Archive for 2024
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Traditions and Transitions: New Directions in the Study of Islam and Society in South Asia
Spring 2025, LUMS, Lahore
The 2025 Annual Conference of the Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS will focus on Islam and society in historical and contemporary South Asia.
In a spirit of reimagining the past and present, we invite submissions that contribute to a richer understanding of the variety of Islamic traditions and their lived expressions in South Asia, as well as the relationships between Islam and other religious traditions and their followers. Submissions may be historical, ethnographic, or from other disciplinary perspectives in the humanities and social sciences. We are particularly interested in explorations of what it means to construct religious traditions as objects of study.
The study of Islamic traditions represents significant domains of scholarly intervention. Over recent decades, scholars from various disciplines have increasingly come to question orientalist assumptions about the vitality and creativity of religious traditions, often interrogating the usefulness of the category of religion. Research on post-classical Islam has noted significant and subtle ways in which these traditions have changed, creatively responding to developing intellectual, societal, and existential concerns. Such research has also turned to the complex interactions and intersections between different religious traditions in South Asia, across multiple languages and contexts. Finally, scholars have investigated the myriad ways in which premodern traditions interacted with colonial modernity and continue to do so in the post-colonial context. Nonetheless, the extent, significance, and shape of these processes remain up for debate and further inquiry.
At the same time, a growing body of research has also explored the diverse ways of being Muslim found in contemporary South Asia. On the one hand, this has involved moving beyond an assumed dichotomy between Sufism and reformism to trace creative reformulations of Muslim religiosity. On the other hand, it has involved approaches that focus not only on rituals and texts but on what Muslims actually do in their everyday lives, in relation to issues such as gender and class, and to processes of inclusion and exclusion, contestation and coexistence. This includes an examination of their relationships with members of other religions in the varied contexts of the subcontinent.
Aiming to bring these issues together in an interdisciplinary forum, we invite papers in the following areas pertinent to South Asia:
- Historical studies of Islamicate traditions
- Studies of interreligious encounters and interactions in Islamicate South Asia
- Colonial modernity and its impact on religion
- Social scientific and humanities research on Muslim and non-Muslim communities, culture and arts
- Theorisations of religious traditions and contestations of the enduring legacies of orientalism, colonialism and eurocentrism in the humanities and social sciences
The conference will take place in-person at LUMS between April 18th and 20th 2025 and will include a tour of Lahore. LUMS will provide meals for panelists, and there is a limited budget for accommodation for those coming from outside Lahore. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is December 31, 2024. Responses will be sent out in January.
Researchers interested in participating can submit the title and abstract of their proposed presentation (up to 300 words), along with a brief biography and email address, to hssconf@lums.edu.pk.
2. The Pashtun Borderland
A Religious and Cultural History of the Taliban
Cambridge, 2024,
Jan-Peter Hartung
3. Mazda Books on the Shahnameh
http://www.mazdapublishers.com/book/the-shahnameh
http://www.mazdapublishers.com/book/women-in-the-shahnameh
http://www.mazdapublishers.com/book/epic-of-the-kings-shahnameh
- December 10, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shii News – ‘Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire’ – E Hayes and P M Sijpesteijn, eds.
Including:
Edmund Hayes, “The Epistolary Imamate: Circular Letters in the Administration of the Shiʿi Community”;
Georg Leube, “Local Elites during Two Periods of Civil Strife: Al-Ashʿath b. Qays, Muḥammad b. al-Ashʿath, and the Quarter of Kinda in Seventh-Century Kufa”;
Nimrod Hurvitz, “Rulers, Ḥanābila, and Shiʿis: The Unravelling Social Cohesion of Fourth/Tenth-Century Baghdad”;
Paul Walker, “Resistance to and Acceptance of the Fatimids in North Africa: A Shiʿi Dynasty in Negotiation with Both Adherents and Enemies”
- December 09, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Jan-Peter Hartung, ‘Approaching Taliban Ideology through Layers of Time’.
CSI ONLINE Monday Majlis on the 9th of December, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)
Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter
Register please on this link:
https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0rdu2srjgrGNVDIoeptFzTR__cmUbdwYS2
2. Nur Baba: A Sufi Novel of late Ottoman Istanbulby Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu
(Routledge, 2023).
3. Doha Residence Program in Advanced Arabic & Social Studies
Fall Semester 2025
A number of merit-based tuition waiver and housing support
The Language Center at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) is pleased to announce its Fall semester 2025-2026 Doha Residence Program in Advanced Arabic Language and Social Studies.
The Program is a unique forum for academic and cultural exchange between the DI’s predominantly native Arabic- speaking graduate students and faculty (from across the Arab world) and their international non-native or heritage peers.
The DRP is offered for one semester on site in Doha. It meets the language, culture, and academic needs of advanced non-native and heritage graduate students who wish to strengthen their language and cultural skills, as well as prepare for specific challenges related to their academic areas of expertise. The Program is delivered entirely in Arabic and consists of a twin advanced language-training and academic components.
The language-training component prepares students to function professionally in Arabic and offers dedicated courses in language, translation, and content-based instruction. The program adapts to the academic needs of students as a base for linguistic and cultural acquisition, emphasizes productive and presentation skills, and develops higher levels of proficiency in speaking, listening, reading and writing.
The academic component gives fellows the opportunity to take advantage of the wide array of unique graduate-level courses the DI distinguished faculty teach in Arabic through its academic units: The School of Social Sciences and Humanities and the School of Public Administration and Development Economics. For more detailed information about the DI, please go to:
https://www.dohainstitute.edu.qa/EN/Pages/default.aspx
The Doha Residence Program is an important part of the DI’s mission to establish, maintain, and nurture intellectual links and two-way dialogues between its students, faculty, and the international learning and research community.
The DI aims to create an enduring legacy of intellectual innovation and education within the Arab world and beyond. It assumes and promotes the Arabic language as a tool of scientific inquiry, an official language in public discourse, and a primary language for teaching and research.
To Apply to the Doha Residence Program, click on the link below:
https://dilc.wufoo.com/forms/m1l744dv0cr3eir/
Semester Program Features:
- 6 credits of Intensive Arabic,
- A language partner,
- Option to audit graduate academic courses taught in Arabic,
- Option to have an academic partner,
- Cultural program
- Access to the DI and Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies rich conferences, symposia, and guest lectures.
Admission Requirements:
- Advanced level in Arabic,
- Tuition fees: 9,000 QAR (approximately 2,250€ or 2,465$),
- Housing: 11,000 per semester (approximately 2,650€ or 3,000$).
Program Dates:
- Application Deadline: March 15, 2025
- Start of Classes: August 24, 2025
- End of Program: December 04, 2025
* Reading Week Holiday: 26-30 October, 2025
4. Fellowship – Mongol Connections: A research network project and travelling seminar hosted at The Courtauld
We invite applications from early career (post-doctoral) and advanced doctoral levels for a three-year (2025-2027) travelling seminar project entitled Mongol Connections. Mongol Connections is made possible with support from Getty through its Connecting Art Histories initiative. We are seeking to develop a collaborative network of researchers and scholars in Art History and sister fields—anthropology, history, archaeology, among others—at different early career stages, to foster new connections between scholars across national and disciplinary boundaries, to stimulate and contribute to the burgeoning of a field in scholarship.
The Project
Mongol Connections (https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/mongol-connections/) approaches histories of the arts of the Mongol era (13-14th centuries) as intersecting, connecting, and competing histories of objects, artists, and technologies, across the Eurasian expanse of the Great Mongol State. The project aims to foster new connections between scholars beyond national and disciplinary boundaries, to stimulate a new field of scholarship which uses the Mongol case as a research tool for investigation into trans-Asian, and transnational perspectives on to the arts, and to surface new collaborative projects that can sustain beyond the lifetime of Mongol Connections.
Annual ten-day seminars will bring together the selected team of scholars, conservators, archaeologists, and cultural heritage professionals from Mongolia, East, West, South and Central Asia, as well as Europe and North America, with leading subject specialists. The traveling network will convene, for about 10 days, in Mongolia (August/September 2025), Uzbekistan (July/August 2026) and the United Kingdom (March 2027), with the final trip timed to coincide with the opening of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art, London, on the art of the Mongol world, and its accompanying conference.
This is a unique and exciting opportunity for members of the travelling seminar to create a network of researchers of all career stages from multiple localities along the Mongol routes. Visits will include archaeological sites and museums, and pre-assigned scholarly presentations on site, as well as meetings and colloquia at leading academic institutions along the way. The travelling seminar offers an important opportunity for ECR and doctoral candidates to generate new collaborative and interdisciplinary research and build their experience working with partners in and outside academia. Prior to the first trip and between each one, the group will convene remotely to share reports, blogs, discussions, expanded bibliographies, image albums, and other forms of research and reflection related to our joint studies and travels.
Travel details
The extraordinary opportunity to travel to Mongolia and Uzbekistan will offer unexpected discoveries but also will require readiness to meet potential challenges of travelling long distances and sometimes along unpaved roads. A long journey by vans or four-wheel drives capable of navigating rough roads will be required to traverse part of the Gobi Desert, for example. Sleeping in ger camps and sharing mealtimes are part of the joy but are also at times demanding of everyone’s good cheers. The journeys are as comfortable as we can arrange and as exciting and richly instructive for the group as can be organised. The cost of economy flights to and from each destination, standard, shared accommodations, transportation to-from airports in main arrival cities, and most meals are covered during the travel period. Single person accommodations will be extra! The London visit, in early 2027, will serve as a capstone to the travelling seminars coinciding with the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art, the accompanying conference, a gathering at The Courtauld, and including visits to nearby museums and private collections.
Applying to join Mongol Connections
Participants are expected to be in the early career stage after receipt of their PhD or be at the doctoral level. They are also expected to be available to join all three annual trips (2025, 2026 and 2027) and to contribute remotely to online discussions and resources for the three-year duration of the project. The participants who decide to pull out of the seminars will need to inform the project leader and the project manager at least two months in advance as the fluctuating numbers of travellers change the costs borne by the tour companies that organise the trips and affect the Mongol Connections budget. By applying to the scheme, you also consent to the sharing of your information within reason with the Getty for the purposes of project planning.Application is by CV and covering letter that includes a statement of up to 1500 words outlining how your knowledge and experience will contribute to the aims of the Mongol Connections project and how participation aligns with your research and professional goals. All application materials should be sent in PDF format to mongolconnections@courtauld.ac.uk and Amanda.Leong@courtauld.ac.uk using the subject line: Mongol Connections Application. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
We will be having a short information session on 6th January 2025, 2 pm GMT where Professor Sussan Babaie, the lead on Mongol Connections, will introduce the traveling seminar and answer questions. Please email mongolconnections@courtauld.ac.uk for a zoom link to attend this information session.
Application materials:
Your CV + a covering letter that has your name, email, physical address, and your affiliation, if any. The letter is in effect a rationale for why you think you should be part ofMongol Connections project, how you can contribute to the development of this research network and how you envision participation in this travel seminar to impact your future research.
Deadline for receipt of applications is 13th January 2025, 5pm GMT.
Potential interviews for shortlisted candidates will be carried out between the 11th-21st February 2025. Recommendation letters from references will also be requested from shortlisted candidates.
Applicants will be advised of the outcome of their application by 24th February 2025.
For further information or an informal discussion about the project, please contact Professor Sussan Babaie: sussan.babaie@courtauld.ac.uk
5. Workshop – Christian Arabic intensive course at Westminster College, Cambridge, UK
Read Christian Arabic in Cambridge in January 2025! Join our intensive course at Westminster College, Cambridge, UK.
Sign up here: https://www.westminster.cam.ac.uk/biblical-languages/christian-arabic
Course dates: 20–25 January 2025.
Contact Email
URL
https://www.westminster.cam.ac.uk/biblical-languages/christian-arabic
6. Jabbari, A., ‘From Persianate Cosmopolis to Persianate Modernity: Translating from Urdu to Persian in Twentieth-Century Iran and Afghanistan’, Iranian Studies (2022), 55, 611–630
Open Access at: https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2022.21
7. HYBRID Research Colloquium “Histories of Ottoman Political Thought: New Perspectives” by Prof. Kaya Sahin (Ohio State University), Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz, 17 December 2024, 16:00 CET
Information and registration: https://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/institute/dates-and-press/events
8. Workshop “Calligraphie et inscriptions aux frontières du monde islamique”, Sorbonne Université, 22-23 janvier 2025
Cette rencontre est organisée en deux temps : une table-ronde réunira d’abord un chercheur, une calligraphe et un tailleur de pierre, dans un échange portant sur les modus operandi. Une journée d’études rassemblera ensuite archéologues, historiens de l’art et épigraphistes travaillant sur les inscriptions sur les rives de la mer Noire, la Péninsule Ibérique, et le monde indo-persan.
Information, programme et inscription : https://callfront.hypotheses.org/7068
9. Winter Workshop of the Mediterranean Seminar: “The Multilingual Mediterranean”, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 28 February – 1 March 2025
The workshop’s aim is to bring together scholars working on the history of multilingualism in the Mediterranean region. Our theme, “the multilingual Mediterranean,” encompasses such topics as language contact zones, multi-lingual art forms and media, and the relationships between language and identity. Our hope is to attract contributions from scholars working on several geographical contexts and historical periods in the Mediterranean world.
Information and programme: https://mailchi.mp/mediterraneanseminar/attend-the-multilingual-mediterranean-the-winter-2025-mediterranean-seminar-workshop-28-february-1-march-urbana-champaign?e=82aeb6c61d
10. “The Ottoman Demographic and Family History Symposium (ODFHS)”, Binghamton University, SUNY, 21-22 March 2025
This conference aims to bring together scholars, archivists, and practitioners interested in the demographic, genealogical, and family history of various populations in the Ottoman Empire over its long history.
Deadline for abstracts: 10 December 2024. Information:
https://networks.h-net.org/group/discussions/20052075/call-abstracts-symposium-binghamton-universit
11. HYBRID Conference “Reclaiming History: Islam and Cultural Patrimony in the 21st Century”, Abu-Sulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies, George Mason University, Faifax, VA, 2 Days in Mid-April 2025
We are calling for papers to address the phenomenon of cultural destruction with an eye to understanding the nature of such loss in places such as, but not limited to, Afghanistan, Bosnia, China, Gaza, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali, Myanmar, the Palestinian Territories, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen ; as well those efforts to redress the crimes of looting and to restore cultural patrimony as an act of reconciliation.
Deadline for abstracts: 3 January 2025. Information: https://islamicstudiescenter.gmu.edu/articles/21477
12. „46th Annual Conference of MELCom International“ – The European Association of Middle East Librarians, Sorbonne Nouvelle University Library, Paris, 20-22 May 2025
The conference sessions will deal with library material from and on the Middle East: Librarianship, collection development and acquisition policies. – Cataloguing policies and practices. – Catalogues and bibliographies. – Electronic resources and digitisation projects. – Digital humanities & Middle Eastern collections. – Cooperation projects between libraries holding Middle Eastern collections. – History of libraries, ownership and readership. Etc.
Deadline for abstracts and registration: 19 January 2025.
Information: https://melcominternational.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/MI_2025_Circular_1_EN.pdf
13. Workshop “Crisis and Preaching: Lexis, Framing, Timings in the Middle East (19th – 21rst Century)”, Institut français de Jordanie, Amman, 26-27 May 2025
Is preaching consubstantial with crisis? How have the various religious traditions present in the Middle East approached the notion of crisis? This workshop aims to identify what “constitutes a crisis” for particular religious actors at a given moment in contemporary Middle Eastern history. It will examine the preaching efforts of the different religious traditions, as well as the transformations of religious discourse in the Middle East.
Deadline for abstracts: 12 January 2025. Information: https://predicmo.hypotheses.org/1262
14. Conference “Signatures and Seals: Identification and Validation Marks in the Medieval Near East”, IFAO, Cairo, 20-21 October 2025
Scholars are invited to submit papers on stamps and seals – regardless of their material or carrier – and on the various types of signatures on medieval documents from the Near East. Papers on the many languages spoken in this cultural area are welcome, and the various disciplines of the humanities can be addressed (archaeology, diplomacy, sociology, etc.).
Deadline for abstracts: 24 December 2024.
Information: https://www.ifao.egnet.net/recherche/manifestations/ma1655/
15. Conference „Philosophy and Poetry in Islamic Contexts“, University of Erlangen, 14-17 January 2026
Themes: Different historical periods, ranging from pre-Islamic poetry to contemporary poetic forms that address philosophical questions, as well as aesthetic theories and mystical perspectives. – The classical period, marked by dialogues between philosophy and poetry, and the modern period, focusing on the influence of European philosophy on poets in Islamic contexts. – Christian, Jewish and other non-Islamic poetic traditions in Islamic contexts.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 February 2025. Information:
16. POSTS:
Berliner Institut für Islamische Theologie
Position: Research fellow (m/f/d) in the field of Islamic Law in History and the Present (1/2 part-time employment, E 13 TV-L-HU, temporary for 4 years)
Qualifications: Completed academic degree in in Islamic theology or Islamic studies; interest in research on Islamic law and related topics such as comparative law, ethics and philosophy of law; knowledge of Islamic and legal research methods; very good knowledge of German, English and Arabic.
Deadline for applications: 27 December 2024. Information: https://is.gd/iV6nIo
Assistant Professor Interested in Socio-Legal Aspects of Contemporary Middle East/North Africa and/or Middle East/North African Diasporas (Criminology, Law and Justice), University of Illinois, Chicago
We seek an exceptional emerging interdisciplinary scholar with broad and innovative theoretical and teaching interests in any socio-legal aspects of this region and its diaporas including incarceration/carcerality, repression, human rights, international law, militarism, securitization, and state violence.
Deadline for applications: 30 December 2024.
Information: https://uic.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/12531?c=uic
Postdoc Fellowship in Modern Middle East Studies (2 Years), Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University
We seek a scholar whose research and teaching focuses on Ottoman Palestine, Mandatory Palestine, and/or Palestine/Israel. We welcome applicants from any discipline in the humanities, broadly defined. Preference given to scholars conducting research in two or more languages.
Deadline for applications: 15 Januaray 2024. Information: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/29312
Assistant/Associate Professor of Middle East Politics, George Washington University, Washington, DC
We seek a professor with expertise in Middle East politics and the ability to teach courses on Iran and U.S.-Iran relations. Speciality in Iranian politics; International relations, comparative politics, Middle East politics. Fluency in Persian is required.
Deadline for applications: 20 December 2024. Information: https://www.gwu.jobs/postings/116111
Ph.D. Research Grants of the Orient-Institut Istanbul 2025/26
The purpose of the grant is to provide support for research in Turkey to Ph.D. candidates not living in Turkey. The research grant consists of a monthly stipend of € 1,200for the duration of usually ten to twelve months. Short term grants of up to 90 days may also be made available. Travel expenses of a journey to and from Turkey will be reimbursed. Good command of Turkish or another source language necessary for the proposed project is obligatory.
Deadline for applications: 2 January 2025.
Information: https://oiist.org/en/ph-d-research-grant-announcement-2025-26/
17. 2nd Wadjih F. al-Hamwi Prize for the Best First Book in Mediterranean Studies (2024)
The Prize covers scholarly and trade publications published from 2021 to 2023 inclusive. The committee is most interested in books that break new ground conceptually or methodologically, are comparative and/or inter-disciplinary, that emphasize intercultural/interregional/interreligious contact. Books from any period and from any Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines are welcome.
Deadline for applications: 31 December 2024. Information: www.mediterraneanseminar.org/book-prize-2024
18. Summer School “Citizenship and Religious Pluralism”, Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, Cairo, 15-25 July 2025
We welcome students enrolled in doctoral studies or having defended their theses on the theme of citizenship and religious pluralism in 2023 or 2024, from all the universities in the Mediterranean basin that are working on this issue within their discipline (political science, law, history, philosophy, theology, economics). Each student will present the current state of their research, including their research questions, hypotheses, and findings.
Deadline for application: 1 February 2024.
Information: https://www.ideo-cairo.org/en/anawati-chair/summer-school-citizenship/
19. Bāyazīd: The Life and Teachings of the Mystic Abū Yazīd al-Basṭāmī (d. ca. 234/848)
Based on the Earliest Sources
Brill, 2024
Annabel Keeler
- December 07, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Hybrid Lecture Series: ‘Shia Islam and Ismaili Studies’
9 December 2024 – When does a group become a group? Remarks on the ‘birth’ of Shi’i Sufism, academic reification, and the issue of confessional identity
With Dr. Alessandro Cancian (Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies)
13 January 2025 – Ismaili Cosmology : Nature and Religion
With Dr. Daryoush Mohammad Poor (Associate Professor and the Interim Head of the Constituency Studies Unit at the Institute of Ismaili Studies)
3 March 2025 – Reconstructing the Higher Thought of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d.548/1153): Eclecticism or Intellectual Synthesis?
With Dr. Toby Mayer (Senior Research Associate at the the Institute of Ismaili Studies)
11 April 2025 – Expressions of Islamic Syncretism in the Ismaili Traditions – The Case of the Nizari Ismailis of Central Asia
With Dr. Hakim Elnazarov (Head of the Central Asian Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies)
- December 06, 2024
- 0 Comment
- December 05, 2024
- 0 Comment
- December 04, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shi News – Academic Items
1. IQP2025 Festival on: Qur’an Initiative Every New about Qur’an (2025 June 9-11)
IQP2025 Festival on:
Qur’an Initiative
Every New about Qur’an
(2025 June 9_11)
In 7 Themes:
1. Presenting Qur’anic Academic Paper
2. Delivering TED Qur’anic Lecture
3. Offering Qur’anic Center
4. Introducing Qur’anic Activity
5. Publishing Qur’anic Book/Magazine/Website
6. Showing Qur’anic Art
7. Creating Qur’anic Application
الرابط للتسجیل:
https://form.123formbuilder.com/6515465/conference-registration-form
______________
أمانة المجلس الدولي المستقل للقرآن الکریم
Ind. Int. Quranic Parliament (IQP)
http://zabanshenasitarikhi.ir/
https://chat.whatsapp.com/IvyUpqDXcKWAtIz2yxLwu6
2. UCL: In person: ‘Politics, historiography, ideology and the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo (13th–16th centuries)’
Neale Lecture 2025: Prof. Jo Van Steenbergen
The Neale Lecture is the annual flagship lecture of the History Department at University College London. This academic year’s lecture will feature Professor Jo Van Steenbergen (Ghent University, Belgium) who will be speaking on ‘The enslavement of Middle Eastern history: Politics, historiography, ideology and the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo (13th–16th centuries)’.
Time and Venue: Wednesday, 5 February at 6.30pm in the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre at University College London
For more information and the link to sign up: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/history/events/2025/feb/neale-lecture-2025-professor-jo-van-steenbergen
3. Digital British Islam Conference: Experiences, Responses and Impact from Britain and Beyond
5th-6th February 2025, Coventry University
Registration now open for the Digital British Islam conference.
Sessions include findings from the ESRC-funded ‘Digital British Islam’ project, panel sessions with UK and international academics, and a roundtable discussion with Nafisa Bakkar (Amaliah) and Hamza Tzortzis.
Register here for free (in-person only event): https://digitalbritishislam.com/conference-registration
Programme available here: https://digitalbritishislam.com/conference-programme/
Any questions, email laura.jones@uwtsd.ac.uk
4. Prochaine séance du séminaire “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du monde iranien”, jeudi 12 décembre 2024, 17h, à l’INALCO
Le CeRMI a le plaisir de vous convier à la prochaine séance du séminaire “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du Monde iranien”, qui se tiendra le jeudi 12 décembre 2024, 17h-19h, en salle 4.15 à l’INaLCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 4e étage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir Mme Muriel Debié (École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL), pour une conférence intitulée: “L’acculturation d’Alexandre le Grand dans l’Antiquité tardive et les débuts de l’Islam“.
Résumé:
Les textes syriaques sur Alexandre le Grand montrent comment la figure du conquérant a été acculturée dans l’Antiquité tardive. Cette séance sera centrée d’une part sur la traduction syriaque du Roman d’Alexandre grec au ve ou vie siècle et d’autre part sur une « Histoire d’Alexandre » produite en syriaque au vie siècle et qui nous est parvenue déclinée en plusieurs textes. On y suivra le voyage ultérieur de ces textes dans les littératures arabes et persanes.
La traduction syriaque du Roman aux mille et une versions en a conservé une des versions les plus anciennes. Elle a notamment préservé des épisodes disparus des versions grecques et latines mais qui se sont frayé un chemin dans les versions arabes et persanes du Roman.
Les textes produits en syriaque au vie siècle ont ajouté une dimension eschatologique et peuvent se définir comme des apocalypses chrétiennes. Le motif de la porte de fer bâtie par Alexandre contre les peuples de Gog et Magog a pris là une nouvelle couleur eschatologique et s’est ensuite glissé dans le Coran aussi bien que dans les versions byzantines et arabo-persanes du Roman.
Orientations bibliographiques:
- Faustina Aerts, Alexander Magnus Arabicus: A Survey of the Alexander Tradition Through Seven Centuries: from Pseudo-Callisthenes to Ṣūrī, Turnhout, Peeters, 2010.
- Muriel Debié, Alexandre le Grand en syriaque. Maître des lieux, des savoirs et des temps, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2024.
- Corinne Jouanno, Naissance et métamorphoses du Roman d’Alexandre. Domaine grec, Paris, CNRS édition, 2002.
- Richard Stoneman, Erickson Kyle (dir.), The Alexander Romance in Persia and the East, Groningen, Barkhuis, 2012
Pour rappel, vous retrouverez le programme 2024-2025 du séminaire mensuel de recherche “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du Monde iranien” sur le site du CeRMI :
https://cermi.cnrs.fr/seminaires-de-recherche/societes
5. Conferences “Serious Laughter: Beyond the Jest-Earnest Binary in Classical Arabic-Islamic Texts”, King`s College London, 18-20 June 2025 and Cornell University, New York, 16-17 October 2025
Themes: Humour and comedy in classical Arabic poetry and prose of all periods and genres. – Performativity and humour on and off the page: comedy in the social world, the musical and visual arts, and material culture. – Moments of humour in texts from the various Islamic ‘ulūm. – The role of the humourous in the making of life stories (bio-graphical and historiographical texts
Deadline for abstracts: 1 February 2025. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20051481/cfp-serious-laughter-beyond-jest-earnest-binary-classical-arabic
6. Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (Focus Middle East Studies) in Pafos, Cyprus, American University of Beirut-Mediterraneo
Applicants should hold a PhD in Politics, Economics, International Relations, International Development Studies, or other closely related fields such as Gender Studies, Middle East Studies, Anthropology or Sociology, for example. Candidates with relevant teaching experience in political economy-related courses, post-doctoral appointments, and a record of grant funding as well as scholarly publications are especially encouraged to apply.
Deadline for applications: 1 January 2025. Information: https://www.aubmed.ac.cy/Documents/PPE-AD-OCT24.pdf
7. Assistant Professor on Socio-legal Aspects of the Contemporary MENA Diasporas, University of Illinois at Chicago
The area of specialization, methodology, and discipline are open. In addition to having a robust research profile, the successful candidate will demonstrate their ability to contribute to the interdisciplinary minor in Global Middle East Studies. We welcome a focus on repression, human rights, international law, militarism, securitization, and state violence. Interest in or commitment to community engagement, broadly defined, is encouraged.
Deadline for applications: 30 December 2024.
Information: https://mesana.org/resources-and-opportunities/2024/11/26/assistant-professor25
8. New “MA Islamic Humanities” and “MA Islamic Humanities and Intensive Language” at SOAS University of London in 2025
This new programme covers the social, cultural and intellectual history, religion, philosophy, literature and arts of the Islamic world, past and present. The programme is also available with a language pathway which enables students to study one of a number of languages, including Arabic (beginners, intermediate or advanced), Persian, Turkish, Chinese, Indonesian and Swahili.
Information: https://www.soas.ac.uk/study/find-course/ma-islamic-humanities
and https://www.soas.ac.uk/study/find-course/ma-islamic-humanities-and-intensive-language
9. Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, An Introductory Textbook
UCL Press, 2024
Assaf Bar-Moshe
Free download: https://ow.ly/e4jy50UhkY2
10. Hybrid: Arabic Studies Seminars w Timothy Mitchell on The Invention of Famine
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR IN ARABIC STUDIES
The Invention of Famine
Thursday, December 5, 2024
7 pm EST at Faculty House
Timothy Mitchell
Abstract:
In the nineteenth century, French orientalists began to refer to a work of the Mamluk scholar al-Maqrizi as “Le traité des famines”. Maqrizi’s text, Ighāthat al-umma bi kashf al-ghumma, written in 1405, was not a treatise on famine but a study of the causes of monetary crisis. In fact, famine may have been virtually unknown in medieval and early modern Egypt. But from the nineteenth century, European scholars, engineers, and colonial administrators began to portray Egypt as a place of great ecological precarity, utterly dependent on the Nile inundation and subject to the occurrence of devastating floods and episodic famines. This view misunderstood how Egyptians used the Nile, a misunderstanding that persists in most scholarship today. But the idea of precarity helped to justify a re-engineering of the Nile valley and the ecocide of the river.
Please note that due to new regulations, non CUID holders will not be allowed into Faculty House without prior notice. If you intend to be present in-person and are not a CUID holder, please RSVP ASAP. If we don’t receive your RSVP we will not be able to let you in. This meeting will also be live streamed here on ZOOM for those guests who can’t make it in person.
11. ‘Melody and Metaphor: Integrating Music and Literature in Persian Language Pedagogy’
Aqsa Ijaz, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, University of Toronto Mississauga
The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies in collaboration with the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago
Saturday, 7 December 2024, 11:00 a.m. Central Time/12:00 p.m. EST (Canada and US)
Zoom Meeting Registration:
https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvdO2qpjMuGNwq5LZUoaVQ1W2expF2RC-0
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
12. Arab World English Journal for Translation and Literary Studies welcomes the submission of papers for the February Issue 2025.
Due to requests from many colleagues, the submission deadline has been extended to December 21. 2024. The issue publication date is February Issue 2025. For more details: https://awej-tls.org/call-for-papers-awej-for-translation-literary-studies-februry-issue-2025/
Please send your submission as an attachment to TLS@awej.org
13. Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg – Postdoctoral position, salary scale according to TV-L 13, 100%, Start date: 1 May 2025
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=68269 \
Application deadline: 31 December 2024
14. Muhammad in the Seminary
Protestant Teaching about Islam in the Nineteenth Century
2024
David D. Grafton
Receive a 20% discount online*:
LLF24
*Valid until 11:59 GMT, 30th June 2025. Discount only applies to the CAP website
https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781479831463/muhammad-in-the-seminary/
- December 03, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Zoom: ‘Safavid Policy in the Kurdish Borderlands’ – A Yamaguchi (4.12.24, 7pm EST)
Zahra Institute:
Wednesday, 4 December, at 6 PM Central/ 7 PM Eastern Time.
Dr. Akihiko Yamaguchi will present, “Safavid Policy in the Kurdish Borderlands: A Comparative Study with Ottoman Kurdish Policies”.
Dr. Yamaguchi is a professor of Middle Eastern History at Sophia University in Tokyo. His research primarily focuses on the history of Iran from the 16th to early 20th centuries, with a special emphasis on minorities and peripheral regions.
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/95861905448?pwd=GVhh6furcdhIwnCnqxdLlRrIVF26yD.1
- December 02, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. The Textile Museum Journal Volume 51
Guest edited by Dr. Myriem Naji, with Dorothy Armstrong, Jonathan Cleaver, Ludovica Matarozzo, and Anna Portisch, The Textile Museum Journal’s 51st volume will go beyond the classical canon of “Oriental” carpets developed in the West from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. They will examine less-studied sites of carpet weaving, and will highlight diverse analytical methods including immersive fieldwork, the impact of technologies, the participation of carpets at inflection points in global history, and the practice of contemporary weavers.
Learn more at https://museum.gwu.edu/textile-museum-journal
Table of Contents
New Approaches to Thinking with Carpets
Myriem Naji with Dorothy Armstrong, Jonathan Cleaver, Ludovica Matarozzo, and Anna Portisch
Reading Networks of Coloniality and Capitalism through “Oriental” Carpets
Dorothy Armstrong
The Contestable Pleasures of Industrial Carpet-Making Archives
Jonathan Cleaver
Unraveling the Threads: An Exploration of Hidden Aspects in the Carpet Productions of Faig Ahmed and Alighiero Boetti
Ludovica Matarozzo
Between Ornament and Structure Carpets in Modern Art and Architecture
Farniyaz Zaker
Designing without Design? Embodied and Situated Carpet Designing in the Sirwa, Southern Morocco
Myriem Naji
Research Notes
Embroidered Treasures of the Stuart Dynasty: Recent Discoveries in the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection
Rachel Pollack
Informing Provenience and Dating of Anatolian Kilims: Ongoing Research Using Technical Analysis
Callista Jerman
2. Open rank tenure-track faculty job at the Master Program of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
The Master Program of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at National Chengchi University invites applications for an open rank full-time position in the field of “Central Asian Studies”. Preference will be given to candidates specialized in Central Asian languages, literature, history, society, and culture.
Qualifications:
- Applicants must hold a doctoral degree in a field related to Central Asian Studies from an accredited university, either in Taiwan or abroad.
- Applicants must demonstrate the ability to teach in English.
Start Date: August 1, 2025
Required Documents:
- Curriculum Vitae, a research statement clarifying the candidate’s proposed program of research, a teaching statement, a list of publications, and a list of proposed courses.
- A photocopy of the Ph.D. diploma. (For overseas degrees, the diploma must be authenticated by a Taiwanese representative office abroad.)
- Transcripts from master’s and doctoral programs. (For transcripts in languages other than English, please attach a Chinese or English translation.)
- The doctoral dissertation and up to five sample publications that are published in the past five years.
- Syllabi; one for the program’s mandatory course “Seminar on Central Asia” (3 credits) and three for other courses related to Central Asian Studies the candidate plans to teach.
- Two letters of recommendation, written in English or Chinese, to be sent directly to the ‘Recruitment Committee’ at 62746@nccu.edu.twor mailing address: Recruitment Committee, Master Program of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, No. 64, Sec. 2, ZhiNan Rd., Wenshan District, Taipei 116, Taiwan.
Application Deadline: February 3, 2025 (Monday)
Additional Information: Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an in-person or virtual interview and perform teaching demonstration.
Application Submission:
- Both hard copies and electronic files are required.
- Hard copies should be sent to: Recruitment Committee, Master Program of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, National Chengchi University, No. 64, Sec. 2, ZhiNan Rd., Wenshan District, Taipei 116, Taiwan. (Please indicate “New Faculty Recruitment Your Name” on the envelope. Applications postmarked after the deadline will not be accepted.)
- Electronic files should be sent to: 62746@nccu.edu.tw, with the subject line: “New Faculty Recruitment_Your Name” (Please ensure submission by 11:59:59 PM Taiwan time on February 3, 2025).
Contact:
Phone: 886-2-2939-3091 ext. 62746, ext. 62736
Email: 62746@nccu.edu.tw
3. Call for Submissions
Contesting Boundaries in Islamicate Multilingualisms
31st Issue of Absinthe: World Literature in Translation
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2025
Absinthe: World Literature in Translation invites submissions of original English-language translations of Islamicate literatures for its 31st issue, to be published in Fall 2025.
Absinthe publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Owned and operated by the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan, Absinthe is edited by graduate students. This issue will be edited by Razieh Araghi and Jaideep Pandey.
The 31st issue of Absinthe, “Contesting Boundaries in Islamicate Multilingualisms” invites submissions exploring notions of boundaries across genres, geographies and temporalities, post the introduction of print technology in Muslim societies 19th century. This special issue aims to contribute to the growing body of scholarship that interrogates the politics of multilingualism and lingua franca (such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu among others) and its intersections with literary production. We intentionally shift the focus away from dominant languages of the Islamicate world, such as Persian, Arabic and Urdu, and center lesser-represented languages (Dari, Pashto, Azeri, Kurdish, Tamil, Malayalam, Bangla, Punjabi, among others) deemed “local”, in order to highlight the rich, diverse tapestry of linguistic and cultural expressions within the broader Islamicate sphere. Through a focus on short genres as a flexible, adaptable form, we invite contributors to explore how different narrative genres traverse, resist, or reinforce the boundaries of linguistic and cultural identity, or between the religious and the secular. This approach allows us to probe the dynamic interplay between language and genre, as well as the ways in which such interactions destabilize conventional notions of multilingualism and genre-specific boundaries within Islamicate contexts.
We seek translations of previously untranslated prose texts from genres such as the short story, sagas, edifying or popular tales, fables, anecdotes, extracts from serialized fiction and novellas, periodicals columns, pocket book translations, life narratives, siyar, pilgrim narratives, travelogs, marginalia writing, prefaces, among others. The translations should be between 1500-7000 words, including extracts from longer works. We welcome works published from the long-19th century onwards, engaging in the most broad and diverse ways with notions of modernity.
Your proposals should include:
- 250 word abstract discussing the content of the work as well as its significance to the greater canon (we use “canon” with great flexibility) of Islamicate geographies
- 150 word translator bio
- 150 word author bio
If you have a translation in progress, you may also submit a portion along with your proposal.
Please submit proposals to araghi@umich.edu and jpandey@umich.edu by January 15 for consideration.
4. The Latin America and Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter
Vol. 4, no. 4 | Fall 2024
Senior Editor Ken Chitwood
Associate EditorsRahma Maccarone and Lucas Vicente
See: https://mailchi.mp/1497f79ea948/latin-america-caribbean-islamic-studies-newsletter-vol4-no4
Home page: https://www.lacisa.org/
5. DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 8TH DECEMBER! Call for papers: Woolf Institute Annual Conference 2025
Tuesday 11th-Wednesday 12th February 2025, Cambridge, UK
The deadline to submit papers for the Woolf Institute’s academic conference has been extended to 8th December.
The theme for the conference is Faith in a world of ‘unprecedented’ challenges, and we are delighted to be joined by keynote speaker Professor Mathew Guest, who will talk about his recent book, Neoliberal Religion: Faith and Power in the 21st Century.
We invite proposals from individual presenters who may apply with an individual paper where you will have 15-minutes to present your work followed by a five-minute Q&A, or, alternatively, to be part of a discussion panel where you will be put into a panel with other presenters with five minutes to present your research followed by a group discussion. Both of these options will require a 300-word abstract and a 50-word biography. We will do our best to allocate you appropriately. We also welcome submissions from multiple presenters (up to four) who are interested in delivering a 60-minute panel/workshop/activity. For this option we will require a 500-word abstract and a 150-word biography to include all presenters. Please specify which format you would prefer in the link below.
To apply to present, please submit your details, abstract, and bio at: https://tinyurl.com/woolf-conference.
The submission deadline has been extended to 23:59 on Sunday 8th December 2024. Successful applicants will be informed of their paper’s acceptance on Monday 16th December 2024. The conference will be held on the 11th-12th February 2025 at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge.
Conference registration will open on 1st December 2024 and is free to present and/or attend. We will be offering a limited number of small grants for doctoral researchers, PGRs, and ECRs for expenses to attend the conference. For further particulars or any queries please contact Dr James Sunderland at js2964@cam.ac.uk.
6. We are currently seeking to fill two postdoctoral positionsin the ALiDiM project at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
The successful candidates will contribute to the work package on the specialized linguistic lexicon in early Arabic linguistic works. One fellow will examine its interactions with other Arabic-Islamic disciplines, while the other fellow will explore connections with the Greek tradition.
The application deadline is December 20, 2024, 12:00 CET. For full details on the application and selection process, please refer to the call for applications published on the university website. The positions are scheduled to start February 1, 2025.
Simona Olivieri
Assistant professor of Arabic language
PI ERC project ALiDiM – Arabic Linguistic Discourse in the Making
Department of Asian and North African Studies
Ca’ Cappello
Calle del Magazen, San Polo 2035
30125 Venezia
- +39 041 234 8848
- simona.olivieri@unive.it
7. PhD Candidate or Postdoctoral Researcher in Ancient Central Asian (Tarim Basin) Contact Linguistics
Leiden University
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) is looking for a PhD candidate (1,0 FTE) or Postdoctoral researcher (1,0 FTE) in Ancient Central Asian (Tarim Basin) Contact Linguistics to work on “Sogdian and Bactrian wanderers: Linguistic contacts of Sogdian and Bactrian in the Tarim Basin” as part of the ERC-funded project The Silk Road Language Web.
Deadline | 3 December 2024
8. Call for Applications | Stein-Arnold Exploration Fund 2024-25
Fund | The British Academy
The fund was established for ‘the encouragement of research on the antiquities or historical geography or early history or arts of those parts of Asia which come within the sphere of the ancient civilizations of India, China, and Iran, including Central Asia, or of one or more of these’. Applicants should be of postdoctoral status or have comparable experience. Research should be “so far as possible by means of exploratory work”. Funds are limited and normally grants will not exceed around £2,500, but in exceptional circumstances grants may be considered up to £5,000.
Deadline | 8 January 2025
9. Bridging Identities: The Cultural Odyssey of Kurdistani Jews
Event | Zoom | 2 December 2024
This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre’s Kurdish Studies Series, will present research findings from the online exhibition and research project ‘Bridging Identities: The Cultural Odyssey of Kurdistani Jews’.
More information
10. From Revolution to Exile: Arab Diaspora Politics in a Post-2011 Context
Conference | Paris (Hybrid) | 30 January 2025
The evolving role of diasporas necessitates a reevaluation of their conceptualization and the transnational dynamics affecting them. The proposed one-day international conference focuses on empirical case studies from the MENA region post-2011 to explore innovative political roles and strategies developed by diasporas in navigating their multifaceted identities and engagements in a post-uprising world.
More information
Fahimeh Saravani, Zekrollah Mohammadi and Hossein Sarhaddi-Dadian
Afghanistan 7.2 (2024): 120-133.
12. CfP: Displaced Arts:
Creative Practices and Geographies of Asylum
Symposium
June 24th 2025
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh
Supported by the Leverhulme Trust
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, UCL
Dr Esa Aldegheri, University of Glasgow
How have creative practices been used to inhabit, expose, navigate or contest global geographies of asylum in the twenty-first century? This interdisciplinary symposium will explore the potential of arts – including literature, life-writing, storytelling, poetry, community theatre, photography, and film – to illuminate geographies of asylum which have been reshaped by increasingly securitised border regimes, narratives of a ‘refugee crisis’, and a rapidly growing asylum-industrial complex. These evolving geographies encompass precarious infrastructures of asylum with a proliferation of camps, detention centres, and ‘contingency’ accommodation in hotels, military barracks, ships, and islands. Meanwhile, new dispersal policies have led to refugees and asylum seekers increasingly being settled away from urban centres in depopulated or rural areas in many places, including Europe, the US and Australia, sometimes in marginalised and remote localities. In these shifting geographies of asylum, displaced arts – creative practices defined at once by the absence or loss of place and their located nature in a new environment – can offer strategies of resistance, tools of documentation and mapping, or means to cultivate new senses of belonging, community, and integration.
Building on a burgeoning body of scholarship in the arts and humanities, as well as the social sciences, which has emphasised the importance of creative practices and methodologies in migration studies, the symposium will focus on the situated nature of displaced arts as it asks: How have displaced arts and indigenous knowledges been used as creative placemaking practices to navigate unfamiliar environments? How might they render obscured or hidden geographies of asylum more visible? How can creative initiatives facilitate integration in new (and sometimes unlikely) sites of refugee resettlement? What cross-cultural artistic practices have emerged from these evolving geographies? And how might these practices form new socialities and solidarities which transcend or challenge the sovereignty of national borders asserted through asylum regimes?
This will also be an opportunity to consider methodological questions and tensions around how we engage with the arts in migration studies. How might creative methodologies facilitate collaborative research practices in migration studies which disrupt hegemonic power dynamics and forms of knowledge production? What burdens do we place on these arts when using them to navigate geographies of asylum? And what can be gained by focusing specifically on representations of place in these arts?
Papers are welcome from scholars or creative practitioners working across disciplines relating to migration and the arts, including: migration studies, literary studies, the visual arts, film studies, cultural geography, and the environmental humanities. In addition to conventional academic papers, we welcome other presentation formats appropriate to the topic (such as practice-based outputs).
We especially welcome papers from PGRs, ECRs, and scholars working on Global South contexts or based at Global South institutions.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Creative encounters and exchanges between refugees and receiving communities in contexts of North-South and South-South migration.
- The relationship between artistic practices and infrastructures of the asylum-industrial complex.
- Representations of border crossings, border ‘spectacles’, and internal borders of exclusion.
- Creative initiatives emerging in the context of new dispersal policies extending across urban and rural/remote areas.
- Creative practices in response/relation to hostile environments.
- Arts and asylum advocacy.
- The spatial politics and aesthetics of displaced arts.
- Place-based creative initiatives for asylum seekers and refugees facilitated by local government, charities, and NGOs (e.g. community performances, exhibitions, art installations, festivals, and storytelling projects).
- Multilingualism, translation, and language acquisition in/through displaced arts.
- Evolving public policy on creative strategies of refugee integration.
- Collaborative and creative methodologies in migration studies.
- Connections between contemporary geographies of asylum and histories of colonialism, de-industrialisation, and austerity.
- Transnational creative solidarities across geographies of asylum.
- Technologies of asylum and forms of digital storytelling.
- Creative engagements with the temporalities of asylum.
- Future imaginaries of asylum.
Please submit abstracts (250 words) for fifteen-minute papers and a short bio (100 words) to displacedarts25@gmail.com by 15th January. Speakers will be notified by 31st January.
The symposium is being organised by Dr Annie Webster (University of Edinburgh) and will take place in-person at The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh.
Please send any queries to displacedarts25@gmail.com
13. Les études sur l’Asie centrale : pluridisciplinarité et connexions d’un champ (11-12 décembre 2024, Paris)
Nous vous prions de trouver ci-joint le programme de la journée d’étude consacrée à l’Asie centrale qui se tiendra les 11 et 12 décembre 2024, à Paris, à la Maison de la recherche de l’INALCO, 2 rue de Lille, Paris 7e, amphithéâtre G. Dumézil : https://www.inalco.fr/evenements/les-etudes-sur-lasie-centrale-pluridisciplinarite-et-connexions-dun-champ
Cet événement a pour ambition de promouvoir les études centrasiatiques en rendant compte de leur dynamisme et de leur diversité, de mettre en relation ses différentes disciplines et composantes, et de constituer un moment d’échanges entre les chercheuses et chercheurs impliqué-e-s dans les travaux sur la région. L’Asie centrale est entendue dans une acception géographique large, s’étendant de l’Iran à la Mongolie et de l’Afghanistan à la Russie.
La journée d’étude est organisée par le GIS Moyen-Orient et Mondes musulmans (MOMM) et le Centre de recherche sur le Monde iranien (CeRMI, UMR 8041), en collaboration avec l’Institut français d’études sur l’Asie centrale (IFEAC, UAR 3140), le Centre de recherche Europes-Eurasie (CREE, EA 4513) et ZooStan (ANR PaléoCALM).
Nous vous y attendons nombreuses et nombreux.
Le comité d’organisation :
Juliette Cleuziou, anthropologue, Université Lumière Lyon 2, LADEC ; Adrien Fauve, politiste, Université Paris-Saclay, IEDP ; Svetlana Gorshenina, historienne, CNRS, Eur’Orbem ; Isabelle Ohayon, historienne, CNRS, CERCEC ; Catherine Poujol, historienne, INALCO, CREE ; William Rendu, archéologie, CNRS, ZooStan ; Camille Rhoné-Quer, historienne, Aix-Marseille Université, IREMAM ; Julien Thorez, géographe, CNRS, CeRMI
14. Marc de Montalembert Prize for Research on the Arts of the Mediterranean World
The prize will be awarded to support a research project whose anticipated results will constitute an original contribution to the knowledge of the arts of the Mediterranean world from Antiquity to our day. The Foundation will also offer the prize holder the possibility of a residency at its headquarters in Rhodes, Greece. The candidate must be a citizen of a country bordering the Mediterranean, be under 36 years of age on November 30, 2024, and hold a PhD degree.
Deadline for applications: 15 December 2024. Information: https://www.ecoledulouvre.fr/sites/default/files/media/document/PrixMontalembert_callforapplicants_2024_2025%20%281%29.pdf
- November 30, 2024
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Residency in Persian Lit. @ UW
The University of Washington recently concluded its week-long residency in Persian literature. Laura Catterson, Shahzoda Nazarova, and Asef Soltanzadeh took part in the inaugural cycle of the residency. Future cycles have not been announced.
Here is a brief write up with a few photos.
2. ONLINE 5th CARPO Research Forum: “Changing Patterns of Global Politics – The Middle East in a Multipolar World”, 27 November 2024, 15:00 – 18:00 CET The focus is on changes in global governance and the multipolar world, examining their implications for Middle Eastern actors. The discussions will highlight the evolving ties between the Middle East and regions of the so-called Global South, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia. Additionally, the forum will address Middle Eastern activities such as in conflict mediation, development cooperation, investment in sustainable technologies, energy diversification, etc. Information, programme and registration: https://carpo-bonn.org/en/5th-carpo-research-forum-changing-patterns-of-global-politics-the-middle-east-in-a-multipolar-world/
3. Colloque « Le Coran et le christianisme de l’Église d’Orient aux VIe et VIIe s. », MSH/EPHE Paris, 28-29 novembre 2024 Ces journées d’étude, se proposent de revisiter la question de l’arrière-plan chrétien du Coran, en examinant notam-ment les liens possibles entre la sphère d’influence de l’Eglised’Orient et le milieu coranique. Il s’agira notamment d’explorer comment cette institution religieuse, solidement implantée dans la péninsule Arabique depuis plusieurs siècles au moment de l’émergence de l’islam, a pu influencer le développement et la formation du texte coranique. Information et programme : https://lem-umr8584.cnrs.fr/IMG/pdf/coran_et_le_christianisme.pdf
4. Conference „The Authority of Silence. Constructing the Figure of the Salaf (7th – 15th Centuries)“, Études orientales & American University in Cairo, 2-3 May 2025 The conference will focus on the numerous areas where the Salaf are considered an authority: ḥadīṯ sciences, historical narrative, Quranic commentary, theology, law, spirituality… It will also look at the diversity of references to the first generations of Muslims, which are not confined to traditionalist circles. Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2025. Information: https://mesana.org/resources-and-opportunities/2024/11/22/the-authority-of-silence.-constructing-the-figure-of-the-salaf-7th-15th-centuries
5. Symposium “Islamic and Jewish Law in the Modern Economy”, Villanova University, 5-6 May 2025 The symposium will explore the integration of pre-modern religious law and norms into the modern financial economy. Papers are welcome from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to legal studies, inclu-ding law, sociology, anthropology, politics, and history, from scholars based in law schools and other academic departments. Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2025. Information: https://callingallpapers.law.uga.edu/2024-09-13_islamic_and_jewish_law_in_the_modern_economy
6. ONLINE Symposium “Survival, Resistance, Flourishing: Religion and Disability (Focus Islam)”, 17 May 2025 We welcome a wide variety of methodological and theoretical approaches including ethnography, historical, cultural, or textual analysis, personal narrative, and theological/philosophical investigation. Our aim is to move scholarship at the intersection of Religion and Disability forward. The essays emerging out of this symposium will be published in a Routledge volume on Religion and Disability. Deadline for abstracts: 1 January 2025. Information: heike.peckruhn@emu.edu
7. “15th Gulf Research Meeting”, Gulf Research Centre Cambridge (UK), 22-24 July 2025
The Gulf Research Meeting (GRM) offers a unique environment to explore matters of key importance to the Gulf region and provides a platform for discussion and dissemination of research in a wide variety of Gulf-related fields, including economic and financial issues, international relations, security, environment, energy and renewable ener-gy, as well as education, labour and social issues. Deadline for papers: 5 January 2025. Information: https://www.gulfresearchmeeting.net/
8. International Conference “Romance on the Nile: The Ancient Novel in Egypt – Egypt in the Ancient Novel”, Freie Universität Berlin, 10-12 September 2025 The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from different disciplines (e.g., Egyptology, Biblical studies, Classics) who, in one way or another, deal with some facet of the phenomenon “the ancient novel in Egypt” or “Egypt in the ancient novel,” i.e., novelistic works produced by different cultures (Egyptians, Greeks, Jews) in Egypt and/or that transmit a literary concept of Egypt. Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2024. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20050401/call-papers-romance-nile-ancient-novel-egypt-egypt-ancient-novel
9. Doctoral Student in the Project “Economic Cosmology: Ethics, Sustainability, and the Nonhuman in the Muslim World (EcoCos)”, Lund University This project examines various empirical, religious, philosophical, and historical manifestations of economic and environmental thought as they were conceptualized across the Muslim world. Pre-modern approaches to economic teachings and the nonhuman environment have called into question colonial and postcolonial imaginative circuits and political formations, creating new forms of ethical engagement and analysis. Deadline for applications: 22 December 2024. Information: https://lu.varbi.com/what:job/jobID:773316/
10. Postdoctoral Research Associate in Middle East Studies (2 Years), Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University Candidates are invited from across the social sciences, who are conducting research related to the Middle East and North Africa and/or their diasporas on issues that can be understood in a comparative global context. The selection process is open with regard to nationality and geographic area of research. Scholars who have received their Ph.D.s within two years of the application deadline are eligible to apply. Deadline for applications: 5 December 2024. Information: https://cmes.watson.brown.edu/news/2024-10-31/alomran-postdoc
11. Postdoctoral Research Associate in Middle East Studies (2 Years), Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University Candidates are invited from across the social sciences, who are conducting research related to the Middle East and North Africa and/or their diasporas on issues that can be understood in a comparative global context. The selection process is open with regard to nationality and geographic area of research. Scholars who have received their Ph.D.s within two years of the application deadline are eligible to apply. Deadline for applications: 5 December 2024. Information: https://cmes.watson.brown.edu/news/2024-10-31/alomran-postdoc
12. Winter School “Reading and Analysing Ottoman Manuscript Sources”, Institute for Mediterranean Studies/FORTH in Rethymno, Crete, 17-21 March 2025 MA students and junior researchers are invited to participate in an international winter school devoted to reading and analysing Ottoman manuscript sources, with a particular focus on archival documents in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic. The winter School is organised by Institute for Mediterranean Studies, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Ifpo, CETOBaC, IREMAM, University of Heidelberg, ASBÜ Ankara, Orient Institut Beirut and Rethmno. Deadline for applications: 15 December 2024. Information : https://www.ims.forth.gr/en/news-item/view?id=1753
13. Articles for “Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies” We welcome proposals offering original analysis on the broad subject of Judaic and Islamic studies and their inter-sections. Deadline for abstracts: 31 March 2025. Information: https://journals.openedition.org/hamsa/4762
14. Articles on “Islamic Philosophy and Thoughts” for a Special Issue of the Journal “The Maghreb Review” We welcome original contributions in English or French on “Islamic Philosophy and Thoughts” from the earliest times to the present day. For example; original articles that combine philosophy and sufism and modernity: al-Fârâbî, Avicenna; Averroès; al-Kindi; Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri and Taha Abderrahmane. Deadline for contributions: 28 February 2025. Information: https://www.maghrebreview.com/
15. Resource: “Lifeworlds in the Quran – عوالم†الحياة†في†القران†”– a Thoughtful and Contemporary Quran Interpretation in Podcast Form This channel bridges the gap between the lives of modern Muslims and the experiences of the earliest listeners of the sacred text in German, English and Arabic language. Information: https://www.youtube.com/@sohaybmohamedalbashar/videos
16. Resource: “The Crusades Regesta” – Searchable Database of Charters, Letters and Other Docu-ments Relating to the Latin Kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean (1098 –1291) The project is an international collaboration between experts on the crusades, crusader states and medieval Mediterranean which began over twenty years ago, instigated by eminent historian Prof. Jonathan Riley-Smith. To-day, supported by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, a team of prominent historians continues to add new entries to the database. Information: http://crusades-regesta.com/
17. Routledge International Handbook on Global Islam and Consumer Culture
edited by Francois Gauthier (Université de Fribourg) and Birgit Krawietz (Freie Universität Berlin).
18. Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg – 6 * three-year PhD Positions (65% / 3 years) / Freiburg, Germany
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=68233
Closing date 31.12.24
19. 2nd Annual Islamic Art History Research Network Conference
December 5th (online) and December 6th (hybrid) 2024
University of York, King’s Manor [K/G07]
DAY 1: Thursday 5th (15:30-18:00 GMT) – Online
https://york-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/92526110780?pwd=3MbmbrTJWs1psnaeryDkajrwNMu7b6.1
Panel 1 (15:30-16:30)
Chandini Jaswal
Becoming ‘Maryam’: Mothering in the Early Mughal World
Parshati Dutta
Charity, Criticality, Cosmopolitanism, and Colonialism: Examining contradictions in Lady Hardinge’s Caravanserai
Panel 2 (16:30-18:00)
Khadijeh Bakhtiari
A Comparative Study of the Art of Manuscript Illumination in the Works of Quran Scribes from the Timurid and Safavid Eras
Filiz Tütüncü Çağlar
Reframing Time and the Past: The Ottoman Imperial Museum as a Temporal Agent
Ahmad Rafiei
Exploring the Judgement of Solomon in the Context of Sabk-i Hindi
DAY 2: Friday 6th (9:00-18:00 GMT) – K/G07, King’s Manor, York
https://york-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94630268456?pwd=Men5fwO2zPV0rP3d89FAeT32CUI4HK.1
Panel 3 (9:10-10:30)
Michael Marx
Carbon Dating of Qurʾān Manuscripts as a Contribution to the Chronology of Script Styles
Marcus Milwright
Technical and Aesthetic Change in Early Islamic Woodwork
Zarifa Alikperova
A Reassessment of the Shrine of Rumi in Medieval Konya
Panel 4 (11:00-12:30)
Richard Piran McClary
Between Rum Seljuqs and Ottomans: Re-Examining Beylik Architecture in Anatolia
Leila Danesh
Re-Examining the Ilkhanid Stucco at Bastam
Ahmad Yengimolki
Symbolism, Inscription, and Artistic Fusion: Analysing a Mamluk Basin
Panel 5 (13:30-15:00)
Fahimeh Ghorbani
Crafting Virtue: The Fusion of Futuwwa and Material Culture in Safavid Iran with a Focus on Futuwwatnama-yi Chitsazan
Sukaina Husain
Writing in Crisis: Making Power and Shaping Language in the Sixteenth Century Mughal World
Lauren Winch
Traversing Persia and India: Transcultural Encounters in the John Rylands Shahnameh (MS 933)
KEYNOTE LECTURE (17:00-18:00 GMT)
Melanie Gibson
Making a ‘Moorish Cosy Corner’: Displaying Islamic Art in British Homes in the Late 19th Century
20. Call for Papers
Online Lecture Series Program Spring 2025
Islam and Antiquity: Islamic art and culture and the ancient world across Europe, Africa and Asia
Convened by Bethany Simpson and Jochen Sokoly (Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar)
This online lecture series explores how Muslims across diverse geographies and chronologies have engaged with the material legacies of ancient and pre-Islamic societies, from the beginning of the Islamic era to the present. We seek to examine the diverse ways in which Islamic communities, including scholars, and religious and political authorities, have valued and interacted with the material, visual, and ideological culture of past civilizations. The contributions will explore a range of issues, from the preservation and collection of antiquities to the complex dynamics of iconography and iconoclasm, the transfer of methods and ideas, providing a deeper understanding of how Muslims have understood and engaged with ancient legacies over time.
We welcome papers from scholars at all levels of their careers that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- The Role of Ancient and Pre-Islamic Artifacts in Islamic Thought: How have material and immaterial remains, and the memory of ancient civilizations been preserved, studied, and integrated into Islamic intellectual traditions, from early Islamic historiography to modern archaeology?
- Iconography and Material Culture in Muslim Contexts: How have images, symbols, and material objects from ancient and pre-Islamic societies been interpreted, appropriated, or rejected in Islamic visual culture? What role does ancient iconography play in the making of Islamic art and architecture?
- Framing of Islamic Identity in Relationship to Dimensions of Antiquity: How have ancient histories, sites, and artifacts served to define and construct Islamic identity and historical consciousness?
- Islamic Archaeology and Heritage Preservation: A critical examination of the practices of collecting, preserving, and interpreting ancient material culture in Muslim-majority regions. How have these practices shifted over time, and what tensions exist between conservation, commercialization, and cultural preservation?
- The Destruction and Appropriation of Antiquities: How have Islamic movements—whether political, theological, or cultural—confronted the issue of destroying or preserving pre-Islamic material heritage? How can destruction be the basis for the creation of new forms and ideas? What are the implications of iconoclastic acts for broader cultural and religious narratives?
- The Politics of Collections and Museums: How have collections of antiquities in Islamic contexts shaped the understanding of ancient civilizations? What role have Islamic rulers, scholars, and institutions played in the creation and display of such collections? What tensions arise in the global circulation of these objects?
- Materiality and the Sacred: The significance of material objects, from relics to monuments, in creating connections between the past and the present in Muslim societies. How do material objects function as mediators of memory, spirituality, and historical continuity?
“Islam and Antiquity” aims to provide a multifaceted view of how Muslims have interacted with the legacies of the ancient world—seeing them not only as historical artifacts but as active agents in shaping Islamic intellectual and cultural life. In addition to this Spring 2025 online lecture series, we hope to develop a more lasting community of colleagues, the beginning of a research group that will provide the opportunity for interaction on an ongoing basis and in a multidisciplinary environment. We hope to organize physical meetings beyond these online lectures where we can discuss the subject in more depth. We are also thinking of an edited volume to disseminate our findings.
Submission Guidelines:
- Abstracts (300-500 words) should be submitted by 15 January 2025.
- Presentations are expected to be delivered online twice a month between March and May 2025 with dates to be announced. Each paper should be 40 mins in length with 20-30 min for discussion.
- Abstracts and inquiries should be sent to islamicartandantiquity@gmail.com.
We look forward to your contributions to this important and timely exploration of the intersections between material culture, history, and identity in the Islamic world.
Contact Information
Dr. Jochen Sokoly, DPhil MPhil (Oxon) MA (London) FRAS
Associate Professor, Art and Architecture of the Islamic World, Department of Art History
Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar
PO Box 8095, Doha, Qatar
www.qatar.vcu.edu
jasokoly@vcu.edu | M +974 5570 9912
21. The Islamic College
Arabic Online Language Course
Tuesdays & Wednesdays 4 hours (2 sessions of 2 hours each week)
Fee: £220 (30% discount available for students (with valid ID), senior citizens (60+), and low-income art enthusiasts.
Starting from 10th December 2024
Registration Deadline: 5 December 2024
https://islamic-college.ac.uk/study-short-courses/learn-arabic/
- November 26, 2024
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