Archive for September 5th, 2023

1.ONLINE Launching Event of the Muslim Worlds Network: “Rethinking the Anthropological Enterprise in Light of Muslim Ontologies: Secular Vestiges, Spiritual Epistemologies, Vertical Knowledge”, 7 September 2023, 15:30 – 17:30 Istanbul Time

Because of the difficulty anthropology continues to face in relinquishing its secular vestiges, field encounters with a not-immediately-perceptible reality have usually been deemed insignificant in anthropological ac-counts. In dialogue with the ontological turn and other recent developments in anthropology, we introduce our network advocating for a more profound reconsideration of the role that the encounter with other modes of knowing in the field might have for the discipline tout court.

Information: https://www.easaonline.org/networks/mwn .

Registration: https://www.facebook.com/events/1392692727946547

2. ONLINE Book Talk ” Animal Sacrifice and the Origins of Islam” (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Prof. Brannon Wheeler, Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, Shenandoah University, VA, 14 September 2023, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST

Islam is the only biblical religion that still practices animal sacrifice. Every year more than a million animals are shipped to Mecca from all over the world to be slaughtered during the Muslim Hajj. This multi-disciplinary volume is the first to examine the physical foundations of this practice and the significance of the ritual.

Information and registration: https://www.contemporaryislam.org/brannonwheelertalk.html

3. ONLINE Lecture on the Book “The Kurdish Nobility in the Ottoman Empire: Loyalty, Autonomy, and Privilege” by Nilay Özok Gundogan, Center for Middle East Studies, Brown University, 26 October 2023, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm ET

Focusing on one noble Kurdish family based in the emirate of Palu, a fortressed town in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the book provides the first systematic analysis of the hereditary nobility in Kurdistan between 1720 and 1895. The abolishment of the Kurdish nobles’ hereditary privileges and the confiscation of their landholdings in the 1840s triggered a five-decade-long conflict.

Information and registration:

https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/events/2023/nilay-ozok-gundogan-kurdish-nobility

4. Research Student Workshop on “Interreligious Relations in the Middle Ages” with Prof. John Tolan (University of Nantes), University of Haifa, 23 November 2023

Prof. Tolan will conduct a workshop on interreligious relations in the Middle Ages. A selected group of re-searcher students will be invited to present their work as part of the workshop.

Deadline for abstracts: 1 October 2023. Information: https://euqu.eu/2023/07/26/call-for-participation-in-a-research-student-workshop-on-interreligious-relations-in-the-middle-ages/

5. 2nd World Congress of the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies: “Translation, Transposition, and Travel in the Global Nineteenth Century”, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait, 16-19 January 2025

We welcome proposals for papers that explore transits between places, languages, cultures, and ideas. Top-ics: •Travel and adventure • Travel narratives and nautical fiction • Pilgrimage • Slave trade and the forced movement of peoples • Circulations, transfers, and migrations • Nomadism • Exile and displacement • Ex-plorers and expeditions • Colonization • Translation and life writing • Travel maps and cartographies of navi-gation • The re/discovery of ancient civilizations/Egyptomania

Deadline for abstracts: 15 November 2023. Information: https://www.sgncscongress.com/call-for-papers

6. Tenure-Track Assistant Professor on European Imperialism, Colonization, Decolonization (Focus Middle East), Department of History, Boston University

We welcome candidates specializing in either the early modern or modern period. Candidates should demon-strate a commitment to excellence in research and teaching. Responsibilities include teaching undergraduate and graduate core courses and in fields of specialization. Ph.D. in hand by beginning of employment

Deadline for applications: 1 October 2023. Information: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/25412

7. Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Position in Classics (Mediterranean or Near Eastern Culture Beyond Greece or Rome), College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA

Candidates should be prepared to teach courses on ancient peoples and cultures beyond Greeks and Ro-mans as well as on a language of the ancient Mediterranean or Near East other than Greek or Latin, such as Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian, Aramaic, Classical Arabic, Hebrew, or Phoenician. The teaching and research should be informed by one or more interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, such as Critical Race and Ethnic Studies; Environmental Studies; or Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.

Deadline for applications: 22 September 2023. Information: https://apply.interfolio.com/130024

8. Chapters for Edited Book on “Disability History in the Middle East”

There are historians contributing chapters from late Ottoman-era Istanbul and Cairo to points east, including early twentieth-century Iran, but we seek one or two scholars of North Africa to make our volume more inclu-sive.

Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2023. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20003893/cfp-disability-history-middle-east-edited-volume

9. Persian Language Pedagogy lecture series to begin this Saturday, Sep 9

We are resuming our virtual lecture series on Persian pedagogy. Please join us for the first lecture in our 2023 autumn lecture series on Persian Language Pedagogy: New Trends and Innovations organized jointly by the University of Chicago and the University of Toronto. You can register in the link below.

Register in advance for this meeting:

https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkf-yoqDwrEtRnTBB_LZR6s8lKntJmiaHV

Saturday, September 09, 2023 

12:00 PM Eastern Time 

Discourse Markers in Persian: Description and Instructional Implications  

Ali R. Abasi, Associate Professor of Persian, University of Maryland 

An examination of naturally occurring instances of talk-in-interaction across various speech exchange systems readily reveals the ubiquity of discourse markers in contemporary Persian. Given their prevalence, one aspect of communicative competence in Persian as an additional language, or in any language for that matter, involves control over their use. Teaching these consequential markers, however, is a challenge for two main reasons. One is that their instruction needs to draw on their empirically grounded functional descriptions – which are largely scares. A second reason has to do with the indexical character of the markers that renders them sequentially contingent, hence surprisingly complex, and rather unwieldly to master. Their status as interactional devices, therefore, entails the relevance of the ongoing debate around teaching interactional/pragmatic competence in instructional contexts. In this light, this paper examines some highly recurrent markers in contemporary Persian and then considers some options for their teaching in classroom contexts.

Bio:  

Ali R. Abasi is an Associate Professor of Persian at the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Maryland. Trained as an applied linguist, his primary research interests include second language writing, discourse analysis, and teaching Persian to speakers of other languages. Some of his publications have appeared in such journals as Journal of Second Language Writing, English for Specific Purposes, Journal of Language and Politics, and International Journal of Applied Linguistics.