paola Orsatti; 8. The Journey of Wisdom. Al-Fārābī on Philosophy before the Greeks and the Development of Knowledge Federico Stella; 9. Quoting the Shāhnāma in Monumental Epigraphy. Literary Culture and Legitimisation Strategies across the Persianate World (5th/11th-7th/13th C.) Viola Allegranza; 10. The Roman Past in 7th/13th-century Ḥamā (Syria): A Brass Cast with the Portrait of Nero in the Treasure Of al-Malik al-Manṣūr II Arianna d’Ottone, Erika Zwierlein-Diehl and Hadrien J. Rambach; 11. Beyond Recovery Towards Continuity in the Qajar Perception of the Past: the Case of Āthār-e ʿAjam (Antiquities of the Persians) by Forṣat al-Dowla Shirāzi Simone Cristoforetti; 12. The re-Orientalisation of the Myth of Adonis in ʿAshtarūt wa-Adūnīs by Ḥabīb Thābit Arturo Monaco
5. Before Archaeology, The Meaning of the Past in the Islamic Pre-Modern Thought (and After)
Edited by Leonardo Capezzone
Sapienza-University of Rome, 2020
https://www.artemide-edizioni.it/prodotto/before-archaeology/
6. Invitation: How Do Publishers ‘Really’ Decide Whether to Publish Your Book Manuscript?
The first interview of our ‘Publication Success Interview Series’, where we will discuss how publishers really decide whether to publish your manuscript.
I will be speaking with Katie Chin, Acquisitions Editor at Brill Publishers, about why she accepts or rejects manuscripts, and about practical tools for increasing scholars’ chances of being published – and quickly.
Join us for the interview on January 26 at:
4:30 PM IST / 2:30 PM GMT / 9:30 AM EST
For further info, see: Registration
Attendance is free of charge, and there is a registration link above. If you are interested but can’t attend, you can register and we will send you a recording.
7. The Indo-Persian Confluence Symposium
“Indo-Persian Confluence: Indo-Persian Musical Hybrid in Afghanistan”
Sunday, January 31, 2021
10am PST, Zoom
RSVP: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpcuutrjIiHdV4WsLZhCyRQGsssq-uH1Fk
The third event in the Indo-Persian Musical Confluence series, featuring a panel of eminent ethnomusicologists on Indo-Persian musical hybrid in Afghanistan and a performance by Homayun Sakhi on the rubab.
Panelists
John Baily (Goldsmith University of London)
Lorraine Sakata (UCLA)
Mark Slobin (Wesleyan University)
Chair and Discussant
Richard Wolf (Harvard University)
Performance: music on the rubab
Homayun Sakhi
For more information on The Indo-Persian Music Confluence project: https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/indo-persian-musical-confluence/
Details of subsequent events will be forthcoming soon.
Project leader: Mohsen Mohammadi
Event Sponsors:
UCLA Mohindar Brar Sambhi Chair of Indian Music
UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology
UCLA Center for Musical Humanities (Robert U. Nelson Fund)
UCLA Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Chair in Iranian Studies
UCLA Iranian Studies program
UCLA Center for India and South Asia (CISA)
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES)
8. Iraq Heritage Stabilization Program
Iraq is home to an ethnically and religiously diverse population and a rich cultural heritage. However, decades of conflict and instability have torn at Iraq’s social fabric, weakened its institutions, and damaged its cultural property. The rise of ISIS and the atrocities perpetrated by the group—including genocide and cultural cleansing—have heightened tensions between different Iraqi communities even further and left much of the cultural heritage in the areas formerly under its control in ruins.
IHSP believes that the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage can contribute to reconciliation and peacemaking within societies affected by communal violence, especially when part of wider humanitarian efforts in post-conflict environments. Our projects in Iraq seek to mitigate the effects of genocide, cultural cleansing, and conflict through the maintenance and promotion of cultural memory, identity, diversity, and freedom of expression. To achieve this goal, we work closely with Iraqi government and civil society groups that are engaged in the protection and preservation of built heritage, particularly in communities directly affected by ISIS and the battle to defeat the group.
IHSP’s projects aim for the following qualities:
- Close work with local stakeholders and employment of local contractors
• Historically accurate conservation and restoration of built heritage for use by living communities
• Action-oriented plans and rapid results
• Cost effectiveness and low operating costs
History
IHSP was founded in 2018 through a $2 million award from the U.S. Department of State to preserve ethnic and religious minority heritage in northern Iraq. The program is based in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
IHSP is built upon the foundations of earlier projects dedicated to the support of Iraq’s cultural heritage and cultural heritage professionals. IHSP’s staff have collaborated closely with Iraqi heritage professionals in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain since 2012 through training workshops and scholarly exchanges facilitated by Boston University’s Mosul Archaeology Program. More recently, many of IHSP’s staff worked on Iraqi cultural heritage issues as part of the American Schools of Oriental Research’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives.
9. The Beginnings of Modern Medicine in Iran
W Floor, Mage, 2020
10. CFP: Innovative Practices and Pedagogies for Teaching Undergraduate International Development Studies
To strengthen the educational practices of international development studies faculty, the Tobias Center for Innovation in International Development at the Hamilton Lugar School for Global and International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington will hold a two-day, virtual workshop on June 7-8 from 10am-3pm ET. entitled “Innovative Practices and Pedagogies for Teaching Undergraduate International Development Studies.”
This workshop will include interactive and engaging presentations that share new and innovative approaches to teaching development studies to undergraduate students. Potential topics could include:
– Best practices for online learning
– Decolonizing your pedagogy
– The possibilities of virtual exchanges
– Bringing reflexive practices into the classroom
– Bridging theory and practice in the field of IDS
– Employing partnerships with development organizations in the classroom
– Case studies of different approaches to teaching development studies
Workshop participants are expected to both present at the workshop and attend all sessions, and they will receive a stipend of $750.00 for their participation. Participation will be capped at 20 people.
For more information and to apply, please click here. Please contact Elisheva Cohen at ellcohen@iu.edu with any questions.
11. Amuletic Archives: Writing Magico-Material Histories of the Middle East
What amulets tell us about the past
Historiography of the Middle East
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
3:00 PM (Pacific Time)
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
10:00 AM (Pacific Time)
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies
13. Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice Processes of Canonization, Subversion, and Change
Edited by Nevin Reda and Yasmin Amin,
McGill, 2020
https://www.mqup.ca/islamic-interpretive-tradition-and-gender-justice-products-9780228001638.php
ZOOM DISCUSSION ROUNDTABLE
Jan 30, 2021
12:00 PM EASTERN TIME5 PM GMT7 PM CAIRO TIME
Zoom link: https://fordham.zoom.us/j/82757414650
14. Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes: Emplacements of Spiritual Power across Time and Place, ed. Daphna Ephrat, Ethel Sara Wolper, and Paulo G. Pinto
Brill, 2020
https://brill.com/view/title/59199?rskey=58MEKF&result=1
- January 23, 2021
- by Andrew Newman
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