Archive for August 12th, 2023
Shii News – Academic Items
1. CfP: ‘Half the World Away – Cultural Circulations between Isfahan and the Early Modern Low Countries’
at Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference 2024 (click here for more details). Cambridge, UK, 10–13 July 2024. Organised by Dr Adam Sammut and Dr Ahmad Yengimolki, University of York.
When Shah ‘Abbas I made Isfahan his imperial capital in 1597, he wished to put Safavid Persia at the centre of the global economy, building the Image of the World Square (Maydan-e Naqsh-e Jahan) with the royal bazaar to the north. This feat of urban planning was praised by an English traveller as ‘as spacious, as pleasant and aromatic a market as any in the universe’, noting that it was ‘six times larger’ than equivalent squares in Paris or London.
The seventeenth century was a golden age of Euro-Safavid diplomacy, transcending political and religious differences on a war-torn continent. Persian ambassadors actively solicited military support from Catholic powers and vice-versa, against their mutual enemy, the Ottoman Turks. At this time, Catholic missionaries including Jesuits were permitted to reside in Isfahan. The relationship was also mercantile. Between 1617–65, the Dutch, English, French and Portuguese all signed trade agreements with the Shahs, entangling Persia in European colonial enterprises and giving new meaning to the saying “Isfahan, Half the World” (esfahan nesf-e jahan).
The European fascination with Persia has been the subject of exhibitions, most recently Rembrandt’s Orient (2020–21). This panel seeks to explore cultural exchange between the Low Countries and Isfahan from both sides. Works of Netherlandish art were acquired by the Safavids as diplomatic gifts but also through trade and Catholic global mission, through which channels engravings and illustrated books also arrived in Isfahan’s bazaars. Armenian merchants were key mediators, importing portraits of contemporary European rulers that were highly prized at the Safavid court. With bases in Amsterdam, Livorno and Rome as well as New Julfa, what cultural presence did Persian Armenians have in the early modern Low Countries?
On the back of commerce and missionary work, at least eleven Netherlandish artists travelled to Persia in the seventeenth century. Jan Lucasz. van Hasselt became master painter to ‘Abbas I, decorating the royal palace at Ashraf, while ‘Abbas II took drawing lessons from Hendrick Boudewijn van Lockhorst. Famously, ‘Abbas II rescued Philips Angel from legal conviction by the VOC, employing him as a court artist on 4,000 guilders per year and presenting Angel with a robe of honour upon his departure. Encounters with Netherlandish art led to a new, “hybrid” style of painting known as Farangi-sāzi, which saw Persian miniaturists adopt European painting techniques and iconography.
To paraphrase Barbara Fuchs, the story of Isfahan in the seventeenth century ‘compromises the narratives of national distinction by emphasizing inconvenient similarities and shared heritages’. The same could be said of Catholic Europe. In Antwerp, Rubens painted the Levantine merchant Nicolas de Respaigne standing on a Herat-type Persian carpet. The same artist copied a corpus of Persian miniatures, annotating the costumes in detail. As for Van Dyck, he painted the English envoy of Shah ‘Abbas I, Sir Robert Shirley, in pendant portraits with his Circassian wife, Terezia Sampsonia, whose habitually magnificent attire helped them negotiate the silk trade in tandem with military alliances. Just how fluid was cultural identity in this period?
Please send proposals of c. 500 words, along with a 1-page CV, to adam.sammut@york.ac.uk and ahmadyengimolki@gmail.com by Friday 29 September 2023.
2. The Exile’s Cookbook
Daniel Newman, transl.
Saqi, 2023
https://saqibooks.com/books/saqi/the-exiles-cookbook/
3. Persian Second Language Pedagogy Fall 2023 Virtual Lecture Series
Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies
in collaboration with
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization and the Center for Middle
Eastern Studies, University of Chicago
present
Persian Second Language Pedagogy
Fall 2023 Virtual Lecture Series
Zoom Registration
https://utoronto.zoom.us/…/tZMkf-yoqDwrEtRnTBB…
Saturday, 9 September 2023, 12:00 PM Eastern Time
“Discourse Markers in Persian: Description and Instructional Implications for Learners of Persian”
Ali Abbasi, Associate Professor of Persian, University of Maryland
Saturday, 07 October 2023, 12:00 PM Eastern Time
“Relative Difficulty in the Acquisition of the Persian Uvular Stop by English Speakers”
Reza Falahati Ardestani, Lecturer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Saturday, 11 November 2023, 12:00 PM Eastern Time
“Innovative Technology in Language Classroom: Using Virtual Reality in Task-Based Language Teaching”
Peyman Nojoumian, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Persian, University of Southern California
Saturday, 2 December 2023, 12:00 PM Eastern Time
“ABC or BCA: What to Teach First: A Psycholinguistic Approach to Teaching Persian as a Second Language”
Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, Instructional Professor of Persian, University of Chicago
4. CFP – Contested Art Histories and the Archive in Britain and the British Empire
14-17 February, 2024, Chicago
Full info at:
https://caa.confex.com/caa/2024/webprogrampreliminary/Session12893.html
5. For the International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 9-11, 2024 Kalamazoo, MI) the Great Lakes Adiban Society seeks papers discussing the interconnected “lives of great languages” from across the Afro-Eurasian landmass before 1820.
By “great languages,” we refer to translocal tongues that connected ideas, power, and peoples among overlapping geographies of the pre-modern world. Such languages include Arabic, Aramaic, Bantu languages, Chinese languages, Greek, Hindi languages, Jewish languages, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, Slavic, and Turkic. Among these traditions and many others, multilingual authors wrote, recited, and crafted texts that reroute current conceptions about politics, religion, and belonging. Analyses of such translocal linguistic and cultural regimes provide scholars ability to understand how classes of professionals, educated elites, and local thinkers produced interconnected social practices at near global scale.
We invite papers from scholars focused on culture, religion, literature, trade, linguistics, and visual arts that explore connections, divergences, and parallel frames among histories of translocal peoples, languages, and texts. By addressing broad categories of power, geography, and creativity, we seek to foster dialogue and points of comparison among scholars whose research concentrates on the linguistic traditions of the globalized pre-modern world.
Before Friday September 15, 2023, please apply for our sponsored hybrid panel by selecting one of the following links:
- To be considered for virtual presentation, apply via this link
- For in-person presentation, follow this link.
We welcome proposals from scholars across all career paths.
For questions and inquiries, please write to us at greatlakesadibansociety@gmail.com or at the address noted below.
Contact Information
Nathan L.M. Tabor, Dept. of History, WMU
Contact Email
6. Albert Houtum Schindler: A Remarkable Polymath in Late-Qajar Iran
D T Potts
Mage, 2023
https://magepublishers.com/albert-houtum-schindler-a-remarkable-polymath-in-late-qajar-iran/
7. ‘A Forgotten Money Heist: The 1746 Mission of Nadir Shah’s Chief Merchant in Russia Revisited’
K Ghereghlou
IRAN, 61, 2023
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/05786967.2020.1829983
8. Middle Eastern Studies – Prize
We are pleased to announce that the Elie and Sylvia Kedourie Prize for Outstanding Article from Volume 58 (2022) of Middle Eastern Studies has been awarded to Siavush Randjbar-Daemi for his article, ‘The Tudeh Party of Iran and the land reform initiatives of the Pahlavi state, 1958–1964’, vol. 58:4, pp.617-35.
Saul Kelly and Helen Kedourie would like to thank the judging panel, drawn from the editorial board, for their work in judging all the submissions and for reaching a decision on the winning article.
We also thank Taylor & Francis for their continuing support. Founded in 2018, the prize is named for Elie Kedourie (1926–1992) founder and editor-in-chief of Middle Eastern Studies until his death in 1992, and Sylvia Kedourie (1925–2016) who took on the editorship of the journal from 1992 until 2016. The award includes a prize payment of £500 and a year’s complimentary subscription to Middle Eastern Studies, with the article free to access on the journal’s website.
The next prize for an outstanding article published in the 2023 volume of Middle Eastern Studies will be awarded in June 2024. Please email your nomination to Saul Kelly (saul.kelly@kcl.ac.uk) or Helen Kedourie (hkedourie@gmail.com), with the subject line ‘Middle Eastern Studies – Nomination for Elie and Sylvia Kedourie Prize’, and include the following in your message: title of article, name of author, and volume and issue number; a brief reason for your nomination (no more than 200 words); your name and affiliation.
9. Articles for “Keshif E-Journal for Ottoman-Turkish Micro Editions”, Volume 1, Number 2
Our vision for Keshif is to provide a forum (and medium) for researchers to make these fragments accessible to a wider audience, including non-Ottomanists, i.e. to bring together the many pieces of the mosaic, such that complete pictures gradually emerge. Keshif is an electronic journal dedicated to collecting and editing small, fine texts and providing easy, free access to the material through a database with sound search functions.
Deadline for submissions: 1 September 2023. Information: https://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/keshif
- August 12, 2023
- by Andrew Newman
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