Archive for 2024
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Milkvetch & Violets: Poems (Expanded Bilingual Edition)
Mohammad Reza Shafi’i-Kadkani
Mage, 2024
https://magepublishers.com/milkvetch-violets-poems-expanded-bilingual-edition/
2. Medieval Arab Music and Musicians (Brill, 2022) is now available in an OpenAccess edition. The volume includes complete annotated translations of three medieval texts that may be of interest to a broad audience among scholars and students of the Middle East:
1) The Biography of Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī from al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī
2) The Biography of Ziryāb from Ibn Ḥayyān’s Kitāb al-Muqtabis
3) Ibn Sanā’ al-Mulk’s treatise on the muwashshaḥ, Dār al-Ṭirāz
Each section is available for download separately to make them easier to use as assigned readings in university courses. An additional option to download the entire work as a single PDF will be added to the website soon:
https://brill.com/display/title/61295
Additional Information:
The biography of the famous 8th-century musician and courtier Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī offers an intimate portrait of life in the ‘Abbasid court in Baghdad during the reigns of the caliphs al-Mahdī, al-Hādī, and Hārūn al-Rashīd. This translation contains an introduction, the complete text in translation, including isnāds and musical indications, along with explanatory annotations, and therefore allows readers to get a sense of how Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī gathered and organized his materials. In many ways, this single biography is a miniature version of the Kitāb al-Aghānī as a whole. Since substantive complete translations from KA into English are few in number, this text may be useful in courses on medieval Islamic history, the history of Arabic literature, and of course the history of Middle Eastern music. Passages on the purchase, selling, and training of “singing girls” (qiyān) may also be helpful in addressing issues of gender in medieval Islamic society.
The Andalusi historian Ibn Ḥayyān’s 11th-century biography of the most famous of all Andalusian singers, Ziryāb, is the longest and most detailed account of the life of a figure who has become legendary in recent centuries. The modern “mythic Ziryāb,” however, emerged entirely from the rather hyperbolic account penned by al-Maqqarī in his Nafh al-Ṭīb in the 17th century. While al-Maqqarī’s text paints an entirely laudatory portrait of Ziryāb, Ibn Ḥayyān’s much earlier text preserves conflicting versions of who Ziryāb was and how he was viewed by his contemporaries. It is also a fascinating portrayal of the 9th-century Cordoban court of the Emir ‘Abd al-Raḥmān II.
Ibn Sana’ al-Mulk’s 12th-century treatise Dār al-Ṭirāz is the single most important medieval source on the emergence and spread of Andalusi muwashshaḥ poetry and song. Although a Spanish translation was published some 60 years ago, that translator misunderstood, and therefore dismissed, the musical information contained in the text. This translation thus offers a significant re-interpretation of a very significant text in the history of Arabic literature and music.
Dwight F. Reynolds
3. Monday Majlis of the Centre for the Study of Islam, Exeter:
Austin O’Malley,
The Hoopoe on the Pulpit: Narrative Structure and Imagined Performance in ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭeq al-ṭayr
Monday Majlis Online on the 26th of February, 17: 00-18:30 (UK time)
Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter.
Register please on this link:
https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEkfu6spjoqHNaVnyqf46nrm_nhZIkepjtD
4. A Story of Islamic Art,
Routledge, 2024
Marcus Milwright
More information about the book can be found at:
https://www.routledge.com/A-Story-of-Islamic-Art/Milwright/p/book/9781032448152
5. Lecture – 2024 Calderwood Lecture on Islamic and Asian Art, Dr. Marianna Shreve Simpson, Boston College – April 2
Paintings as Prelude and Postscript in Deluxe Persian Manuscripts of the Early Modern Period
Deluxe Persian manuscripts of the early modern period often open, and sometimes
close, with double-page paintings of court receptions, literary gatherings, hunts and
other scenes. While such ubiquitous compositions are generally thought to be
independent of specific literary texts, closer consideration suggests fascinating
thematic connections, and also points to particular centers of artistic production.
Tuesday April 2, at 5:30 pm
Hill Family Conference Room
McMullen Museum
2101 Commonwealth Avenue
Brighton, MA 02135
Reception to follow
Sponsored by the Calderwood Professorship in Islamic and Asian Art
Art, Art History and Film Department, Boston College
Contact Information
Emine Fetvaci
Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art
Boston College
Contact Email
6. Zoom- Circle for Late Antique and Medieval Studies
The Circle for Late Antique and Medieval Studies is pleased to present two events in the Spring 2024 semester:
Friday, March 1 – “The Military Origins of the Persian Language (6th-9th Cent.)” a lecture by Étienne de la Vaissière, professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris
Friday, April 5 (TBC) – Panel discussion on numismatics in late antique and medieval studies.
Date & Time
Mar 1, 2024 05:00 PM
Apr 5, 2024 05:00 PM
London times
Register at:
https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0vc-2hrT0oH9HkUY0X__Me1Rlc3wlzB_Yl#/registration
7. INTENSIVE English-Arabic TRANSLATION COURSE
This in-depth program caters to students and colleagues interested in developing expertise in translation theories, techniques and cultural nuances.
Course Content: This course aims at training students of translation and translators on the translation of journalistic, political, commercial, legal, and scientific texts from Arabic into English and vice versa. The course includes the presentation of linguistic and cultural issues affecting meaning transfer from the original text into target language. Personalised one-on-one guidance and practical exercises ensure skillful navigation of cultural and linguistic nuances, empowering participants to excel in this dynamic field.
Course Dates & Duration: Two weeks 21st April – 2 May 2024 (5 hours a day, total of 50 hours).
Tuition: 1520 USDS
For more information please contact us at: info@jordanla.com
We look Forward to welcoming your students to this unique learning experience.
Sincerely,
JLA team
Jordan Language Academy
Mobile: +962 779502220
Tel: +962-6-5820985
info@jordanla.com
www.jordanla.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/jlaarabic
facebook: www.facebook.com/jlaarabic
8. Intellect is pleased to announce that Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 18.1 is out now!
Special Issue: ‘Interventions in Film Studies’
For more information about the journal and issue click here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-contemporary-iraq-the-arab-world
9. CfP Cross-Points: A Cambridge–Stanford Graduate Conference in Arabic Literature
We are looking for papers for a conference on Arabic Literature to be held at the University of Cambridge, UK on 12th and 13th September 2024
This two-day conference, hosted jointly by the PATH+ Research Unit at Stanford University and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, will bring together doctoral students of Arabic literature, with the aim of building an inter-institutional community, fostering collaboration, and imagining new directions and methodologies for research. Conscious of the limitations imposed by adherence to temporal, geographical, and generic boundaries, we shall arrange our panels thematically. This approach will allow us to tease out connections between customarily diverse subfields. As such, we encourage applicants to engage with the broader implications of their research when submitting abstracts. Potential themes include but are not limited to:
- Textual ecologies
- Formulaic transgressions
- Canon (trans)formation
- Con-, sub-, and inter-textualities
- DisOrienting theory
We invite submissions for ten-minute papers on any aspect of Arabic literature. Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and brief biographical information to camstan.arablit@gmail.com by 31st March 2024. Participation is restricted to doctoral students. Funding will be available to offset travel and visa costs, and accommodation will be provided. Further information on travel reimbursements will be sent to participants upon acceptance of their proposal.
10. Symposium: Challenging Empire: Women, Art, and the Global Early Modern World
March 1-2, 2024, Online and in Person
- Symposium title: “Challenging Empire: Women, Art, and the Global Early Modern World”
- Conference dates: March 1 – 2, 2024
- Venues: The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama
The symposium “Challenging Empire: Women, Art, and the Global Early Modern World,” part of the project Global Makers: Women Artists in the Early Modern Courts of Europe and Asia, is intended to extend and expand knowledge of cultural production by and for early modern women – particularly those associated with the courts – on a global scale. While numerous conferences, symposia and resulting publications in the past several decades have addressed women as producers, consumers and subjects of European art during the early modern period (c. 1400-1750), less consideration has been given to women’s roles in the courts – particularly as informed by the steadily increasing cross-cultural interactions (i.e. between Europe and Asia, the Americas, Africa, etc.) that characterized the period. This symposium aims to address this lacuna while de-centering the traditional Euro-centric model of study in the analysis of women’s cultural production, presentation and consumption surrounding courts and empires (institutions associated with ruling power). The goal is to encourage a more equitable view of early modern women’s experiences of and with art globally, across traditionally held national and continental boundaries.
For information and registration, please visit: https://art.ua.edu/challenging-empire-symposium/
11. MLA 2025 LLC West Asia Call for Papers
Between Land and Sea: Literatures in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula
Literary cultures of the Arabian Peninsula / Persian Gulf beyond citizenship and monolingualism. Topics may include petrofiction and ecocriticism; Gulf futurism; Indian ocean; diasporic writing; race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality; neoliberal cultural industries.
~ 250 word abstracts to alon@umn.edu by March 15, 2023
- February 24, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- February 23, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Hybrid – “End-of-Time Trends in Contemporary Thought & Messianic Beliefs”
Islamic Research and Information Center (IRIC) in collaboration with the Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, is holding a meeting entitled “End-of-Time Trends in Contemporary Thought and Messianic Beliefs” on Wednesday 21 February 2024 from 2pm to 4pm (Tehran Time).
The meeting will take place in Hannaneh Hall, Faculty of World Studies, Northern Campus of University of Tehran and will be streamed live on Zoom too.
This program includes a panel discussion with distinguished experts
- Mohmmad Nahavandian,
- Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Sajjadpour,
- Mahdiyeh Pakravan,
moderated by Sareh Taromirad.
Please note that the program is in English.
For more information:
https://iric.org/events/end-of-time-trends-in-contemporary-thought-and-messianic-beliefs/
2. Dick Davis Talk at Georgetown University about Khosrow and Shirin
Monday 26 February, 2024 at 3:30pm McGhee Library, ICC
to attend in person
The event will also be live streamed HERE
3. Washington and Lee University: Middle East and South Asia Studies
Location Lexington, VA
Open Date
Feb 14, 2024
Description
The Middle East and South Asia (MESA) Studies program at Washington and Lee University invites applications for a Visiting Assistant Professor of Arabic for the 2024-2025 academic year. We seek candidates with native or near-native fluency in Arabic, and fluency in English, who have teaching experience at the university level. The teaching load for this appointment is six courses per year. The successful candidate will teach undergraduate Arabic at the introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels.
The Visiting Assistant Professor of Arabic will be a core member of the university’s interdisciplinary MESA program. Participation in this program includes attendance of the cohort’s monthly meetings, as well as contributions to student-focused extracurricular activities (e.g., film screenings, cooking classes, poetry readings). Members of the cohort are actively engaged in research relating to the Middle East and South Asia. Though research is not a formal requirement of this position, opportunities for scholarly engagement and collaboration with existing faculty will be available.
Washington and Lee is a top-ranked, highly selective university devoted to the liberal arts. We are committed to excellence in teaching and to the research and professional activity that support it. Situated in the Shenandoah Valley, three hours southwest of Washington, DC, the university enrolls approximately 1,860 undergraduates and 380 law students.
Washington and Lee affirms that diverse perspectives and backgrounds enhance our community. We are committed to the recruitment, enrichment, and retention of students, faculty, and staff who embody many experiences, cultures, points of view, interests, and identities. In keeping with the University Strategic Plan, we encourage applications from underrepresented minority candidates and members of other communities that are traditionally underrepresented in academia.
Qualifications
Applicants must have a PhD (or ABD status) in Arabic or a related field (e.g., Middle Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies) by the time of appointment, which begins July 1, 2024.
Application Instructions
All application materials must be submitted online through Interfolio at http://apply.interfolio.com/140901. Applications must include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, graduate transcript (unofficial is acceptable for initial application), student evaluations, and contact information for three professional references. At least two of these references should be able to speak to your teaching abilities. Women and minority candidates are especially encouraged to apply. Please send any inquiries about the position to Seth Cantey at canteys@wlu.edu.
Review of applications will begin on March 11 and will continue until the position is filled.
4. Workshop: Aesthetics, Rituals, and Narratives in Islamic Mobilization
Date: 24th October 2024
Venue: The Middle East Centre, University of Oxford, Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 6JF (UK)
Workshop funded by Sasakawa Peace Foundation
For over four decades, the Middle East has witnessed the (re)emergence of Islamic mobilization—a multifaceted phenomenon that involves diverse groups advocating for visibility, political legitimacy, and resonance in response to social and political grievances. When analysing Islamic narratives of resistance, it is imperative not to underestimate the importance of aesthetic, ritualistic, and entertainment characteristics. These elements play a pivotal role in capturing people’s attention and motivating them to participate in collective actions.
In this workshop, we will investigate how art, rituals, performances, music, and symbolic meanings contribute to creating a cohesive narrative that shapes various forms of Islamic mobilization across the Middle East. We invite abstracts that explore aesthetics, rituals, and narratives within the context of Islamic movements in the Middle East. Submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- The Aesthetic of Armed Resistance:
_Analysing the expressive dimension of Islamic militant activism, focusing on the interplay between symbolic meanings, visual representations, and emotions in influencing militant groups to challenge their antagonists.
_Examining the contribution of art, slogans, graffiti, and music in shaping narratives of armed resistance.
- Rituals and Islamic Mobilisation:
_Investigating the incorporation of religious festivals, communal rituals, and traditions in Islamic mobilization.
Examing the role of rituals in the identity formation of Islamic movements.
- Narratives in Action:
_Investigate how activists construct narratives about memories of past struggles and current experiences of grievances to foster or resist political changes.
_Examine the role of oral histories, art, literature, and cultural expressions as essential components of collective action frames, elucidating how activists express their grievances.
- Digital Storytelling:
_Exploring the role of digital platforms in enabling Islamic groups to share the experiences of activism through multimedia representations.
_Analysing the impact of digital activism on mobilization by unfolding the relationship between online campaigns and aesthetics of protest in the digital era.
How to Apply:
Applicants must submit an abstract of 400-words, a 100-words biography, and a two-page CV to info_workshop_mena2024@area.ox.ac.uk by 22 March 2024.
Please note that we will be selecting only 15 abstracts for presentation. Notification of acceptance will be sent by April 2024. Papers to be submitted after the notification of acceptance will be 4000-words for work in progress and 8000-words for full articles.
Partial funding is available to support accommodation in Oxford for participants, with priority given to individuals with limited institutional support. If you require funding for accommodation, please indicate your request in your submission.
Conveners: Dr Antonella Acinapura (Antonella.acinapura@area.ox.ac.uk ) and Dr Kenichi Tani (kenichi.tani@area.ox.ac.uk )
5. The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2023–2024 East of Byzantium lecture series.
Tuesday, February 27, 2024 | 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom
Political Rituals and Urban Communities in Cilician Armenia
Gohar Grigoryan, University of Fribourg
Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/
6. A new documentary THROUGH THE MIRROR OF CHESS: A CULTURAL EXPLORATION which explores the remarkable impact of chess on culture, art, literature, science and more in an attempt to comprehensively address the question of what makes the game so unique.
The viewer is taken on an exhilarating journey across a wide range of times and places, touching on Asian studies, Islamic art, Medieval romance, Enlightenment philosophy, psychology, linguistics, game theory, gender bias, literature, computer science, educational theory, empirical economics, sporting culture, penal reform, social empowerment and more.
Part 2 of the film provides a detailed exploration of the history and widespread social and cultural impact of chess over its first thousand years, from roughly 500–1500 CE. Beginning in Northern India, the film follows the evolution of the game into the Sasanian Empire, its incorporation into the Islamic world through the Arab Conquest, and its eventual penetration into Medieval Europe, highlighting its many influences on art, literature and politics throughout a broad range of very different societies.
Professor Antonio Panaino, University of Bologna, examines the strong cultural role that games played in the Sasanian world, reflecting prevailing societal norms, while describing the very real activities that young noble warriors were engaged in as a means of training and education.
Professor Jenny Adams, UMass Amherst, is featured in the film and talks about what medieval literary representations can tell us both about the ways the game changed as it was naturalized in the West and about the society these changes reflected. In its Western form, chess featured a queen rather than a counselor, a judge or bishop rather than an elephant, a knight rather than a horse; in some manifestations, even the pawns were differentiated into artisans, farmers, and tradespeople with discrete identities.
The film explores how a careful investigation of chess pieces over the ages sheds highly revealing light on the artistic and courtly values of many different civilizations. At the same time, a close examination of the many chess-related literary references, from epic Persian poems to medieval romances and political allegories, provides an additional array of unique insights into a tapestry of distinct yet overlapping traditions.
On the film page, https://ideasroadshow.com/libraries_chess/, you can find more details. Attached is a detailed study guide with additional information. Feel free to contact me directly, irena@ideasroadshow.com , for more information about this film and upcoming films on the Italian Renaissance.
Contact Email
URL
https://ideasroadshow.com/libraries_chess/
7. The Al Babtain-Leiden University Centre for Arabic Culture will offer the sixth Leiden Summerschool on Philology and Manuscripts from the Muslim World, with lectures by experts, hands-on classes and much practice with manuscripts from its famous collection of oriental manuscripts. The course is meant for graduate students (MA and PhD) and researchers. It will take place from August 19 to 30, 2024. More information will soon be available on the website mentioned below (page Summerschools.) Or send an e-mail to Fons Hooft for more information.
The deadline for applications is Wednesday May 1, 2024. Participants will be informed about the selection by Friday May 3, 2024.
Contact Information
Mr Fons Hooft, student-assistant.
Contact Email
URL
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/humanities/institute-for-area-studies/arab…
8. Cambridge Blue Story of Muhammad Hanafiyyah from Java
Majid Daneshgar’s article on a rare copy of the Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiyyah kept at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. This work is inscribed on a BLUE paper from the mid-17th century.
This copy was produced in Java, and it contains more Persian poetic accounts. Here is the online article:
https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=27592
- February 20, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- February 19, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.The Mediterranean Seminar Summer Skills Seminars are intensive, interactive four-day workshops that provide students, scholars and professionals with foundational training in technical skills related to Mediterranean Studies. The Seminars, run by leading scholars, emphasize hands-on reading complemented by supplementary and contextual topics.
All Skills Seminars are held synchronously by remote client (i.e.: Zoom, Teams. etc.), and are open to all. Meeting times are set to accommodate the most possible participants taking into account the effects of time zones. The meeting times noted below are given in MDT (Mountain Daylight Time), which is EDT -2, CDT -1, PST +1, GMT -8, and WET -9.
“Mediterranean Magic: An Introduction” 10–13 June 2024
This Summer Skills Seminar provides participants with an overview of magic and its ability to intersect with religion, ethnicity, gender, and more across transnational networks. While anchored in the premodern cultural and literary past we will also explore some contemporary echoes.
Contact Email
mailbox@mediterraneanseminar.org
URL
https://www.mediterraneanseminar.org/overview-mediterranean-magic-2024
2. Archaeology, Text, Narrative, and the Usable Past in Global Perspective (Session #1108, EAA Rome)
The concept of the/a “usable past” was coined by Van Wyck Brooks in 1918 in an attempt to retrospectively bind together disparate cultural elements in the USA. The instrumentalising of the past to shape collective memory is a feature of all human collectivities. Salient examples of this in the politics of the present and the past are to be found in the use of the shared-but-exclusive heritage of perceived golden ages from around the globe—e.g., the Rashidun Caliphate, Roman Empire, Gupta Empire, Tawantinsuyu, Mali Empire or Tang era, among many other points in space and time—to justify contemporary political systems, social stratification and inter-polity relations. However, it would be difficult to argue that the deployment of a usable past by established social groups this is ever totalising, with individuals and groups having complex relationships with the past and narratives associated with it.
This session seeks to take stock of the research being done across the globe on these issues, both in the present and the use of the past in the past. Papers are encouraged in relation to both case-studies where textual and archaeological evidence intersect and contradict, and on areas for which documentary narratives do not survive. Studies treating these processes outside Europe are particularly encouraged, as are comparative treatments of the problematic. Research questions that could be posed include—but are not limited to—why usable pasts are so often linked to military highpoints; the use of the past by groups writing against one another in narrative complexes; gatekeeping and selectivity and the past; the removal of the past in colonial relations; archaeology shaping and being shaped by narrative; and on the past as a socio-political and cultural resource more widely.
Session #1108, The European Association of Archaeologists, 30th annual meeting in Rome, 28-31 August 2024
Additional details:
- Presentations are planned for 15 minutes each.
- Abstracts need to have between 150 and 300 words. 3-6 keywords should be added.
- The maximum number of authors is 10, the main author.
- For submitting an abstract, consult https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2024/
- Please note that ultimately all Annual Meeting delegates must be current EAA members (paid-up for 2024) and pay the Annual Meeting registration fee.
Contact Information
Russell Ó Ríagáin, University College Dublin (Ireland)
Hagit Nol, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt-am-Main (Germany)
Contact Email
URL
https://submissions.e-a-a.org/eaa2024/
3. Edinburgh – Hybrid: Islam and Christian Muslim Relations (ICMR) Research Seminars
The talks will take place on Tuesdays in the Martin Hall at New College from 16:10 until 17:30 (unless otherwise stated), in hybrid form. Those wishing to attend online may do so by following this link: https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83079577369 and entering passcode cWg5iQ5U.
30 Jan
Professor Nahyan Fancy (University of Exeter)
‘The Brain Never Shuts Down’: Sleep Theory and Practices in Premodern Islamic Societies
20 Feb
Professor Andrew Peacock (University of St Andrews)
Translating the Bible in Mongol Tabriz: Persian manuscripts, Syriac Translators and European Patronage.
5 Mar
Professor Emily Selove (University of Exeter)
Book Talk: The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Ancient and Medieval Magic
19 Mar
Dr Sofia Rehman (independent scholar)
Book Talk: Gendering the Hadith Tradition: Recentring the Authority of Aisha, Mother of the Believers
*** Online only from 10am to 11:30am ***
2 Apr
PhD Student Panel in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
Speakers TBA
All best wishes,
Salam Rassi
Contact Email
4. Book: Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage
GINGKO has published Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage, a beautiful two volume book including twenty seven essays responding to objects associated with the arts of pilgrimage, from the remarkable collection of Professor Sir Nasser David Khalili.
Each of the essays are written by prominent specialists in the field. The volumes are beautifully illustrated with full-colour images of objects from the collection, some of which have never been seen before. Together, the essays in Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage provide a comprehensive overview of Hajj, illustrating the religious, spiritual, cultural, and artistic aspects of pilgrimage to the Holy Sanctuaries of Islam and the cosmopolitan nature of Hajj itself.
Edited by Qaisra M. Khan with Nahla Nassar
Foreword by Julian Raby
Essays by Bilal Badat, Sergio Carro Martín, Sami De Giosa, Sabiha Göloğlu, Alastair Hamilton, Edmund Hayes, Qaisra Khan, Janie Lightfoot, Jan Loop, Michael Christopher Low, Ulrich Marzolph, Richard McGregor, Luitgard Mols, Harry Munt, James Nicholson, Nahla Nassar, Seif el Rashidi, Yousuf Saeed, Saarthak Singh, John Slight, Mehmet Tütüncü, Aram Vardanyan, Arnoud Vrolijk, Michael Wolfe, Muhammad Isa Waley, Peter Webb.
Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage is available to buy from our website: https://www.gingko.org.uk/publishing/books/hajj-and-the-arts-of-pilgrimage/
5. Online summer course in Persian at UT: Iranian Cinema
Re-initiation of the online, higher-intermediate/advanced summer courses in Persian at UT Austin.
Our first summer course will be IRANIAN CINEMA, to be taught entirely in Persian in summer session 1 (June 6-July 11, 2024).
Enrollments are open to any language learners anywhere in the world, with the condition of taking the placement exam.
You can read more about this summer course on the attached flyer or by clicking on (or copy/pasting) this link: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mes/languages/persian/iranian-cinema-summer-course-prs-329.html.
Fellowships available.
6. SOAS Iranian Women Visual Artists – 27 February 2024
SOAS Middle East Institute and the SOAS Centre for Iranian Studies
Iranian Women Visual Artists – NOW!
5.30pm-7.00pm, Tuesday 27 February 2024
More info and register at:
https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/iranian-women-visual-artists-now
7. Islamic Theology and Extraterrestrial Life: New Frontiers in Science and Religion
Bloomsbury, 2024
Jörg Matthias Determann and Shoaib Ahmed Malik, eds.
More information:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/islamic-theology-and-extraterrestrial-life-9780755650880/
8. Prochaine séance du séminaire “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du monde iranien”, jeudi 29 février 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 29 février 2024, 17h-19h, en salle 3.15 à l’INaLCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 3e étage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir M. Yavuz Aykan, spécialiste de l’histoire du droit et de l’histoire sociale de l’Empire ottoman, Maître de conférences en histoire moderne à l’Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, pour une conférence intitulée: “L’Empire et son madhhab: vers une relecture de l’impérialisation ottomane“.
Résumé
Cette communication a pour point de départ la question suivante : quel rôle a joué le droit musulman dans l’intégration des périphéries à l’empire ottoman à l’époque moderne ? Pour éclairer le problème dans sa complexité, je me concentrerai sur le déploiement de la doctrine juridique hanafite dans la ville d’Amid (aujourd’hui Diyarbakır), limitrophe des territoires safavides, et interface du monde iranien. J’examinerai en particulier le sort du terme juridique de hakk-ı karar, comparable au principe romain de l’usucapio, qui désigne littéralement le droit du cultivateur sur la terre agricole “en vertu de la résidence”. Jusqu’au XVIIe siècle, ce principe était régi par les règles du kanun, sorte de code administratif imposé par le souverain. Avec l’intégration de ce principe dans les textes hanafites, on observe l’interpénétration progressive des règles du kanun et de la doctrine sunnite-hanafite, et le déploiement de cette dernière dans les pratiques juridiques ottomanes. En me fondant sur l’analyse d’un procès complexe concernant le destin d’une terre vacante dans la ville d’Amid au XVIIIe siècle, je soutiendrai qu’en s’appropriant les principes du kanun ottoman, la doctrine sunnite-hanafite s’est constituée en soutien aux prérogatives d’État sur les terres agricoles, notamment en période de crise. Ma conclusion mettra en perspective ce processus dans le contexte des politiques sunnites dans la région, pour mieux comprendre le renforcement du hanafisme ottoman aux frontières de l’empire safavide.
Orientations bibliographiques
- Aykan, Yavuz, Rendre la justice à Amid: procédures, acteurs et doctrines dans le contexte ottoman du XVIIIe siècle, Leyde, Brill, 2016 (en part. p. 183–84).
- Abou Al-Hajj, Rifaat, “Power and Social Order: the Uses of Kanun”,dans Irene A. Bierman, Rifaat Abou-El-Hajj et Donald Preziosi (dir.), The Ottoman City and its Parts: Structures and Social Order, New Rochelle, N.Y., A.D. Caratzas, 1991, p. 77–99.
- İnalcık, Halil, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600, Londres, Phoenix, 2000 (en part. p. 179–85).
Pour rappel, vous retrouverez le programme 2023-2024 du séminaire mensuel de recherche “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du monde iranien” sur le site du CeRMI :
Dans l’attente du plaisir de vous retrouver à l’occasion de ces séances, qui se déroulent en présentiel sur le site de l’INaLCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII), nous vous adressons tous nos vœux les meilleurs pour la nouvelle année.
Contact: justine.landau@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
9. A Stroll in the Enchanting Sphere of Persian Wisdom, Language, and Culture
A Series of Courses Introducing Masterpieces of Persian Literature
Course 1:
With Sa‘di in the Delightful Gardens of Golestan
Lecturer: Dr Isa Jahangir
April 16 – July 16
Tuesdays 6-7:30 pm
Venue: The Islamic College 133 High Road London NW102SW
To register:
https://islamic-college.ac.uk/study/short-courses/persian-language-culture/
10. Webinar:
Silk in Ottoman Safavid Trade, Warfare, and Urban Life in the Early Modern Period,”
Professor Fariba Zarinebaf
4 March, 5 pm EST
https://unc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ss4GNLt9TamA9rTT9vRjkQ#/registration
11. GINKO Grants
GINGKO provides grants to support academic research into the history, art history and religions of MENA. GINGKO also offers grants for people organising transformative interfaith and intercultural encounters between people from MENA and the West.
In 2023 successful applications included a workshop entitled ‘From West Africa to South East Asia: The History of Muhammad al-Jazuli’s Dala’il al-Khayrat Prayer Book (15th-20th centuries)’ to be held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York Public Library and a conference entitled ‘Searching for the light: The life and work of Mahmoud Saïd, pioneer of Egyptian and Arab Modernism’ to be held at the Università La Sapienza in Rome.
If you have a research project or an encounter that you would like to pursue, pleases consider applying.
We are open for applications until 6 April 2024. You can read more about the GINGKO Grants Programme and find information on how to apply by visiting:
gingko.org.uk/how-to-apply
12. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Programoffers over 400 unique awards for U.S. citizens to teach, research, and conduct professional projects in more than 130 countries, including projects in the areas of study of Islamic art. Explore awards available in the 2025-26 competition. You can join the more than 400,000 Fulbrighters who have come away with enhanced skills, new connections and greater mutual understanding.
We encourage you to visit our website for application resources:
– Getting Started
– Application Guidance
– Open Awards in the 2025-26 Competition, searchable by discipline, country/region, etc.
– Webinar Schedule and Archive
– Office Hours, a great way to get your questions answered live by Fulbright staff
View our webinar schedule for presentations throughout the year, sharing opportunities for specific regions, countries, and disciplines.
We look forward to receiving your application by our deadline of September 16, 2024. To receive program updates and application resources, connect with Fulbright.
- February 17, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – AMI CfP: ’12th annual AMI Contemporary Fiqhī Issues Workshop’ – (Birmingham, 4-5 July, 2024)
Call for Papers: Language and Meaning in Islamic Legal Theory
The deadline for submissions is 19th April 2024.
- February 15, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- February 14, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.HYBRID Presentation of Research Project “Beyond 1932: Rethinking Musical Modernity in the MENA Region”, CEDEJ, Paris, 13 February 2024, 11:00 am CET
The Cairo Congress of Arab Music in 1932 brought together musicians and musicologists from across the post-Ottoman world and involved the participation of eminent Western composers, orientalists and musicologists. Its underlying aim was to share ‘best practice’ in performance, pedagogy and research, to unify and connect. Martin Stokes, Yara Salahiddeen, Sophie Frankford, and Rim Irscheid will consider 1932 in retrospect and consider the fate of postcolonial politics and culture across the entire Arab and post-Ottoman world.
Information and registration:
http://cedej-eg.org/index.php/2024/02/04/cedej-seminar-on-tuesday-february-13-2024-at-11am/?lang=en
2. ONLINE Lecture “Byzantium as Europe’s Black Mirror” by Anthony Kaldellis (University of Chicago), Havard University, 16 February 2024, 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST
In the course of its long self-fashioning, “the West” (later “Europe”) set itself off as a superior alternative to a number of imagined Others, including the infidel world of Islam, the primitive nature of the New World, and even its own regressive past, the Middle Ages. This lecture will explore the unique role that Byzantium played in this process.
Information and registration: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/byzantium-as-europes-black-mirror
3. ONLINE Webinar: “From True “History” to the “He-Story” of Truth: Al-Mawqif as Narration of the Beginnings” by Chafika B. Ouail (Nizwa University, Oman), Centre for Islamic Theology (ZIT), University of Münster, 28 March 2024, 6:00 pm CET
In this first lecture of the online lecture series “Sufism and Suprarationality: The Cognitive Aspects of Islamic Mysticism”, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chafika B. Ouail will investigate the mystical experiences of an early Islamic Sufi wanderer, Abd al-Gabbar an-Niffari (d. 965). Al-Niffarī’s main Work “Spiritual Stations and Addresses” is considered as one of the most ambiguous sufi texts.
Information and registration: https://www.uni-uenster.de/ZIT/Aktuelles/2024/Sufism_and_Suprarationality_ The_Cognitive_Aspects_of_Islamic_Mysticism.html
4. Max Weber Foundation Conference on „Harmful Entanglements“, Orient-Institut Istanbul, 14-15 May 2024
The concept of entanglement enables researchers to avoid dealing with clearly (pre-)defined social or political entities. What kind of entanglements have been regarded as sufficiently “bad” to provoke attempts at disentanglement? As dependencies involve power inequalities, the question of agency in disentanglements becomes crucial: What regimes of power trigger decolonialisation and neo-colonialisation processes?
Deadline for abstracts: 25 February 2024. Information:
https://networks.h-net.org/system/files/attachments/cfc-harmful-entanglementsblocksatz.pdf
5. Early Career and Postgraduate Conference “Theology & Religious Studies, the Global and the Local”, Durham University, 16 July 2024
We welcome papers from postgraduate students and other early career scholars interested in theology and religion from multiple disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.
Deadline for abstracts: 5 April 2024. Information: https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/catholic-studies/about-us/events/early-career-and-postgraduate-conference/
6. Symposium “Women and Power between the Mediterranean and the Nordic World in Harald Hardrada’s Times”, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 8-11 September 2024
This symposium explores how powerful women shaped Harald’s formative travels, from Ingegerd of Sweden in Kievan Rus’ to Empress Zoe of Byzantium and Rasad in Fatimid Egypt. Yet This symposium will also be an opportunity to develop a wide-raging discussion and comparison on the broad theme of women and power across the varied cultures with which Harald interacted.
Deadline for abstracts: 3 March 2024.
Information: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/hardrada/2023/07/09/event-2-women-and-power/
7. Conference “Exploring the Middle East: Dynamics, Challenges, and Perspectives”, Christopher Newport University, VA, 7-9 February 2025
Themes: • 1. Politics and Governance, • 2. Socioeconomic Development, • 3. Culture, Arts and Heritage, • 4. Migration and Refugees, • 5. Media and Communication, • 6. History and Historical Perspectives, • 7. Religion, Identity and Cultural Pluralism, • 8. Environment and Sustainability.
Deadline for abstracts: 20 July 2024. Information: https://mesana.org/resources-and-opportunities/2024/02/05/exploring-the-middle-east-dynamics-challenges-and-perspectives
8. Postdoctoral Research Associate (5 Years) in the History of Islam and Muslims in Europe (16th–20th c.), Leipniz-Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz
Your profile: outstanding PhD; high quality academic publications in the field of early modern or modern European Islamic and Muslim History; internationally oriented academic track record; very good command of English; good knowledge of German or willingness to learn German.
Deadline for applications: 25 February 2024.
Information: https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=66864
9. PostDoc Position (“Oberassistenz”) in Islamic Studies (2 Years +, 80%), Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich
Your profile: PhD in Islamic Studies or adjacent fields (history, religious studies, anthropology); Excellent knowledge of Arabic; Knowledge of another language relevant to the field (Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu) appreciated; Teaching experience; Administrative skills; Interdisciplinary research agenda focusing on dis/continuities between the pre-modern and the modern world; Motivation to further advance on the academic career path via “Habilitation”.
Deadline for applications: 15 March 2024. Information: https://jobs.uzh.ch/offene-stellen/postdoc-oberassistenz-islamic-studies/421121a8-a963-4a3c-a535-07833de4221a
10. International Fellowships (24 Months) for Young Foreign Postdoc Researchers, Offered by of the British Academy and the Royal Society, UK
The applicants must: Have a PhD or be in the final stages of their PhD; Applicants should have no more than seven years of active full time postdoctoral experience at the time of application; Be working outside the UK; Not hold UK citizenship; Be competent in oral and written English; Have a clearly defined and mutually-beneficial research proposal agreed with a UK host researcher.
Deadline for applications: 13 March 2024.
Information: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/international-fellowships/
11. 2 Postdoctoral Positions (3 Years) on Feminism and Mobilisation of Law in Gulf Countries, University of Oslo
Applicants must hold a PhD degree in a relevant field: 1) the first postdoc (sociological studies, sociology of gender, and gender studies); 2) the second postdoc (qualitative and quantitative legal analysis). The two postdocs are expected to conduct in-depth fieldwork within courtrooms in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Emirates. They should have excellent oral and written communication skills in English and advanced oral and written communication skills in Arabic.
Deadline for applications: 14 February 2024. Information: https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/254652/postdoctoral-positions-on-feminism-and-mobilisation-of-law-in-gulf-countries
12. Call for Abstracts: Memory Studies in Turkey and Beyond. A Handbook
edited by Erol Gülüm (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) and Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim (Boğaziçi University & Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey) Brill
Sections: • Transcultural memories: Ottoman past and post-imperial memories etc. • Painful memories: Difficult pasts, conflicts, traumas, and resolutions etc. • Memory politics: Identities, ideologies, diplomacies, diasporas etc. • Migrating memories: Circulations, transmissions and reproductions etc. • Ecological memories: Geographies, (disputed) territories, cultural landscape etc. • Cognitive psychological memories: Individual memory, autobiographical memory, (collective) future thinking, flashbulb memories etc.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 April 2024. Information: https://www.memorystudies-frankfurt.com/2024/01/22/call-for-abstracts-memory-studies-in-turkey-and-beyond-a-handbook/
13. Arab Media & Society,the biannual journal of the Kamal Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism in the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, is seeking submissions for our next issue on “Media & Artificial Intelligence.”
The advent of artificial intelligence has ushered in a new era that promises significant changes in the field of communication and media. As nation-states and organizations invest substantial resources in advancing artificial intelligence, it becomes essential to explore the potential outcomes of this revolutionary digital mechanism. While artificial intelligence is often presented within a utopian framework, there are also cautious voices raising concerns. This call for papers aims to critically analyze the impact of artificial intelligence on media and communication, particularly in the Arab world and its diaspora.
Specifically, we seek to examine how artificial intelligence will contribute to and shape the production of media and communication. Additionally, we aim to investigate the downstream effects of artificial intelligence on media audiences and consumers, as well as the potential alterations in communication dynamics between individuals and entities. This call encourages deep reflection on the opportunities, risks, ethical and moral implications, potentialities, and transformations that may arise in the imminent age of artificial intelligence.
In light of the pressing need to address the complexities presented by artificial intelligence, Arab Media & Society dedicates its upcoming publication, issue 37, to this theme. We welcome diverse submissions on various subtopics related to media and artificial intelligence. Some suggested subtopics include, but are not limited to:
- The role of artificial intelligence in media production and content creation
- AI-driven algorithms and their impact on media consumption patterns
- Ethical considerations and challenges in introducing artificial intelligence in media and communication
- The future of media and its content: journalism, advertising, public relations, strategic communication, broadcast, etc., in an era of artificial intelligence
Journalism and Communication programs in Higher Education
- in the era of Artificial Intelligence
- Digital Divide / (In)equitable access to technologies
- Social Media Algorithms and User Behavior
- AI and Media Consumption Patterns
- AI, Propaganda, and Information Warfare
- AI in Entertainment and Creative Industries
- Economic Impact of AI on Media Industries
- Regulatory and Policy Perspectives on AI in Media
Authors interested in submitting their work for peer-review consideration should send their manuscripts by June 15, 2024. Other submissions, including book and conference reviews, shorter research papers, and columns, should be received by July 1, 2024.
All submissions must be in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx), adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, and have a maximum length of 10,000 words (including footnotes and citations). Please include the author’s name (as it will be published), affiliation, and a brief abstract of no more than 150 words.
Please direct your articles and ideas to editor@arabmediasociety.com .
For further information regarding our publishing policies, kindly visit www.arabmediasociety.com/publishing-policies/.
14. Leiden Yemeni Studies Lecture Series
Leiden University will host the first round of a series of online talks about Yemen. The series, running from January 2024 till June 2025 and sponsored by the Horizon-2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project EMStaD YEMEN, brings together experts on various aspects of Yemen’s history, art and archaeology, politics, economics, sociology, anthropology, and literature, creating an interdisciplinary dialogue about the region.
All talks take place online (zoom) at 16.00 Central European Time, registration is available through the individual pages of the events on the series webpage.
The schedule for the spring is the following:
January 22, 2024 – Bernard Haykel (Princeton University), Keynote lecture: Zaydis, Salafis and Houthis and their Engagement with the Islamic Tradition in Yemen.
February 19, 2024 – Ewa Strzelecka (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Reimaging Peacemaking: Gender, Diaspora, and Peace Democratization in Yemen / discussant: Elham Manea (University of Zurich)
March 25, 2024 – Mahmood Kooria (Edinburgh University), Indian Problems, Yemeni Solutions? Legal Exchanges in the Sixteenth Century / discussant: Roxani Eleni Margariti (Emory University)
April 22, 2024 – Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont (University of Liège), Blessed Aristocracies: Charismatic authority, rural elites, and historiography in Medieval Yemen (6th-9th/12th-15th c.) / discussant: Vincent Cornell (Emory University)
May 20, 2024 – Ingrid Hehmeyer (Toronto Metropolitan University), History of Water Management in Yemen: An Interdisciplinary Study / discussant Daniel Varisco (American Institute for Yemeni Studies)
June 24, 2024 – Marieke Brandt (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Mapping the Past, Imagining the Future: Heritage Politics in Ḥūthī Yemen / discussant Noha Sadek
Contact Email
URL
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/events/series/leiden-yemeni-studies-lectur…
15. Workshop and Special Issue: Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonizing World
The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal invites submissions for a
workshop and an ensuing special thematic issue on the Internationalism of the
Decolonizing World in the Cold War.
In recent decades, Cold War historiography has paid growing attention to the
autonomy and agency of the players beyond the US-Soviet dichotomy. In the wake
of Westad’s seminal The Global Cold War (2005), scholars have increasingly
explored the episodes, events, and institutions that demonstrate the agency of the
Global South. From the Bandung Conference to Pan-African networks, the so-called
Third World assumes a pivotal role in the latest historiographies. Newly independent
states, among others, are recast as actors in their own right and not mere pawns in a
game played by two superpowers.
Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonizing World advances this recentering of
the narrative by focusing on decolonizing or newly independent states, along with
related actors, as the makers and breakers of the Cold War world order. This special
issue thus seeks to reframe the Cold War from the standpoint of Latin American,
Middle Eastern, African, or Asian actors – where the US and Soviet Union appear
not as the protagonists but as the dependent variables of decolonial world-making.
In addition, we seek contributions to highlight the decolonizing world’s agency in
defining and/or shaping various ideologies – including, but not limited to,
Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, Nationalism, or Liberalism. We want to
explore how actors from the postcolonial sphere assigned new meanings to the
political vocabulary of the Cold War and created their own vocabularies.
Submissions including, but not limited to, the following topics are welcome:
● Anti-imperialist networks
● South-south diplomacies
● Biographical or multi-biographical studies
● Revolutionary organizations linked to post-colonial powers
● Women’s organizations, labor, intellectual, cultural, medical, educational, and
humanitarian groups
● Politics of anti-colonial nationalism
● Non-Soviet communisms
- International repercussions and transnational afterlives of novel variations of
ideologies or stand-alone ideologies emerging from the decolonizing world
(Maoism, Nasserism, Juche, Jamahiriyya, Latin American Developmentalism,
Nkruhmaism, Nehruvianism, etc.)
Contributions from all levels, including graduate students and independent scholars,
are greatly encouraged.
To Apply:
Prospective authors should send a short abstract (300 words) and a short bio (one
paragraph) directly to Burak Sayim (burak.sayim@nyu.edu ) and Severyan Dyakonov
(sd3196@nyu.edu ) by March 30, 2024. We will be in touch about the results by April
15.
The workshop will take place on June 5-6, 2024 at Geneva Graduate Institute.
Financial support for travel and accommodation is limited.
If you are invited to submit a paper for the envisioned publication afterwards, the
submission deadline for a completed manuscript is October 30, 2024.
The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal is the only academic, peer-reviewed
journal to focus solely on this transformative impact and legacies of this decade in
our history. Originally launched in 2008 as The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics,
and Culture, it was renamed in 2022 to account for the broader and more globally
inclusive trajectory of scholarship in this area.
Generally focusing on the concept of “the long Sixties” and welcoming approaches
from all disciplines, the journal addresses how this period continues to be examined
and redefined across the world, encouraging global, regional, and local perspectives,
as well as transnational and comparative analyses.
For more details, please visit:
https://www.globalsixtiesjournal.com/workshop-special-issue-internationalism-of-the-
decolonizing-world
Contact Information
16. Searching for the Deputy Editor of Iranian Studies Journal
The Deputy Editor of Iranian Studies, appointed for an initial period of three years (July 1, 2024-June 30, 2027), is responsible for evaluating all submissions on the Cambridge University Press electronic platform, ScholarOne, ensuring that they conform to the journal’s word-limit, citation, and transliteration styles. Following this initial review, the Deputy Editor will make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief about the appropriate course of action. The Deputy Editor will also monitor the review assignments for timely processing and, when necessary, send reminders to the Associate Editors and reviewers.
The Deputy Editor receives an honorarium of $2,500 per annum from the Association for Iranian Studies.
Please submit a 2-page letter of application, in which you describe past experience and/or aptitude for this role, to the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Nasrin Rahimieh (nasrin.rahimieh@uci.edu), by April 15, 2024. A selection committee will conduct brief interviews with the short-listed candidates.
17. The First Reading Comprehension Texts of Persian,” Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari – February 17, 2024, 12:00 PM EST
lease join us for the second lecture in the “Literature in Persian Language Pedagogy” webinar organized jointly by the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago, entitled, “Ḥekāyāt-e Laṭīf: The First Reading Comprehension Texts of Persian and their Literary Sources” by Prof. Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Persian at the University of Tehran.
The lecture will be this coming Saturday, Feb 17 at 12:00 EST and 11:00 CST. Please register below to receive the zoom link.
Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!
Best wishes,
Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) پونه شعبانی جدیدی
Instructional Professor of Persian
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
5828 South University Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, Room 303
Email: pshabanijadidi@uchicago.edu Webpage
Persian Language Program at the University of Chicago
- February 13, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.New book: Love at a Crux
explores the emergence of the Persian romance genre (the dastan-e asheqana) in a comparative context (Arabic, Greek, Georgian, French, and German), with Vis & Ramin as its focal point.
It is available to order at the University of Toronto Press website in a variety of formats, but as it has been published Open Access, you can directly download the PDF of the book here.
Cameron Cross
Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies
University of Michigan | Middle East Studies
2. Andreas Görke and Gregor Schoeler,
THE EARLIEST WRITINGS ON THE LIFE OF MUHAMMAD
The ‘Urwa Corpus and the Non-Muslim Sources
Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, volume 27
Gerlach Press, ISBN 9783959941266, 2024
HC, 328 pages, with Index
EUR 145 GBP 135 USD 167
https://gerlachpress.com/index.php?art_no=9783959941266
3. UCLA Hybrid event: Pourdavoud Lecture Series with Christian Sahner
How Zoroastrians Argued with Muslims in the Early Islamic Period
Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 4:00pm Pacific
Royce Hall 314
Hybrid Zoom Option Available
4. Call for Paper – Deadline March 1, 2024
Beyond Binaries: Intersex in Premodern Islamic Legal, Medical, and Literary Discourses
On 26 June 2024, I am organising an international conference entitled “Beyond Binaries: Intersex in Premodern Islamic Legal, Medical, and Literary Discourses” at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. This conference is part of the Veni Grant “Beyond Binaries: Intersex in Islamic Legal Tradition.”
While, on the one hand, numerous studies have currently focused on the history of Islamic doctrines and cultural traditions concerning gender and sexuality, such as effeminacy, transgenderism, and homosexuality, the questions regarding intersex topics in Islam and Muslim culture, despite having great visibility in terms of how they are publicly debated and invoked in polemical contexts, have hardly been tackled comprehensively by scholars of Islam.
On the other hand, presently, traditional Muslim scholars and public preachers often advocate for Islam as intolerant of trans-genderism or non-binary sex/gender divisions (see, for example, Assim al Hakeem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ0DE7tI7No; Yasir Qadhi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCsUXGz1_6I; Amer, Jamil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWF-b_rXwpU). Not surprisingly, this dominant approach has reinforced orientalist narratives insisting that the male-female binary conception of humanity in Islamic teaching is a monolithic rigid code without room for discussion and historical developments. For example, Paula Sanders, in “Gendering the Ungendered Body,” argued for the following two notions: (1) premodern Islamic legal and medical texts demand sex and gender dimorphism that strictly define males and females as true opposites; (2) medieval Muslim jurists could not tolerate intersex ambiguity and imposed a gender on such (“unsexed-ungendered”) bodies to protect against social disorder and preserve male-dominated sexual hierarchy (Sanders 1991). Astonishingly, she drew such a broad conclusion primarily based on an examination of four mainly eleventh-century legal manuals, dominantly Kitāb al-mabsūṭ of the Ḥanafī jurist Muḥammad Ibn Aḥmad al-Sarakhsī (d. 1090). Despite the limitation of Sanders’s study, her thesis has been championed by various scholars of Islamic, Middle Eastern, and gender studies in the last three decades.
By contrast, Muslim discourses on sex or gender are oftentimes surprisingly dynamic. Therefore, some scholars have challenged Sanders’s position and upheld that the recognition of the intersex category as a non-binary possibility is particularly significant as classical Muslim jurists and physicians acknowledged the complex identification of such individuals, even when assigning them a specific legal sex/gender (Gesink 2018, Alipour 2017, Geissinger 2012). Moreover, contemporary grassroots-level activists and Muslim reformist scholars lobby for a more accepting attitude, referring to Islam’s inbuilt tolerance of both biological sex fluidity and non-binary conceptions of gender.
This conference thus offers a scholarly assessment of the premodern Muslim medical practice, Islamic law, and Persian and Arabic literary trajectories demarcating the space between the two poles of acceptance and rejection of the third sex and/or gender in premodern Muslim discourses. Its enquiry thus relates to the sex and/or gender identity(ies) of intersex individuals in Islamic legal, medical, and literary debates.
Paper proposals that examine – but are not limited to – the following questions are welcome:
- What are the discursive spaces on intersex topics in Islamic legal, medical, and/or literary debates?
- How did Muslim premodern medical experts perceive intersex bodies and behavioural characteristics?
- How have intersex topics shaped Muslim legal and/or medical discourses concerning binary/non-binary debates?
- How were intersex people illustrated in premodern Persian and Arabic literature in terms of their behavioural and biological characteristics?
- What was the reception of intersex people in premodern Muslim culture?
- What is the correlation between intersex (khunthā) and effeminate (mukhannath) in premodern Muslim vernacular culture as depicted by Persian and/or Arabic poetry and prose?
The conference is a primary step towards an edited volume on the theme. I thus invite accepted contributors to submit their papers to this volume for publication in a peer-reviewed university press after the conference.
Please send your abstract (no more than 300 words) and CV (no more than 150 words) in one document by email to m.alipoorkalaei@uu.nl before March 1, 2024
Conference date: 26 June 2024
Organizer: Mehrdad Alipour
Venue: Drift 21, room 0.05 (Sweelinckzaal), Utrecht University
Costs of the Conference: Reservations for the conference hall, lunch, and conference dinner (only for the speakers) will be covered by the organisation. Applicants should cover their own travel expenses and accommodations.
For more information on the conference and the project “Beyond Binaries: Intersex in Islamic Legal Tradition” go to the following link: https://beyondbinaries.nl
5. Events on Islamic Law at Wolfson College, Oxford, 22 February 2024
The first event is a panel discussion at 2.30 pm titled “Islamic Law and the Modern State: Rupture or Continuity?” with Rob Gleave (University of Exeter), Morgan Clarke (University of Oxford), and Dominik Krell (University of Oxford).
Later on the same day, Baudouin Dupret (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) will give a talk titled “Is There Such Thing as Islamic Law”.
Between the panel discussion and the lecture, all participants will be invited to join us for coffee, tea, cakes, and snacks. More information can also be found here.
Please register by using this link.
We look forward to welcoming you to both events.
Law in Societies Cluster, Wolfson College
6. UCLA Iranian Studies
Forugh Farrokhzad: A Journey Along the Line of Time
فروغ فرخ زاد: سفری در خط زمان
A Film Screening and Panel Discussion
Sunday, March 3, 2024 at 3:30pm Pacific Time | Royce Hall 314
Alternate live stream on Zoom:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94371748384
(No need to register in advance, just click the link at 3:30pm on March 3 to join.)
7. L. Chamankhah, ‘Hall ul-fusus and its Main Tenets: A Reading into Mīr Sayyid `Alī Hamadānī’s Commentary on Fusus ul-Hikam’
The Muslim World, 2024
Open Access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/muwo.12477
8. University of Chicago’s Heshmat Moayyad Lecture Series 2024
Please Join us for Prof. Kathryn Babayan’s Talk on Wednesday 2/28 at 5pm CST as part of the University of Chicago’s Heshmat Moayyad Lecture Series 2024.
This talk spotlights a rant ascribed to a woman from the Bakhtiari tribal group of Lurs living in the vicinity of Isfahan in southwestern Iran. The letter is undated. It finds its way to Isfahan as a collector’s item recorded in several late seventeenth-century anthologies. The vernacular language deployed in the letter ascribed to a Bakhtiari woman uses sexual insults to publicize the infidelity of her husband. I will read this rant to project the female voice excluded from epistolary collections of seventeenth century anthologies.
Prof. Kathryn Babayan specializes in the social history and culture of the early-modern Persianate world, gender studies, and the history of sexuality. She is the author of two award winning books, Mystics, Monarchs and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2003), and The City as Anthology: Eroticism & Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021). Prof. Babayan has also co-authored Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavi Iran, with Sussan Babaie, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Massumeh Farhad (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), and co-edited two books Islamicate Sexualities: Translations Across Temporal Geographies of Desire with Afsaneh Najmabadi (Cambridge M.A.: Harvard University Press, 2008), and An Armenian Mediterranean: Words and Worlds in Motion with Michael Pifer (Cham, Switzerland: Palgarve Macmillan, 2018).
To join on Zoom (registration required)
https://uchicagogroup.zoom.us/j/92591319924?pwd=UUxacGZnSlA5U2UwL1Njd3NJN0JRdz09
9. The Rebellion of Forms in Modern Persian Poetry: Politics of Poetic Experimentation
Farshad Sonboldel, Bloomsbury, 2024
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/rebellion-of-forms-in-modern-persian-poetry-9798765103593/
10. M-Classi, a new digital tool in knowledge organization
Dear colleagues, dear friends,
I am happy to announce the creation of “M-Classi”, a new digital tool to catalogue and interrogate the classifications of the sciences in Islam. Its development will be focused by priority on Arabic, Persian, and Turkish classifications, but for comparative purposes it will also integrate taxonomies in languages such as Syriac, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. The current Beta version of the program is now available on request at https://sites.uclouvain.be/erc-philand/dissemination/m-classi/, where a short demo video is also to be found.
Godefroid de Callataÿ
Prof. of Arabic and Islamic Studies
UCLouvain
PI of PhilAnd Advanced ERC grant
https://sites.uclouvain.be/erc-philand/
11. Leibniz Institute of European History – postdoctoral position (research associate) (m, f, x) in the History of Islam and Muslims in Europe (16th–20th c.)
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=66864
12. Spring 2024 AMECYS Digital Series
Friday February 23, 11 am CDT
Dr. Heidi Morrison
Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin- La Crosse,
Editor of Lived Resistance against the War on Palestinian Children
(forthcoming, University of Georgia Press, August 2024)
F March 8, 11 am CDT
Rusha Latif
Independent researcher
Author of Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution
(American University of Cairo, 2022)
Wednesday March 20, 1 pm CDT
Dr. Jessica M. Marglin
Professor of Religion and
Ruth Ziegler Chair in Jewish Studies
Author of The Shamama Case:
Contesting Citizenship Across the Modern Mediterranean
(Princeton University Press, 2022)
Links/registration info for series will sent to all AMECYS listserv members, so make sure signed up for the listserv! Digital medium for series is Zoom (https://zoom.us/download).
13. Edinburgh – The Alwaleed Centre has a number of public seminars taking place in February to which all are warmly welcome.
Fakes and Forgeries in the Islamic Art Market: A Study of Two Problematic Pieces of Mina’i Ware
Friday 16 February, 3pm, Room G06, 50 Geroge Square + online
A special seminar by Richard Piran McClary (University of York) exploring the ways in which fakes and forgeries present in Islamic ceramic wares in both public and private collections. This event is free to attend either in-person or online but registration is necessary. Click here for further information and free registration
Book Talk: On Muslim Democracy
Friday 23 February, 3pm, Room G06, 50 George Square + online
Join Andrew F. March (University of Massachusetts Amherst/Harvard University) as he discusses his and Rached Ghannouchi’s new book ‘On Muslim Democracy’. This event is free to attend either in-person or online but registration is necessary. Click for further information and registration.
SAVE THE DATE: Prof. Saul Takahashi on Palestine
Tuesday 27 February, 5:30pm, Appleton Tower Lecture Theatre
The Alwaleed Centre is to be welcoming Prof. Saul Tahahashi (Osaka Jogakuin University) to discuss his time as Deputy Head of Office in Occupied Palestine (Ramallah), United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Further details + registration to follow in due course. For now, please save the date.
Islam and the Spice Trade: Towards a New History of Global Commerce
Wednesday 28 February, 4pm, Screening Room, 50 George Square (in-person only)
An in-person lecture by Professor Joel Belcher (George Washington University) on lesser-known ports and practices of the 15th century spice trade. This event is in collaboration with the Edinburgh Centre for Global History and the Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World.
Free to attend, in-person only – no need to register. Click here for further information.
With very best wishes,
The Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam
in the Contemporary World
University of Edinburgh
16 George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LD
0131 650 4615
14. Fri. Feb. 23, 12pm EST: Literary Modernity and Anticolonial Revolution in the Muslim World: A Conversation Between Nergis Ertürk, Sam Hodgkin, and Annette Damayanti Lienau
Arabic, Persian, and Turkic, as shared literary languages of the Muslim world, provided a means of communication and a basis for political coordination to the early generations of radical anticolonial writers and thinkers from Jakarta, Cairo, and Timbuktu; Bukhara, Lahore, and Tabriz; Istanbul, Kazan, and Kashgar. These revolutionaries read each other’s newspapers, spent years of exile in each other’s regions, and developed rich literary subcultures based on their shared cultural traditions. Ultimately, these activists’ shared projects of independence, vernacularization, and national modernization produced a far less continuous linguistic and cultural space, with new patterns of coordination and solidarity. Three new books explore this transnational world of literary and political revolution, providing different vantage points on the ways that world contributed to the making of the national literatures and world literature that we have inherited today. This will be a public conversation between Nergis Ertürk (Writing in Red: Literature and Revolution Across Turkey and the Soviet Union, Columbia, April 2024), Sam Hodgkin (Persianate Verse and the Poetics of Eastern Internationalism, Cambridge, December 2023), and Annette Damayanti Lienau (Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference: Global Arabic and Counter-Imperial Literatures, Princeton, January 2024), in which the three scholars will reflect on the politics of literary form and language in the circuitries of literary internationalism.
You can register for the webinar here.
15. From Konkan to Coromandel: Societies and Cultures of the Deccan World
Webinars co-organized by the Center of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, and Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, Bangalore, presenting the pioneering scholarship across various fields of knowledge from both the Northern and Southern Deccan regions of India.
FEBRUARY
The Rise and Fall of the Goan Temple
Amita Kanekar (Architectural Historian) on February 16th at 1 PM London (8 AM New York and 6:30 PM India)
MARCH
Mughal Burhanpur: Dynamic Urbanism at the Edge of Empire
Rachel Hirsch (Harvard University) on March 22nd at 1 PM London (9 AM New York and 6:30 PM India)
APRIL
Translating Dakani Poetry and Nusrati’s Gulshan-i ‘Ishq
Makoto Kitada (Osaka University) on April 19th at 11 AM London (4:30 PM India/8 PM Japan)
MAY
Exploring the Library of Tipu Sultan
Ursula Sims-Williams (The British Library) on May 17th at 2 PM London (9 AM New York and 6:30 PM India)
All webinars will take place on Zoom. Free and open to the public. Prior registration is mandatory.
Please visit https://www.cis.cam.ac.uk/activities/lectures-workshops/from-malabar-to-coromandel/ to register and receive the Zoom link.
If you have issues signing up please email Neil Cunningham, nc524@cam.ac.uk.
16. Iran Heritage Foundation Grants
MISSION STATEMENT OF THE IHF ACADEMIC COMMITTEE
The Iran Heritage Foundation is pleased to announce that, after a lapse of several years due to Covid and administrative disruptions, its Academic Committee will be reconstituted. Like its predecessor, its overall aim will be to foster knowledge and appreciation of Iran’s rich cultural heritage by awarding research-related grants. It will, however, have a fuller agenda than was previously the case. It will operate two cycles each year, the first disbursing £15,000 and the second £20,000. The Trustees will review the awards process and may consider occasional support over and beyond the annual grant budget in exceptional circumstances.
In this, the initial year, the deadlines for receipt of applications are 30 May 2024 and 29 August 2024. As before, the Committee will assess applications for research grants in various academic disciplines, with a particular emphasis (in alphabetical order) on archaeology, arts, history, linguistics, and literature, though applications from other disciplines may be considered. Projects to be supported may include the most various academic initiatives, from fieldwork to workshops to building databases and digitising images, and will – as previously – privilege new research such as editions and translations of key texts. In order to support multiple initiatives in each cycle, grants will preferably not exceed £3,000.
The application process and conditions for such grants will shortly be laid out on the website of the IHF https://www.iranheritage.org/. In its second cycle, the Committee will also award two book prizes each year; one in memory of Iradj Bagherzade, the late founder of I.B. Tauris Publishing (now a subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing), as an enabling prize to defray some of the costs of a book still to be published; and the other for an already published book making a significant contribution to the world of Iranian studies. The terms and conditions for these book prizes will also be laid out on the website of the IHF.
The Committee’s mandate includes advice to the Trustees on the merits of major academic conferences, exhibitions and cultural events of value which the IHF has historically helped support or has itself organised in the past. This will involve advice on the selection of institutional partners such as prestigious universities and museums, and collaboration with other charities dedicated to the celebration and preservation of Iranian culture. We shall seek to support endeavours covering Prehistoric, Ancient, Islamic, Modern and Contemporary Iran.
The five members of the Academic Committee will meet at regular intervals throughout the year. The membership of the Committee is as follows:
Hassan Hakimian, former Director of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, is Professor of Economics and currently the Interim Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at HBKU University, Qatar. He is a Founding Member and a past President of the International Iranian Economic Association (IIEA). One of the programs he directed at SOAS won the Queen’s Prize for Higher and Further Education in 1996.
Professor Robert Hillenbrand, FBA (Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews) has published 11 books, edited or co-edited 14 books, published some 200 articles, organised ten symposia and held ten visiting professorships. His specialties are Islamic architecture, painting and iconography with a special emphasis on Iran.
Professor Marcus Milwright (University of Victoria, Canada) is currently British Academy Global Professor at the University of York (2023-27). His research focuses on the art and archaeology of the Islamic Middle East, labour and traditional craft practices, and cross-cultural interaction. He has written six books and 82 papers.
Andrew Peacock is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research focuses on the history and culture of Iran and the Persianate world. He has written or edited twelve books and published some 55 papers.
Dr Julian Raby, art historian and long-term Director of the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., has been founding editor of Oxford Studies in Islamic Art (14 volumes) and General Editor, Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (over 30 volumes). He has written numerous books and articles and mounted multiple exhibitions.
Applications are now invited.
17. The Text Pre Exegetical Test ( TPET ) has just been published in Iran. This book is an interdisciplinary relationship between Qur’anic studies and engineering; Machine learning and Digital Humanities (DH) TPET tries to methodize the type of encounter with the text as the most important event in the field of text-oriented Islamic studies. The pre- Exegetical nature of these rules means that the researcher must define his position regarding the results of these tests before interpreting the text. Testing the text before interpretation practically provides the researcher with the prepared and processed text. The result of this test of the text is not necessarily the interpretation of the text; Rather, putting all the possible possibilities of the text on the table is on the interpreter’s desk; so as to provide the context for a better judgment of the commentator and a more accurate interpretation of the text. It is clear that the more the number of these tests on the text; The percentage of error probability (Tafsir-e- be Ray) is reduced.
TPET book is the first book-length publication emerging from the IQP project “Ind. Int. Quranic Parliament”.
https://iict.ac.ir/1402/10/pishatafsiri-3/
18. This year, the Iranian Studies Program at the Yale MacMillan Center is hosting the major Afghan novelist and memoirist Homeira Qaderi as our Writer in Residence.
Over the course of this year, Qaderi is conducting several conversations with other Persian-language writers about their craft. These are online webinars conducted in Persian, and we invite Persian-speakers from all over the world to tune in.
Following up on a fascinating conversation with Aliyeh Ataei in November, we are pleased to announce two more upcoming conversations with Qaderi:
Tues. Feb. 20, 12-1:30pm EST: A reading and conversation with Prof. Fatemeh Shams on the art of poetry, moderated by CMES fellow Bezhan Pazhohan
Tues. Mar. 26, 12-1:30pm EST: A reading and conversation with Mujib Mehrdad on Afghan literature, moderated by the Yarshater Fellow in Iranian Studies, Latifeh Aavani
To register for the event, follow this link. This event is co-sponsored by the Yale Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation.
- February 10, 2024
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment