Archive for September 19th, 2023
Shii News – Academic Items
1.HYBRID Lecture on “Conflicting Perceptions: A Journey through Modern (Mis-)Readings of the Qurʾān” by Stefan Weidner (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin), 20 September 2023, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm CEST
Drawing on literary history and personal experiences German writer and Arabist Stefan Weidner illuminates some of the more striking examples of the Qurʾān’s colonial and postcolonial perceptions in both East and West. These examples range from its comparison to the Upanishads in Mughal India to its transformation into an anti-modern manifesto in 20th-century German poetry.
Information and registration: https://blog.sbb.berlin/termin/collegium-coranicum-at-the-staatsbibliothek/
2. ONLINE Webinar “MENA Jewry After the ‘Middle Eastern Turn’: Modernity and Its Shadows” with the Authors of a Special Issue of the Journal “Jewish Social Studies”, Penn State University and University of Chicago, 18 September 2023, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm EST
Speakers: Orit Bashkin (University of Chicago), Michelle Campos (Penn State University), Shay Hazkani (University of Maryland-College Park), Abigail Jacobson (Hebrew University), Jessica Marglin (USC), Moshe Naor (University of Haifa), Molly Oringer (UCLA), Achim Rohde (University of Hamburg), Lior Sternfeld (Penn State University), Alon Tam (Ben Gurion University).
Information and registration: https://mesana.org/resources-and-opportunities/2023/08/31/mena-jewry-after-the-middle-eastern-turn-modernity-and-its-shadows-special-issue-of-jss
3. ONLINE Lecture “Byzantium as an Indian Ocean Society” by Rebecca Darley (University of Leeds), Mary Jaharis (Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, Brookline, MA), 28 September 2023, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm ET
This paper examines Byzantium not as a player in an Indian Ocean defined by mercantile networks, but as one of many societies around the Indian Ocean littoral, shaped by common forces. Between the fourth and the ninth centuries, understanding Byzantium as an Indian Ocean society provides a new insight into the development of governmental structures, state religion and economic practices that all affected the lives of millions.
Information and registration: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/byzantium-as-an-indian-ocean-society
4. HYBRID Double Book Lunch on “States of Cultivation: Imperial Transition and Scientific Agriculture in the Eastern Mediterranean” and “Bedouin Bureaucrats: Mobility and Property in the Ottoman Empire”, Kevorkian Center, New York University, 28 September 2023, 5:30 pm ET
Information and registration: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20004285/double-book-launch-nora-barakat-and-elizabeth-williams-conversation
5. ONLINE Workshop „Creative Ethnographic Methods in the Middle East”, Center for Middle East Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, 20 October 2023, 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Hosting four panelists working with different communities of the Middle East, this webinar will unravel diverse uses of creative and experimental methods in anthropology beyond the conventional modes of academic writing – such as poetry, graphic novel and documentary. The webinar will explicate how using such methods facilitate and complicate ethnographic knowledge production. It will also provide insights to people interested in utilizing creative methods in their analytical thinking.
Information and registration:
https://watson.brown.edu/cmes/events/2023/panel-creative-ethnographic-methods
6. Conference “Rural Worlds and Social Classes in Egypt”, Egyclass Network, Cairo, 19-20 No-vember 2023
The objective is to rethink social stratification and class relations in the context of diverse ruralities in Egypt. How can we grasp and trace the dynamics of changing social life in rural and semi-rural areas? This conference seeks to bring together researchers working on various topics, here with a particular emphasis on the continued relevance of class in rural settings.
Deadline for abstracts: 2 October 2023.
7. ONLINE 17th Annual Conference of the Muslim Studies Program on “Researching Muslim America: Intersecting Identities, Methodological Advances, and Lingering Challenges”, Michigan State University, 8-9 February 2024
This call for papers is meant to invite scholars in a diverse array of fields, including sociology, religious stud-ies, political science, communication, psychology, geography, and more.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 October 2023. Information: https://muslimstudies.isp.msu.edu/about/conference/
8. Second Biannual Conference of the Persian Manuscripts Association on “Timurid and Safavid Music in Manuscripts”, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, 24-24 February 2024
This conference aims to bring together scholars from various fields, working on music, philosophy, theology, mysticism, history, literature and art history, as reflected in Persian and Arabic manuscripts. We would love to hear about your studies and discoveries about music, musicians, instruments, court repertories, perfor-mance practices, musical patronage, music circles etc., during the Timurid and Safavid periods in Greater Iran, Central Asia, South Asia and the Ottoman world.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 October 2023. Information: https://persianmanuscripts.org/news/
9. Instructional Professor in Northwest Semitics, University of Chicago
We invite applications for appointment as Instructional Professor (open rank) in Northwest Semitics, particularly Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, and related dialects/languages.
Deadline for application: 1 November 2023. Information: https://apply.interfolio.com/131663
10. Postdoctoral and Visiting Fellowship Program in Regional Political Economy, Princeton University
The program was created with the goal of developing a new generation of scholars able to analyze and make policy recommendations about the regional political economy in the Middle East, East, South or Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
– Postdoctoral Fellowship Program https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/30944
– Visiting Fellowship Program: https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/31262
Deadline for applications: 5 December 2023.
11. Nominations for the “Women Historians of the Middle East (WHOME) Mentorship Award”
The nominees must be woman-identifying PhD holders whose scholarship and/or teaching focuses on Middle East history. They may be at any type of institution (community college, teaching-intensive, research-fo-cused), may be at any stage of their careers, and may hold any type of faculty position (part-time, adjunct, T/T).
Deadline for nominations: 10 October 2023. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20005991/2023-whome-women-historians-middle-east-mentorship-award-call
12. Articles for Journal “Anatolica”, Netherlands Institute in Turkey
Submissions are welcome on the archaeology and history of Anatolia and neighboring regions from prehis-tory to the Ottoman era. Original scholarly papers from the disciplines of archaeology, history, history of archaeology, history of art, anthropology, epigraphy, history of architecture, archaeometry, geographical in-formation systems (GIS), numismatic, maritime archaeology, cultural heritage management, digital humani-ties, museum studies are in the scope of the journal.
Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2024. Information: https://www.nit-istanbul.org/publication/anatolica
13. CFP ACLA Seminar: Textual Geographies and Technologies Decentralization: World Literature Through the Spectrum of Digital Humanities
Digitizing literature and textualizing the digital has been the key feature of today’s humane world that puts severe emphasis on the way to artificialize texts, literatures, figures and knowledge at large. With such case of emerging call for intelligence, one can only be more sceptical about the drastic change the digital sphere brought into the meaning and the geography of the texts, authors and readers as it manipulates the truth turning it into something phantomatic. And yet, digital humanities tools proved to be somehow efficient when used to read literatures of the world by using distant reading strategy when searching for networks and scopes of texts than the close ones. Either way, the question remains whether digitalization of texts and its annexes can help worldling literatures or minoring them in different directions, in the sense that literatures circulate well outside their home making it reachable and domesticable than before. In addition, pandemics and online communities have disrupted the ordinarily physical human contact towards which significant efforts have been made to keep it digitized as possible, the fact that shapes our understanding and perception of virtualized literatures and its incorporated spaces, themes, and effects.
The main concept behind this seminar is that rich data can provide a unique way of knowledge access about social and cultural change through the lens of literary production. It can provide us with much more insight than any other traditional method of storage. The main problem in digital archives is that, while it is relatively easy to collect large amounts of data, making use of the data is a completely different story. While we can easily store thousands of literary works, it is the analysis of these works that can be of benefit to knowledge synthesis and accumulation.This seminar is open for researchers with projects that explore digitized printed texts printed in the 19th century till present, including literary books, periodicals, and printed ephemera.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- How can digital humanities shape our humane experiences of literature?
- Does it suggests/offers other avenues of interpretation?
- Can AI add more tenor to the way we read and taste literature?
- Technical challenges of DH with non-anglophone and non-Latin material
- Postcolonial DH and World Literature
- Critique of DH in Literary Studies
- Evaluating digital scholarship in World Literature.
- Can we still maintain the same meaning and demarcations of geography of texts in how they affects their horizones.
- Does the digital sphere revisits the crossing, circulation and translation of literary texts?
- What are the new channels of worldlifying minor and marginalized literatures through the prism of digitalization and vertualualization of literatures?
14. Shopping with Allah, Muslim pilgrimage, gender and consumption in a globalized world
UCL Press, 2023
Viola Thimm. Free download: https://bit.ly/3L2r1QW
15. PhD in Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts”, University of Hamburg
Call for applications: Doctoral scholarships for internationals
The Graduate School of the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” at CSMC invites applications for doctoral scholarships within the Graduate School Scholarship Programme (GSSP) of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), for a 3-year period of doctoral studies starting from 1 April 2024 onwards.
Awardees will receive a full scholarship (1200 EUR/month) plus health insurance and additional allowances (for details, see here). An extension to four years is possible in well-grounded cases. We are looking for highly qualified and very motivated international candidates (non-German citizens) with excellent English skills and holding a Master’s, Diploma or equivalent degree in any discipline concerned with the study of manuscript cultures and written artefacts. In particular, we welcome applications from candidates from developing and emerging countries. About CSMC as a research environment CSMC has created a cross-disciplinary and international research environment for the holistic study of handwritten artefacts and the rich diversity of global manuscript cultures beyond traditionally held boundaries of academic discipline, time, and space. Today, around 150 researchers from over 40 academic disciplines are working on more than 60research projects, many of which combine the humanities with the natural sciences and computer sciences.
Application deadline and further information Applications for GSSP doctoral scholarships are to be submitted by 31 October 2023 to the Coordinator of the Graduate School by e-mail. The full text of the call and details about the requirements can be found here: https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/study-at-csmc/dr-phil/scholarships.html.
Contact Dr Merryl Rebello, Coordinator of the Graduate School E-mail: merryl.rebello@uni-hamburg.de
16. Bard College – Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) – History of the Middle East and North Africa
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=65945
17. University of California – Irvine – Assistant Professor, Jews in the Muslim World
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=65968
18. Brill: Just published: Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr, a new online version of Ibn Saʿd’s Compendium of the Lives of the First Generations of Muslims. Ibn Saʿd’s Compendium is the earliest extant biographical dictionary on the life of the Prophet and the early generations of Muslims. It is one of the most important historical works about the first centuries of Muslim society in Arabic. This classic Brill edition was first supervised by Eduard Sachau and was originally titled Biographien Muhammeds, seiner Gefährten und der späteren Träger des Islams bis zum Jahre 230 der Flucht. Find out more.
This new online version is published on Scholarly Editions, Brill’s bespoke platform for the study of texts and text editions. Scholarly Editions offers many useful and unique features such as customizable panes for side-by-side reading of texts, easy features for citing and exporting, customizable text scaling and more.
19. Associate Professor/Full Professor – Women Gender & Sexuality
University of Virginia: UVA Provost’s Office: College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences: Women, Gender & Sexuality
Location
Charlottesville, VA
Open Date
Sep 13, 2023
Description
The Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality at the University of Virginia invites applications for a tenure track appointment as Associate or Full Professor working in gender and sexuality studies of the Global South. We especially welcome humanities scholars whose work extends the existing strengths of the department.
For priority consideration, applications must be received by November 1; however, the position will remain open until filled. The appointment begins with the fall term of 2024, with an anticipated start date of August 25, 2024.
Visit http://apply.interfolio.com/129310 to apply with the following:
- A cover letter, which includes a brief description of the candidate’s teaching, research, and/or service, including how their skills and experiences could advance the University’s ambition to cultivate the most vibrant community in higher education in order to prepare students to be citizen-leaders in a diverse and globally connected world
- Curriculum vitae
- Teaching philosophy and experience
- A writing sample
- The names of three references (References may be contacted for a written letter of recommendation at a later point in the application process, and will be given a deadline by which to submit their recommendations)
For questions about the position, please contact Professor Farzaneh Milani at wgsuva@virginia.edu. For questions about the application process, please contract Melanie Sponaugle, Academic Recruiter, at unw5dq@virginia.edu.
20. 1st International Conference on Visual Culture. Periphery and Interdisciplinarity in Visual Studies
Call for oral presentations in person
Over the last few decades, the fields of knowledge of art history, philosophy, literary theory, cultural industries –and many others– have given way to an interdisciplinary encounter conceptualized as visual studies. This field has focused on the image in any medium, medium, or time. Images have the capacity to influence our perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors and, in turn, are nourished by the cultural conditioning factors of each time and place.
The study of visual culture is not limited to dominant discourses and practices, but must prominently include marginalized, subversive, or alternative perspectives and voices, which have been displaced in some cases from the more visible cultural spotlight. By paying attention to approaches from the periphery, the conference seeks to open up spaces for the critical analysis of images and representations linked to secondary spaces, outside the ‘canon’ and mainstream trends, that are overlooked or not directly supported by the dominant cultural policies of the time.
As Keith Moxey, Norman Bryson, and Michael Ann Holly have pointed out, visual studies have not come to banish traditional art historical studies, but to provide new tools for the analysis of both past and present historical culture. For this reason, this congress will give a special place to proposals focused on the past whenever they discuss the applications of the concepts of periphery or interdisciplinarity, especially from visual evidence prior to our present time.
In this current era of disciplinary hyper-specialization, subjected to the commercialism of increasingly commercial science, to speak of visual culture as an interdisciplinary field does not imply leaving visual phenomena on the margins of traditional areas of study, but rather integrating them discursively with very different methodologies to provide novel readings of devices, artifacts, and visual or audiovisual media. This way of understanding the visual also affects museums and all the institutions that make up the cultural industries, from criticism to the art market, sectors to which this congress is also oriented.
Keynote speakers
Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam)
Keith Moxey (Columbia University)
Matthew Rampley (Masaryk University)
Michele Bacci (University of Fribourg)
Juan Martín Prada (University of Cádiz)
Ana García Varas (University of Zaragoza)
Sergio Martínez Luna (UNED)
Paula Barreiro López (Université Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès/Laboratoire FRAMESOA)
Preferred thematic lines
The communication proposals can be framed along one of the following lines:
- Visual Studies and Art History as Epistemologies in the 21st Century.
- Visual Studies as an Interdisciplinary Field of Study.
- Cultural Tensions Between Visual “Centres” and “Peripheries” Throughout History
- The Globalisation of Visuality and Spatial and Temporal Borders
- Digital Humanities and Visual Studies
- The Visuality of the Past from the Present: New Approaches to the Visual ‘Canon’.
- Interdisciplinarity and Periphery in Cultural Institutions: Museums, Criticism and Art Market
- Other Projects and Practices un Visual Studies and Art History
Submission of abstracts for evaluation
Researchers interested in participating with an oral communication in-person in the conference, should send their abstracts through this webpage‘s application before September 22, 2023. If you have any questions or doubts, do not hesitate to contact us at congreso.culturavisual@urjc.es.
Publications derived from the Conference
After the event has taken place, at least one scientific monograph will be published with a selection of chapters written by the speakers and presenters who wish to do so, with an independent evaluation process that will supervise the final texts of the interventions to guarantee their scientific quality. The book will be published by an impact publisher indexed in Q1 of the Scholarly Publishers Indicators (SPI) or a Q1 journal in Scopus. Interested persons may purchase the book in advance as a complement to their registration for the conference, bearing in mind that the publication will be delayed for at least one year after the date of the conference.
Summary of Deadlines
- Deadline for submission of paper proposals: 22 September 2023
- Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 25 September 2023
- Deadline for early registration for the conference: 02 October 2023*.
* It will be compulsory for at least one of the authors of the paper to register for the conference, following the corresponding modality. Certificates and conference documentation will only be issued to those who have successfully registered for the conference.
Contact Information
1st International Conference on Visual Culture. Periphery and Interdisciplinarity in Visual Studies.
https://eventos.urjc.es/go/visualculture
Department of Historical and Social Studies
Rey Juan Carlos University
congreso.culturavisual@urjc.es
Contact Email
congreso.culturavisual@urjc.es
URL
https://eventos.urjc.es/go/visualculture
21. Exhibition – The Intersection between Texts and Textiles across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia: a display and talk at the Library of Congress, 29.9.23
The Library of Congress is an ideal location to analyze the overlap between textiles and texts.
This one-day display includes cloth manuscript wraps and covers from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, Hmong embroidered cloth story maps, fabric swatch books from Japan, and manuscripts depicting the labor of textile production.
Join us 1:00 for a fascinating talk and Q&A about the intersection between texts and textiles by Sylvia Houghteling, Associate Professor of the History of Art at Bryn Mawr College.
This talk will also be live on Zoom. Register for the talk through this link
Contact Information
Charlotte Giles, South Asia reference librarian
Contact Email
URL
https://www.loc.gov/item/event-410703/the-intersection-between-texts-and-textil…
22. The Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University is seeking outstanding scholars of the contemporary Middle East and North Africa for a residential fellowship to begin September 1, 2024. The fellowship is for a maximum of two years upon the successful completion of fellowship requirements in the first year. The fellowship is open to all disciplines—particularly politics, economics, history, religion, sociology and anthropology. The fellowship’s goal is to allow untenured early career scholars the flexibility and means to advance a specific research project related to the contemporary Middle East and North Africa.
*ELIGIBILITY *
The 2024–2025 Junior Research Fellowship is open to both recent PhDs (as a postdoctoral position) and untenured assistant professors in Middle East-related fields. Applicants must have received their PhD within the last six years. A PhD must be in hand by September 1, 2024.
*TERMS*
This fellowship is a one-year appointment beginning September 1, 2024, and ending August 31, 2025, or August 31, 2026 if conditions for renewal are met. The financial package includes an annual salary of $70,000, an annual research budget of $4,000, funding for conferences, and a one-time relocation reimbursement up to $1,500. Fringe benefits will be available during the appointment period.
Fellows are required to be in residence at the Crown Center during the tenure of the fellowship and not hold any teaching or service responsibilities outside of the Center. During their residence, fellows produce one public-facing Crown Center publication per year and participate in all Crown Center events, including seminars, lunches, workshops, meetings, and retreats.
*APPLICATION MATERIALS*
1. Cover letter, including names and emails for three referees
2. Curriculum Vitae
3. A two-page research statement describing your current and future research projects, as well as any recent accomplishments in your work
4. A research writing sample no more than 20 pages in length
*APPLICATION DEADLINE *
October 27, 2023
*NOTIFICATION *
February 1, 2024
*INQUIRIES*
You may direct inquiries to Kristina Cherniahivsky at crowncenter@brandeis.edu or call 781-736-5322.
- September 19, 2023
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment