1. Socio-spatial Marginalization in Islamic Contexts: Architectural Conditions and Active Approaches
Thursday, October 27, 2022
11:00 am–12:30 pm CDT
Free & open to the public
This program will be recorded. Registrants will receive a link to the video after the event.
Temporary architectures, adaptive tactics, the large- and small-scale movement and relocation of people, and concerted programs of colonization and razing shape sites and spaces of marginalized communities in Islamic contexts. People may be marginalized for reasons of religious practice, gender, ethno-linguistic identification, nationalist policies, conflict, environmental shifts, or other factors, with the result that they have limited access to certain resources and live their lives, seek places of worship, assemble support systems, and adopt and adapt the built environment in specific ways. Architectures created by the forces of marginalization include buildings on the urban outskirts and the borderlands of states, makeshift housing and services in the socio-economic badlands, and solutions to the need for space enacted in the “in-between” of ad hoc adaptations.
The impetus for our panel comes from our collective work to understand the marginalization of communities in Islamic contexts around the globe through the built environment, as well as from our active engagement with the selfhood, rights, and safety of women, children, minority denominational communities, sectarian groups, racialized people, and even those questioning their own socio-political and scholarly dominance.
According to UN statistics, migration disproportionately impacts states with majority Islamic populations, and the primary host countries for refugees are also largely Muslim. These dynamics have historical roots, and when combined with environmental and economic factors, can lead to marked changes in the architectural fabric, the exclusion and erasure of undesired peoples and their narratives, and a misunderstanding of how the built environment functions.
Our panel includes architects, visual artists, and scholars working to understand, address, and confront the conditions of marginalization embodied in architecture in Islamic contexts as part of their practice, teaching, research, and activism.
2. Publication Announcement – Karl Stowasser’s translation of al-Maqrīzī’s Khiṭaṭ
Karl Stowasser’s partial translation of al-Maqrīzī’s Khiṭaṭ is now available for download (Open Access: https://hdl.handle.net/2268/237608):
Al-Maqrīzī: Book of Exhortations and Useful Lessons in Dealing with Topography and Historical Remains (al-Khiṭaṭ). Translated and annotated by Karl Stowasser (d. 1997). Parts I-II in 3 vols. Edited by Frédéric Bauden and Clopper Almon with an Introductory Essay by Frédéric Bauden. Liège, 2022.
This translation covers a bit more than the first half of the first volume of the Khiṭaṭ in the Būlāq edition, ending with page 285, and volume 4 of the Wiet edition. It will serve as a basis for a new critical edition with an annotated English translation in the frame of the Bibliotheca Maqriziana project published by Brill.
3. Online Symposium – The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology, NMAA – October 21-22, 2022
Join the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art on October 21 and 22, 10 am-5 pm EST daily, for The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology.
This is a hybrid event: In-person attendees register on eventbrite here / Virtual attendees register on Zoom here.
Between the third and seventh centuries CE, the Sasanian Empire became one of the most dominant powers in the ancient world, extending geographically from Western to Central Asia. From monumental buildings and impressive rock reliefs to elaborately designed metal vessels and finely carved seals, these structures and objects provide a glimpse into the empire’s artistic diversity and its rich material culture. Recent scholarship has further expanded our knowledge of the Sasanian empire and has confirmed its enduring legacy beyond its geographic borders, long after the Arab conquest in the seventh century.
The Sasanians in Context: Art, History, and Archaeology gathers some of the most renowned national and international scholars to share their recent work on the Sasanians and their lasting artistic and historical contributions.
This symposium is generously supported by the Tina and Hamid Moghadam Fund and is organized in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine.
4. The 2022 BRISMES Annual Lecture will be given by Professor Nadje Al-Ali (Brown University). Nadje Al-Ali is Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown, where she is also Robert Family Professor of International Studies and Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, mainly with reference to Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement.
The title of the lecture will be Feminist Dilemmas and Ambivalences: Gendered and queer perspectives on the Middle East.
Date: 22 November 2022, 17:30-19:00 (GMT)
Location: Online (via Zoom)
More information and registration: www.brismes.ac.uk/events/annual-lecture/2022
5. The Islamic College
Postgraduate Studies Certificate in Islamic Philosophy
Three Semesters (full-time) & Six Semesters (part-time)
18:00 -20:30 (London Time)
Starting: 14 November 2022
Application Deadline: 15 October 2022
Fees: £1500 (All students are eligible for a scholarship of up to 50%)
https://www.islamic-college.ac.uk/psc-islamic-philosophy/
6. Funds: The J.B. Harley Research Fellowships in the History of Cartography: call for applications (Deadline: 1st November)
The Harley Fellowships – the only one of their kind in Europe – provide support for those working on the history of cartography, from any discipline, doing the equivalent of post-graduate level work in the historical map collections of the United Kingdom. Awards range up to £2000. Website: http://www.maphistory.info/harley.html
The J.B. Harley Fellowships were set up in London in 1992 in memory of Brian Harley (1932-91). Prof. Harley was founding co-editor of the History of Cartography Project and the leading theoretical thinker in the field.
Applications are invited from anyone pursuing advanced research in the history of cartography, irrespective of nationality, discipline or profession, who wishes to work in London and other parts of the United Kingdom. While independent of them, the fellowships are run in association with the four institutions in the London area that, together, hold the greatest number of early maps, namely: British Library, The National Archives, Royal Museums Greenwich and Royal Geographical Society.
The closing date for applications is 1st NOVEMBER. The Fellowship website has an application page that should provide all the necessary information as well as answering many frequently asked questions: http://www.maphistory.info/application.html . Please indicate in your application if you are a postgraduate or an early career researcher within five years of completion of your PhD.
It would be helpful if you could say where you saw this notice. Please forward to others who might be interested.
Contact Info:
Tom Harper
Honorary Secretary, J.B. Harley Fellowships, Lead Curator of Antiquarian Mapping, The British Library
Contact Email:
URL:
http://www.maphistory.info/harley.html
7. New Publication – Lüsterkeramik. Schillerndes Geheimnis / Luster Ceramics. Shimmering Secret, Museum für Islamische Kunst
Dear Friends of the Museum für Islamische Kunst,
We are pleased to announce our latest publication Lüsterkeramik. Schillerndes Geheimnis / Luster Ceramics. Shimmering Secret
The volume aims to explore the fascination of the shimmering shine of luster ceramics by illuminating the history of this special ceramic technique up to the present day. The starting point is the restoration of a unique Iranian luster vase of the thirteenth century, which the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation has given to the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin on permanent loan.
The 98-page publication is bilingual in English and German.
Table of Contents
Check for the restoration of the luster vase also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXVeDxbp4M8
The restoration and publication were sponsered by Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung Aachen https://ludwigstiftung.de/
8. Great Lakes Adiban Society Workshop 2022
I’m pleased to invite you to this year’s Great Lakes Adiban Society Workshop on October 1-2 at the University of Chicago. Online participation is also an option. You will find below details including the panels, paper titles, and associated times. Please feel free to circulate the program more broadly. If you have any questions, please email greatlakesadibansociety@gmail.com. We are very much looking forward to your participation.
Chicago, IL 60637 [link to map] (visitor parking available nearby)
Saturday, Oct 1
On Persia, Persian, and Persians (09:15-10:45)
09:15-10:00: Jeson Ng (U of Chicago), Arab roots in a Persian land: Saljuq panegyrists and the negotiation of ethnic identity in the eleventh century
10:00-10:45: Shaahin Pishbin (U of Chicago), Persian and the Cosmos: Iranophilia in Akbar’s Hindustan
The Politics of Translation in Persianate South Asia (11:00-12:30)
11:00-11:45: Justin Smolin (U of Chicago), Religion As a Question: The Tauḍīḥ al-milal and Mughal Political Theology
11:45-12:30: Zoë Woodbury High (U of Chicago), Translating the new taste: Rasa, movement, and multilingualism in Ibrahim ʿAdil Shah II’s Kitāb-i nauras
Islamicate Poetics of Time and Place (14:00-15:30)
14:00-14:45: Rama Alhabian (Hamilton College), The Poetics of Contingency in Ḥarīrī’s “Maqāma of Oman”
14:45-15:30: Cameron Cross (U of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Call Him Diyanus in Greek! The Correlating of Pagan and Islamic Knowledge in ʿUnsurī’s Vāmiq-u ʿAzrā
Sunday, Oct 2
Islamicate Editorial & Critical Practices (09:15-10:45)
09:15-10:00: Shiva Mihan (Princeton U), Text transmission and editing in 15th-century Iran under the Timurids
10:00-10:45: Shahla Farghadani (U of Michigan, Ann Arbor), The Earliest Critics: The role of rhetoric in the creation of a proto-literary canon
Adab & the Paratext (11:00-12:30)
11:00-11:45: Seher Agarwala (Colombia U), Between word and image: Illustrated manuscripts and the construction of ethics in sixteenth-century Golconda
11:45-12:30: Manpreet Kaur (Colombia U), Scenographic Strategy as Literary Technique: Framing the teacher-student relationship in the Sufi malfūẓāt genre in South Asia
The Adab of Disclosure & Recitation (14:00-15:30)
14:00-14:45: Zach Winters (U of Chicago), Speaking Too Freely with Āẕarī Isfarāyinī (d. 866/1461-2)
14:45-15:30: Fateme Montazeri (UC Berkeley): Zikr and ‘Aqd-i Nikah: Forgotten functions of Persian quatrain
Closing Discussion (15:30-16:15)
