Archive for August, 2023

1. Early Career Fellowships at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg

Early Career fellowships are available to researchers from any nationality and discipline based in Freiburg, Germany and abroad. The fellowships enable the researchers up to eight years after completion of their PhD to carry out their own research projects. Applications are welcome from all disciplines that can be supported at the University of Freiburg.

Deadline for applications: 15 September 2023.

Information: https://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/en/funding-programmes/frias-fellowships?set_language=en

 

 

 

 

2. Senior Fellowships at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg

Senior fellowships are available to researchers from any nationality and discipline based in Freiburg, Ger-many and abroad. The fellowships enable scholars with at least eight years of postdoctoral research experience, holders of tenure-track professorships, and full-time professors to carry out their own research projects. Applications are welcome from all disciplines that can be supported at the University of Freiburg.

Deadline for applications: 15 September 2023.

Information: https://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/en/funding-programmes/frias-fellowships?set_language=en

 

 

 

 

3. Faculty Position in Arabic Language or Linguistics Associate Professor / Professor, Georgetown University in Qatar

The ideal candidate should have stature and experience in programmatic leadership with qualifications in applied linguistics or language pedagogy and experience in an American university context. Candidates should have native fluency in Modern Standard Arabic; experience in proficiency-based, communicative approaches to teaching the language; and be familiar with proficiency testing and ACTFEL standards.

Deadline for applications: 15 October 2023. Information: https://apply.interfolio.com/129108

 

 

 

 

4. Articles for ZDMG

The Zeitschrift der deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG), one of the oldest academic journals publishing on the Near East, Asia and Africa, calls for new and innovative articles on Islamic Studies of various length to be published in issues 174.2 (2024) und 175.1 (2025).

Deadline for abstracts: 15 October 2023.

Information:

https://www.dmg-web.de/page/aktuelles_en

 

 

 

5. Registration Open for 2023 BRISMES Annual Lecture

Marking the 20-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, BRISMES invites members and non-members to attend the 2023 BRISMES Annual Lecture Re-membering Iraq: On the Wounds of War by Sinan Antoon.

Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, scholar, and translator. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq and left after the 1991 Gulf War. He earned a doctorate in Arabic literature at Harvard. He has published three collections of poetry and five novels. Antoon’s translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s last prose book, In the Presence of Absence, won the 2012 American Literary Translators’ Award. His scholarly works include The Poetics of the Obscene in Pre-Modern Arabic Poetry: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf and articles on Arabic poetry and modern Iraqi culture and politics. His essays have appeared in The Guardian, Washington Post, The Nation, The New York Times, and many pan-Arab newspapers and journals. He is co-founder and co-editor at Jadaliyya.com. Antoon is associate professor of Arabic Literature at New York University.

Date: Thursday, 16 November 2023

Time: 17:30-19:00 GMT

Location: Online (via Zoom)

More information and registration: www.brismes.ac.uk/events/annual-lecture/2023

The BRISMES Annual Lecture provides an opportunity to hear from a distinguished scholar or expert within the field of Middle Eastern Studies and is a major event in the BRISMES calendar. The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but registration is essential.

 

 

 

6. Online Conference – Prospects for Democracy and the Muslim Subject: Reflecting on the Raba’a Massacre Ten Years On

15 – 16 August, 2023

https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/events/prospects-democracy-and-muslim-subject-reflecting-rabaa-massacre-ten-years

 

 

 

7. On-Line Persian Courses

Hikmat International Institute

https://hikmat-ins.com/persian-language-courses/

See also BBC News here.

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

nathan.tabor@wmich.edu

 

 

 

 

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

1. ‘In the Aura of the Prophet: Dreaming of Fāṭima and the Tropes of Connectedness in Iranian Women’s Pious Circles’

S Chavosian

in

The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam

Edited by Nelly Amri, Rachida Chih and Stefan Reichmut

Brill, 2023

https://brill.com/edcollchap-oa/book/9789004522626/BP000015.xml

 

 

 

2. The American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA) is delighted to announce this year’s Arabic Translation Contest. We kindly ask you to encourage your eligible students to participate in the contest.
Details on the topics, eligibility, requirements, submission date, submission email address, prizes, etc. can be found HERE. Entries will be evaluated by judges who will focus on accuracy in rendering both meaning and style.

The winners will be recognized during AATA’s annual meeting to be held in Montreal, Canada, in conjunction with MESA on 02 November 2023.

All entries must be submitted no later than August 15, 2023 to be eligible for consideration.