Archive for November 29th, 2025
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Call for Papers: Performing Islam
Special Issue: ‘Performing Islamophobia’
A Critical and Anthropological Study of Politics, Poetics and Representation in Europe
View the full call here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/performing-islam#call-for-papers
Over the past two decades, Islamophobia has evolved beyond discursive prejudice into a complex performative phenomenon, one enacted through politics, law, culture and everyday life. Performing Islamophobia: A Critical Study in Europe seeks to interrogate how anti-Muslim sentiment is not only expressed but also performed, reproduced and normalised through multiple channels of representation, from artistic and media forms to policy frameworks and bureaucratic practices.
This volume aims to bring together interdisciplinary, decolonial and critical perspectives to examine the ways in which Islamophobia operates as a set of performative acts, embodied, institutional and symbolic, that shape both public perception and lived experience. Contributors are invited to explore how Islamophobia manifests in visual and performing arts, film, television, journalism, digital media, literature, popular culture and state mechanisms, including law enforcement, education and immigration policy. The collection is equally concerned with the counter-performances that resist, subvert and expose such practices.
The volume draws inspiration from the works of scholars such as Judith Butler on performativity, Edward Said on Orientalism, Talal Asad on secularism and religious identity, Sara Ahmed on affect and the politics of emotion, and S. Sayyid, Nasar Meer, and Arjun Appadurai on race, identity, and globalisation. It also welcomes engagement with non-Western scholarship and cultural expressions that challenge Eurocentric epistemologies, offering comparative or transnational insights into the staging, scripting and spectacle of Islamophobia.
Contributors are encouraged to consider, among others, the following questions:
– How is Islamophobia enacted through visual, performative, and narrative forms in Europe?
– In what ways do state policies, legal discourses, and security regimes perform and legitimise exclusionary practices?
– How do artists, filmmakers, writers, and activists perform resistance and reclaim agency in spaces of representation?
– What does an anthropological reading of performativity reveal about the social and cultural reproduction of fear, suspicion and belonging?
By foregrounding the performative dimension of Islamophobia, this volume seeks to articulate, critique, and challenge the mechanisms through which bias becomes embodied and made visible, while amplifying the creative and intellectual interventions that seek to undo it.
Submission Guidelines:
Proposals: Please submit a title, a 150-200 word abstract, and a 150-word biographical note by 20 December 2025.
Full chapters: Accepted contributors will be invited to submit their full papers (6,000-8,000 words) by 30 May 2026.
Formatting: All submissions should follow the latest Harvard referencing style. Please send proposals and inquiries to the Editor, Kamal Salhi, performingislam@yahoo.com.
2. Upcoming presentation in the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies’ Persian Lithographic Printing Seminar
بررسی تاریخچه مطبعه مجلس از بزرگترین چاپخانه های دولتی ایران
“The Majlis Printing House”
(in Persian)
Homa Afrasiabi
Independent Scholar
Thursday, December 4, 2025, 12:00 p.m. EST
Zoom Registration Link:
https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/LzX8QvxMR6y0yTkB7ESWqA
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
3. Through Meinecke’s Lens: The Cairenes and Cairo in the 1970s
What did it mean to live among centuries-old monuments? In 1970s Cairo, historic buildings were part of daily life. People lived in them, worked in them, and built their communities around them. This quiet yet powerful reality is captured in this online exhibition which was originally presented as a photo exhibition in collaboration with the Museum for Islamic Art as part of the ’20th Colloquium of the Ernst Herzfeld Society for Studies in Islamic Art and Archaeology’, held for the first time in Cairo.
This photo exhibition highlights the daily life of Cairenes in Historic Cairo during the 1970s, showcasing one of the world’s richest cities filled with Islamic monuments. The forty images are drawn from the Meinecke archive at the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin, a collection created by the art historian Michael Meinecke (1941–1995) and his wife, the art historian Viktoria Meinecke-Berg (1941–2005). This exhibition aims to reveal a layer of history often overlooked, fostering a deeper understanding of the relationship between Cairo, its people, and visiting scholars while reflecting on the archive’s value for these discussions.
The Photo Exhibition is curated by Dr.-Ing. Eman Shokry Hesham (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck Institute) and Issam Al-Hajjar (Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin)
Contact Information
Museum für Islamische Kunst (im Pergamonmuseum)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Contact: https://islamic-art.smb.museum/kontakt/?lang=en
Contact Email
URL
https://islamic-art.smb.museum/en/story/cairo-meinecke-photo
4. Multaka 10th Anniversary: Learning from the Past, Envisioning the Future
Two-day event | 5–6 December 2025
Dates:
Fri, 05.12.2025 | 09:30 am – 5:45 pm
Sat, 06.12.2025 | 09:30 am – 2:00 pm
Event language: English
Multaka: Museums as Meeting Point was developed within the framework of the Syrian Heritage Archive Project and initiated in December 2015 by the Museum for Islamic Art – in cooperation with the Museum of the Ancient Near East, the Bode-Museum, and the German Historical Museum. Over the past ten years, the multi award-winning project Multaka has received national and international recognition and is regarded as an innovative source of inspiration both within and beyond the museum landscape.
On 5 and 6 December 2025, Multaka: Museums as Meeting Point will celebrate its 10th anniversary together with co-host Multaka Oxford!
The anniversary event Reflecting the Future, brings together the international Multaka network to explore innovative approaches to participatory museum practice, intercultural exchange, and dialogue-based learning.
Hosted at the Center for Cultural Education – Haus Bastian on the Museum Island, the event highlights a decade of intercultural dialogue, collaborative work, and engagement with historical-cultural collections within the award-winning initiative Multaka: Museums as Meeting Point.
Why participate?
The two-day program offers diverse opportunities for (early-career) researchers and universities interested in decolonial museology, methods and strategies of diverse audience engagement, and collaboration between museums and communities.
As a platform for professional networking, knowledge exchange, and cooperation between museums and universities, the event invites participants to reflect on shared visions and to shape future pathways for inclusive cultural education and transnational collaboration.
Contact Information
Participation is free of charge, but registration is required by Tuesday, 2 December 2025, or until all spots are filled.
Please register early to secure your place on the following website: Reflecting the Future
Contact Email
isl@smb.museum
URL
https://www.smb.museum/museen-einrichtungen/museumsinsel-berlin/veranstaltungen…
5. The final lecture of the Virtual Islamic Art History Seminar Series for Fall 2025 will take place on Tuesday, December 2, 2025, at 12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 20:00 Istanbul.
Amanda Caterina Leong (Courtauld Institute of Art) will present “Recovering the Many Faces of Female Javanmardi in the Illustrated Manuscripts of the Premodern Persianate World (945–1800).”
To attend, please register in advance here:
https://wellesley.zoom.us/meeting/register/EzuPAit6QACKL3Ls9h6uhw
Upon registration, you’ll receive the link to access the lecture.
As always, you can find a full schedule of upcoming talks and register for our list-serv on our website at viahss.org. Although not every talk is recorded, we also have recordings of several recent talks available on the VIAHSS Vimeo page at vimeo.com/viahss. Lastly, you can follow us on Instagram at @theviahss to stay up to date on upcoming events! The schedule for spring 2026 will be released in late December/early January.
Contact Information
Drs. Alexander Brey, Jaimee Comstock-Skipp, and Rachel Winter
Contact Email
URL
6. Arab Studies Journalvolume 33, no. 1–2 (Fall 2025) is now available from Tadween Publishing.
ARTICLES
Writing Africa for Africans: Du Bois, Egyptian Africanists, and the Encyclopedia Africana Project Between Dreams and Disruptions
May Kosba
Crime and Dystopia in Three Egyptian Novels: Dissecting Cityscapes and the Body as a Terrain for Political Critique
Dalia Said Mostafa
Tobacco Cultivation in the West Bank Between Economic Survival and Settler-Colonial Constraints
Kholoud Al-Ajarma, D. A. Jaber, and Jawida Mansour
Palestinian Farmers’ Resilience Against the Settler Colonial-Capitalist Production of Vulnerability in the Jordan Valley
Fairouz Salem
ESSAYS: “Seismic Shifts” in the Middle East
Introduction: “Seismic Shifts” in the Middle East? Reflections From MESA Global Academy Scholars
Diana B. Greenwald
Authoritarianism Reinvented: Post-Assad Syria and the Strategic Reorientation of the Arab East
Dina Hadad
Ruling in the Grey Zones: Hybrid Warfare and the Remaking of Political Order in the Middle East
Nadia Al-Sakkaf
REVIEWS
The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century
By Zozan Pehlivan
Reviewed by Deren Ertas
The Untold Story of the Golan Heights: Occupation, Colonization, and Jawlani Resistance
Edited by Muna Dajani, Munir Fakher Eldin, and Michael Mason
Reviewed by Gary Fields
Egypt’s Beer: Stella, Identity, and the Modern State
By Omar D. Foda
Reviewed by Kaleb Herman Adney
The Arab Nahda as Popular Entertainment: Mass Culture and Modernity in the Middle East
Edited by Hala Auji, Raphael Cormack, and Alaaeldin Mahmoud
Reviewed by Adéla Provazníková
A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon
By Munira Khayyat
Reviewed by Susann Kassem
Arab Studies Journal is a peer-reviewed, independent, multidisciplinary journal of Middle Eastern and North African Studies. It is published twice a year by the Arab Studies Institute (ASI) and is affiliated with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.
Contact Email
coeditors@arabstudiesjournal.org
URL
http://www.arabstudiesjournal.org/
7. Jobs:
University of Massachusetts Amherst – Assistant Professor in the History of the Modern Middle East
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/69505/university-massachusetts-amherst-assistant-professor-history-modern-middle-east
New York University Abu Dhabi – NYUAD Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World – Postdoctoral Fellowship
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/69504/new-york-university-abu-dhabi-nyuad-humanities-research-fellowship-study-arab-world
8. Séminaire “L’Afghanistan à travers les âges” – 3e séance mercredi 3 décembre 18h-19h30
nous avons le plaisir de vous convier à la troisième séance du séminaire “L’Afghanistan à travers les âges”, qui se tiendra mercredi 3 décembre 2025, 18h-19h30, en salle 3.01 à l’INaLCO(65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 3eétage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir Mme. Ella Kempf, Inalco-Cermi, pour une conférence intitulée : Des montagnes, des plantes et des hommes : Agriculture et savoirs botaniques dans la vallée de Bamiyân du Moyen-âge à nos jours.
Résumé:
Après une introduction d’Arezou Azad consacrée aux Cahiers de Bâmiyân et à leur contribution à l’étude de la vie paysanne de l’Afghanistan médiéval, cette communication présentera les premières données archéobotaniques de la vallée de Bâmiyân ainsi que les perspectives d’un projet de recherche sur le patrimoine naturel et archéologique afghan.La première partie portera sur les résultats préliminaires de l’étude carpologique du site médiéval de Shahr-e Gholgholah, Cette analyse révèle une grande diversité d’espèces économiques et sauvages, témoignant de l’agriculture et de l’exploitation des ressources végétales au XIIIe siècle. La deuxième partie abordera la mission de fouilles conduite en novembre 2025 à Shahr-e Zohak, et la collecte de nouveaux échantillons destinés à approfondir notre compréhension du paysage culturel et naturel de la région. Enfin, la description de la végétation et des cultures actuelles de la vallée de Bâmiyân permettra d’observer l’évolution des interactions entre les populations locales et leur environnement au cours du temps, tout en interrogeant le rôle de l’altitude dans les choix agricoles.
Orientations bibliographiques:
- Baker P.H.B. et Allchin F.R. 1991. Shahr-i Zohak and the history of Bamiyan valley Afghanistan. Archaeopress. 234 p.
- Bendezu-Sarmiento J. 2022. Archaeological Survey and First Preliminary Results of the Site of Shahr-i Gholghola (Afghanistan), in C. Baumer, M. Novák, et S. Rutishauser (dir.), Cultures in contact: Central Asia as focus of trade, cultural exchange and knowledge transmission, Wiesbaden, Allemagne, Harrassowitz Verlag.
- Freitag H. 1971b. Studies on the natural vegetation of Afghanistan. In: Davis P.H. et al.: Plant Life of South West Asia, Edinburgh.
- Taskhir A. 1947. Insect fauna of Afghanistan: The Entomological Society of India. Reprinted from the Indian Journal of Entomology, Bangalore City.
- Younos C. 1970. La végétation de Bamiyan à Band-e Amir. in Paysages du centre de l’Afghanistan. Paysages naturels, paysages culturels. Hindou-Kouch, Lacs de Band-e Amir, Vallée de Bâmiyân. CEREDAF, Paris. 224 p.
Vous trouverez l’intégralité du programme 2025-2026 du séminaire mensuel de recherche “L’Afghanistan à travers les âges” en ligne sur le site du CeRMI: L’Afghanistan à travers les âges – Centre de recherche sur le monde iranien
Bien cordialement,
Arezou Azad et Matteo De Chiara
9. The Latin America and Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter
Vol. 5, no. 4 | Fall 2025
https://www.lacisa.org/newsletter
10. Upcoming BRISMES Event | Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize Showcase & Careers Conversatio
Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize Showcase & Careers Conversation
Monday, 8 December 2025, 3-4:30pm (GMT)
BRISMES invites you to celebrate this year’s recipients of the Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize, awarded annually to the writer of the best PhD dissertation submitted at a British university on a Middle Eastern topic in the Social Sciences or Humanities. Prize winners and runners-up will present highlights from their research and share their academic plans moving forward. Senior scholars in attendance will offer comments and career guidance, creating a space that both honours excellence and supports early-career development. This event is open to anyone interested in Middle East research, especially final-year PhD students and early-career academics looking to learn more about the prize and future pathways in academia.
Speakers:
- Dr Sara Abdel Ghany (2025 Joint Winner)
- Dr Eirik Kvindesland (2025 Joint Runner Up)
- Dr Kristine L. Sheets (2025 Joint Runner Up)
Chairs and discussants:
- Dr Sabiha Allouche (BRISMES Outreach and Pedagogy Committee)
- Dr Wassim Naboulsi (BRISMES Outreach and Pedagogy Committee)
- Prof Nicola Pratt (BRISMES President)
More information and registration:
11. ONLINE Webinar: ‘Beyond the Botanical with Persian collections at Kew Gardens’ Library and Archives’
British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS), 10 December, 2025, 5:00 pm UK Time
This talk explores Persian materials in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, focusing on the unexpected cultural and social histories preserved within a botanical archive. While the exhibition Persia Reimagined: From Herbarium to Heritage (30 September 2025 – 22 January 2026) is rooted in plant expeditions and specimens, it highlights how collectors recorded much more than flora.
Their diaries, labels, photographs, and sketches captured the foods they ate, the buildings they stayed in, the landscapes they admired, and the people they encountered. These traces reveal overlooked dimensions of daily life in early 20th-century Iran, preserved—almost incidentally—within a scientific archive.
By drawing attention to these hidden layers, the talk invites a reconsideration of what botanical collections can tell us, beyond science. It also reflects on the process of curating an exhibition from these materials, including the development of outreach activities and community workshops designed to bring Kew’s Persian collections into dialogue with contemporary audiences.
This is an online event. Register in advance to take part.
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_m8KyDi_OR3WY_N2TJLBdyA#/registration
12. Applications Open: VIVAMENTE GRANT IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 2026
The Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) invites applications for the 2026 VivaMente Grant, The Garden of Ideas.
VivaMente: The Garden of Ideas
Deadline: 28 February 2026
Grant amount: up to €5,000
The scheme supports outstanding proposals in the history of ideas and intellectual history, from antiquity to the contemporary period, across philosophy, science, medicine and technology.
VivaMente provides substantial financial and logistical support for a two-day event in Pisa. Each funded proposal receives up to €5,000 together with complimentary use of the Domus Comeliana. Eligible formats include conferences, workshops, seminars, exhibitions and public engagement events. Multidisciplinary approaches are welcome, provided the core focus remains on the history of ideas.
VivaMente is competitive and offers an important platform for both senior and early-career scholars.
Full details are available at:
https://csmbr.fondazionecomel.org/grants-and-awards/vivamente-grant/
Applicants are welcome to contact the Centre (info@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org) with any questions.
Fabrizio Bigotti
Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) – Director
Domus Comeliana, Via Cardinale Maffi 48, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Tel.: +39.02.006.20.51 – Mobile: +39.333.13.12.203
Email: fb@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org
David Durand-Guédy
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Published Online on 21 November 2025
14. Associate Professorship (or Professorship) and Tutorial Fellowship in Modern Middle Eastern History 1830-1970
University of Oxford
Trinity College and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford are seeking to appoint an outstanding historian with teaching and research interests in the modern history of the Middle East and North Africa (c.1830 to c.1970) as a Tutorial Fellow and Associate Professor of History. This post is available from 1st October 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.
Deadline | 7 January 2026
15. Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Paper Prize for Early Career Scholars 2025
Prize | CPD Working Group, BISA
The prize is aimed at supporting CPD’s early-career members in the development of peer-reviewed work, while at the same time carving out space in International Studies to engage with the question of empire and coloniality as fundamental to the discipline. The winning paper will be chosen by a panel nominated by the conveners of the Colonial, Postcolonial, and Decolonial Working Group and the editors of Review of International Studies (RIS), a BISA journal.
Deadline | 31 December 2025
16. Call for Papers | Reconstruction
Journal | Oxford Middle East Review (OMER)
The editors welcome submissions for the tenth anniversary issue of OMER, a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal. This issue invites contributors to think broadly about the forms that reconstruction can take, be it physical, political, environmental, or cultural. How are futures imagined after crisis? What new solidarities, aesthetics, or institutions materialize when old structures collapse? How do processes of reconstruction engage with memory, and justice? And what happens when reconstruction itself becomes a site of contestation, shaped by global capital, humanitarian intervention, and ideology?
Deadline | 4 January 2025
17. Education and Scholarships (Coordinator)
Caabu and Amjad & Suha Bseisu Foundation
Applications are invited for this shared role working three days a week for the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) and two days a week for the Bseisu Foundation.
Deadline | 7 December 2025
18. Conference “Exploring the Sacred: People, Place and Power in the Islamic Indian Ocean”, National University of Singapore, 4-5 December 2025
The historical and contemporary papers explore the sacred by grounding it in the archives, texts, material culture, and ethnographies of the Islamic Indian Ocean. Papers focus on local or transregional processes and themes.
Information, program and abstracts: https://tinyurl.com/4p8kupaf
19. HYBRID “Seventh Annual Islamic Philosophy Conference”, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 5-7 December 2025
We invite academic studies of scholars, methods, institutions, texts, and topics typically considered within the domain of philosophy, as well as those that treat kalam-theology, Islamic legal philosophy (usul al-fiqh), or other intellectual trends that at times may be seen as distinct from philosophy.
Information and registration: https://asipt.org/conferences/
- November 29, 2025
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment