Archive for 2026
Shii News – ‘Articles on “Digital Humanities in Alewi-Bektashi Studies’
Articles on “Digital Humanities in Alewi-Bektashi Studies” for a Special Issue of the “International Journal of Alevi-Bektashi Studies (IJABS)”
This issue will explore the growing role of Digital Humanities in the study of Alevi and Bektashi commu-nities, histories, cultures, and religious traditions. We welcome proposals engaging with the ways digital methods, tools, archives, and technologies can open new avenues for research in Alevi-Bektashi Studies.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/wzdce6rv. Contact: akstump@wm.edu
- September 15, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Exhibition preopening weekend: The Heart’s Desire – Sufi Collections and Contemporary Art Exploring Shawq (Longing)
The Heart’s Desire
Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO, Chatou, France
3 October 2026 – 12 September 2027
The Heart’s Desire, curated by Jessica Cerasi, explores longing in all its forms and its particular resonance within Sufi thought. Bringing together new works by six contemporary artists in dialogue with the collection of the Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO (MACS MTO), the exhibition considers what it means to live with absence, to sustain hope across distance, and to allow longing to become a means of connection, transformation and spiritual depth.
Inaugurated in 2024, MACS MTO explores the principles, cultural heritage and artistic expressions associated with Sufism through a collection spanning from the Achaemenid period to the present day. Its annual exhibitions bring this collection into dialogue with contemporary artistic practices.
Pre-opening weekend: 3–4 October 2026
A special pre-opening weekend will take place on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, with a programme of talks, encounters and activities offering visitors opportunities to engage further with the themes of the exhibition.
Access during the pre-opening weekend is reserved for ticket holders for the programme.
Full exhibition information and pre-opening programme are available on the museum’s website.
Contact Information
Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO
6 avenue des Tilleuls
78400 Chatou, France
Opening hours
- Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 11 am – 6 pm
- Saturday and Sunday: 10 am – 6 pm
The garden is open and free to access from Wednesday to Sunday during the same opening hours as the museum.
Getting there:
- By train: Approximately 30 minutes from central Paris on RER A, alighting at Chatou–Croissy.
- By bus: Lines D and E, alighting at Gare de Chatou–Croissy.
- By car: From Paris, take the A14, then the A86. Take exit 35a towards Chatou. Free parking is available on the street near the museum and on the Île des Impressionnistes.
Contact Email
URL
https://www.macsmto.fr/en/the-hearts-desire/
2. Cornell University – Modern Middle East – Open Rank
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/70368/cornell-university-modern-middle-east-open-rank
3. Call for papers
Cfp: Critical Digital Archives. Travel, Translation, Transformation.
A Hybrid Symposium on Archives in and from the SWANA Region.
This symposium aims to provide a forum for scholars, archivists, community and cultural organizations interested in critical approaches to digital archives containing materials from and about the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, understood as a geographic, historical, and cultural space. In this space, archives have been historically imposed, looted, extracted, dispersed, destroyed, but also rescued, rebuilt and reinvented, pioneering practices of resistance, reparation and return that raise compelling ethical, theoretical and practical questions for scholars and stakeholders (Ghaddar, 2025). Building on Itza Carbajal and Michelle Caswell’s framework (2021), our approach seeks to advance a language-sensitive understanding of reparative archival practices that are attentive to and accountable for the technological, social, and environmental impacts of digital archives.
We are interested in digitisation as a transformative process that reshapes archival practices, knowledge production, and power relations.
Conceived as a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and horizontal forum, the symposium invites participants, both in person and online, to engage in discussion and exchange around three interconnected themes and interpretative lenses. Two keynote speakers – Sara Salem (LSE) and Amanda Egbe (UWE) – will act as discussants, facilitating collective reflection and dialogue around participants’ contributions. The three themes of the symposium are Travel, Translation and Transformation:
Travel: Archives in Movement
This strand explores journeys and movement both as subjects represented in archival collections and as conditions shaping the archive itself, opening up questions of archival looting, dispersal and dispossession as well as care, stewardship, and reparation. Discussions may engage with spatial humanities approaches, including digital mapping and gazetteers; the displacement and mobility of archives; practices and ethics of archival solidarity and return; and questions of heritage, ownership, and identity from indigenous and diasporic perspectives.
Translation: Languages in the Archive
This strand will examine issues relating to languages and translation, both in the records and in the archival metadata that make them searchable by and accessible to stakeholders. We will especially welcome contributions reflecting on the role of metadata as descriptive as well as interpretative text, exploring the potential for linguistic, semantic and epistemological translations. We will also welcome contributions that explore the multilinguality of archival records as enduring representations of human activity and consider the practices and ethics of reparative translation in digital archives.
Transformation: Digital Futures and Ethics of Dematerialization
The third strand will look at digitisation as a transformative process for the archive that involves new materialities and highlights new absences. We aim to discuss the impact of digital projects on key stakeholders (users, subjects of records, source communities). We invite contributions on the fragility of digitised and born-digital heritage, as well as the specific biases and risks that digitalisation processes may introduce, particularly through the reproduction, by digital tools, of historical and ongoing harms to people and the environment.
We also aim to assess the potential of digital technology, especially non-corporate and low-threshold, to act as vectors of resistance and tools against erasure.
Keynote speakers:
Sara Salem is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics. Her first book, published with Cambridge University Press, is entitled Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (2020). Her second book, co-authored with Mai Taha, is entitled Anticolonial Radios: On the Sonic Lives of Internationalism, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Along with Mai Taha, she curates Archive Stories, a platform exploring radical and creative archives.
Amanda Egbe is a Senior Lecturer in Media Production at the University of the West of England and leads Heritage Futures, a practice-led research programme building infrastructure for heritage at risk through archives, film, and digital systems. Her research focuses on how cultural memory is documented, governed, protected, transformed, or lost in contexts shaped by social change, technological transformation, environmental stress, and historical inequity.
Convenors:
Barbara Spadaro, University of Liverpool
Valeria Vitale, University of Sheffield
The event is jointly hosted by the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS) and the Institute of Classical Studies (ICS) at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, and funded by the British Institute for Libyan and North African Studies (BILNAS).
Please send via email a 300words abstract and short bio to b.spadaro@liverpool.ac.uk and v.vitale@sheffield.ac.uk
Deadline: 30 SEPTEMBER 2026
A limited number of travel bursaries will be offered to participants travelling to the symposium in London.
URL: https://ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/critical-digital-archives-travel-translation-transformation
Contact Email
URL
https://ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/critical-digital-archives-travel-trans…
- Exhibition preopening weekend: The Heart’s Desire – Sufi Collections and Contemporary Art Exploring Shawq (Longing)
The Heart’s Desire
Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO, Chatou, France
3 October 2026 – 12 September 2027
The Heart’s Desire, curated by Jessica Cerasi, explores longing in all its forms and its particular resonance within Sufi thought. Bringing together new works by six contemporary artists in dialogue with the collection of the Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO (MACS MTO), the exhibition considers what it means to live with absence, to sustain hope across distance, and to allow longing to become a means of connection, transformation and spiritual depth.
Inaugurated in 2024, MACS MTO explores the principles, cultural heritage and artistic expressions associated with Sufism through a collection spanning from the Achaemenid period to the present day. Its annual exhibitions bring this collection into dialogue with contemporary artistic practices.
Pre-opening weekend: 3–4 October 2026
A special pre-opening weekend will take place on Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 October, with a programme of talks, encounters and activities offering visitors opportunities to engage further with the themes of the exhibition.
Access during the pre-opening weekend is reserved for ticket holders for the programme.
Full exhibition information and pre-opening programme are available on the museum’s website.
Contact Information
Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO
6 avenue des Tilleuls
78400 Chatou, France
Opening hours
- Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 11 am – 6 pm
- Saturday and Sunday: 10 am – 6 pm
The garden is open and free to access from Wednesday to Sunday during the same opening hours as the museum.
Getting there:
- By train: Approximately 30 minutes from central Paris on RER A, alighting at Chatou–Croissy.
- By bus: Lines D and E, alighting at Gare de Chatou–Croissy.
- By car: From Paris, take the A14, then the A86. Take exit 35a towards Chatou. Free parking is available on the street near the museum and on the Île des Impressionnistes.
Contact Email
URL
https://www.macsmto.fr/en/the-hearts-desire/
- Cornell University – Modern Middle East – Open Rank
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/70368/cornell-university-modern-middle-east-open-rank
- Call for papers
Cfp: Critical Digital Archives. Travel, Translation, Transformation.
A Hybrid Symposium on Archives in and from the SWANA Region.
This symposium aims to provide a forum for scholars, archivists, community and cultural organizations interested in critical approaches to digital archives containing materials from and about the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, understood as a geographic, historical, and cultural space. In this space, archives have been historically imposed, looted, extracted, dispersed, destroyed, but also rescued, rebuilt and reinvented, pioneering practices of resistance, reparation and return that raise compelling ethical, theoretical and practical questions for scholars and stakeholders (Ghaddar, 2025). Building on Itza Carbajal and Michelle Caswell’s framework (2021), our approach seeks to advance a language-sensitive understanding of reparative archival practices that are attentive to and accountable for the technological, social, and environmental impacts of digital archives.
We are interested in digitisation as a transformative process that reshapes archival practices, knowledge production, and power relations.
Conceived as a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and horizontal forum, the symposium invites participants, both in person and online, to engage in discussion and exchange around three interconnected themes and interpretative lenses. Two keynote speakers – Sara Salem (LSE) and Amanda Egbe (UWE) – will act as discussants, facilitating collective reflection and dialogue around participants’ contributions. The three themes of the symposium are Travel, Translation and Transformation:
Travel: Archives in Movement
This strand explores journeys and movement both as subjects represented in archival collections and as conditions shaping the archive itself, opening up questions of archival looting, dispersal and dispossession as well as care, stewardship, and reparation. Discussions may engage with spatial humanities approaches, including digital mapping and gazetteers; the displacement and mobility of archives; practices and ethics of archival solidarity and return; and questions of heritage, ownership, and identity from indigenous and diasporic perspectives.
Translation: Languages in the Archive
This strand will examine issues relating to languages and translation, both in the records and in the archival metadata that make them searchable by and accessible to stakeholders. We will especially welcome contributions reflecting on the role of metadata as descriptive as well as interpretative text, exploring the potential for linguistic, semantic and epistemological translations. We will also welcome contributions that explore the multilinguality of archival records as enduring representations of human activity and consider the practices and ethics of reparative translation in digital archives.
Transformation: Digital Futures and Ethics of Dematerialization
The third strand will look at digitisation as a transformative process for the archive that involves new materialities and highlights new absences. We aim to discuss the impact of digital projects on key stakeholders (users, subjects of records, source communities). We invite contributions on the fragility of digitised and born-digital heritage, as well as the specific biases and risks that digitalisation processes may introduce, particularly through the reproduction, by digital tools, of historical and ongoing harms to people and the environment.
We also aim to assess the potential of digital technology, especially non-corporate and low-threshold, to act as vectors of resistance and tools against erasure.
Keynote speakers:
Sara Salem is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics. Her first book, published with Cambridge University Press, is entitled Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (2020). Her second book, co-authored with Mai Taha, is entitled Anticolonial Radios: On the Sonic Lives of Internationalism, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Along with Mai Taha, she curates Archive Stories, a platform exploring radical and creative archives.
Amanda Egbe is a Senior Lecturer in Media Production at the University of the West of England and leads Heritage Futures, a practice-led research programme building infrastructure for heritage at risk through archives, film, and digital systems. Her research focuses on how cultural memory is documented, governed, protected, transformed, or lost in contexts shaped by social change, technological transformation, environmental stress, and historical inequity.
Convenors:
Barbara Spadaro, University of Liverpool
Valeria Vitale, University of Sheffield
The event is jointly hosted by the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS) and the Institute of Classical Studies (ICS) at the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, and funded by the British Institute for Libyan and North African Studies (BILNAS).
Please send via email a 300words abstract and short bio to b.spadaro@liverpool.ac.uk and v.vitale@sheffield.ac.uk
Deadline: 30 SEPTEMBER 2026
A limited number of travel bursaries will be offered to participants travelling to the symposium in London.
URL: https://ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/critical-digital-archives-travel-translation-transformation
Contact Email
URL
https://ics.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/critical-digital-archives-travel-trans…
- September 15, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Intellect is pleased to present Performing Islam Volume 14
For more information about the journal and issue click here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/performing-islam
Aims & Scope
Performing Islam is the first peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal about Islam and performance and their related aesthetics. The journal covers dance, ritual, theatre, performing arts, visual arts and cultures, and popular entertainment in Islam-influenced societies and their diasporas.
This title is indexed with Scopus.
Volume 14
Articles
Unravelling gems: Prophetic proximity in poetic performance
KAMAL SALHI, AROOJ EHSAN AND AFNAN HAFIZ
Commentary as performativity: Mimesis, embodiment and scholarly authority in the Islamic tradition
EBRAHIM MOOSA
2. Now Enrolling for Fall 2026
Silk Road Academy of Eastern Languages and Cultures
School-Library-Museum
Building on the brilliant experience of “Ghand-e Parsi: The Academy of Persian Language and Persianate Culture” (link) and “Lisan-ı Türki: The Academy of Turkish Language and Turkic Culture,” (link) we continue our journey under our new brand, Silk Road Academy. Unlocking the rich literary, philosophical, and historical heritage of Eastern languages that once spanned from the Balkans to Bengal, our programs combine academic rigor with cultural immersion—empowering beginners and advanced researchers alike to master both classical texts and modern spoken communication.
All courses begin the first week of October 2026 and are conducted in live online seminar formats. Registered participants will receive full access to recorded session videos and all course materials and can use the courses’ materials offline.
If you have any questions about the courses, please feel free to reach out to admin@silkroadacademy.info
3. The International Society for the History of the Map and the Newberry Library’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography invite participants for the inaugural Map History Writing Workshop. Meant for graduate students, early career scholars, and scholars writing about map history for the first time, this workshop will bring together a cohort of people working on articles or book chapters about map history. The workshop is designed to help refine scholarship in the field of the history of maps and mapping while also building a community of rising scholars in the field.
Structure:
The workshop will meet on Zoom up to 6 times for 1.5-2 hours each over the course of the first half of 2027, depending on the number of participants. Each meeting will focus on the precirculated writing of one participant. For each meeting, the organizers in consultation with the presenter will recruit 2-3 experts in the field as respondents. Along with these experts, the other participants will then discuss the presenter’s writing with attention both to content and argumentation.
Participants in the workshop should be prepared to:
- Attend all meetings of the workshop
- Read each paper before each meeting
- Circulate a draft of an article or chapter (8,000-12,000 words) in advance of their assigned meeting
- Be or become a member of ISHMap before the start of the workshop
Required materials for application:
- CV
- 300-500 abstract of the article or book chapter
- Commitment to attending meetings
- Commitment to having writing prepared to pre-circulate at least 2 weeks in advance
To apply for the workshop, please fill out this form by 31 October 2026. Please address any questions to ishmap.society@gmail.com
Contact Information
International Society for the History of the Map
Contact Email
URL
4. Online Resource – The CallFront Database of Calligraphic Works in Arabic Script – Now Available
After several years of research, development, and international collaboration, the CallFront team is pleased to announce the launch of the project’s website: https://callfront.inha.fr/s/callfront/page/welcome
This website is intended for researchers, students, heritage professionals, and, more broadly, anyone interested in the history of calligraphy in Arabic script and it brings together a previously unpublished digital corpus dedicated to writings in Arabic script produced in the border regions of the Islamic world, from Spain to China. The corpus offers an original approach to these graphic traditions, based on a methodology developed by the project’s scientific consortium. Each entry combines a description of the artifact with a detailed analysis of the calligraphy based on the CallFront ontology, which is also available as open access.
The platform allows users to explore the data through various categories—regions, media, objects, monuments, manuscripts, graphic styles, interactive maps, or multi-criteria search. It thus offers a new tool for studying calligraphic traditions that are often little known and sometimes previously unpublished, while facilitating comparisons across regions, periods, and media.
Beyond the database, the website now serves as a platform for disseminating CallFront’s scholarly activities. It will feature consortium news, publications, audiovisual resources, and information on upcoming events and projects.
Developed as part of the ANR project “Calligraphy in Arabic Script at the Frontiers of the Islamicate World (CallFront) ” (ANR-22-CE54-0015) directed by Eloïse Brac de la Perrière (Sorbonne Université, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris) in collaboration with Maxime Durocher (Sorbonne Université), the website is hosted by the INHA and the project was also supported by Sorbonne Université, UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée, Barakat Trust, Observatoire des Patrimoines de l’Alliance Sorbonne Université and the Foundation Max van Berchem.
Access to the site: https://callfront.inha.fr/s/callfront/page/welcome
Contact Information
Maxime Durocher, Lecturer in Islamic Art and Archaeology, Sorbonne Université
Contact Email
maxime.durocher@sorbonne-universite.fr
URL
https://callfront.inha.fr/s/callfront/page/welcome
5. Hybrid Lecture – “The Shah Tahmasp Album from the Istanbul University Library,” Lâle Uluç
September 17 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm BST
About the Talk
“Shāh Ṭahmāsp Album” is a set of illustrated calligraphic works dating from the mid-14th to the mid-16th centuries compiled from various sources during the reign of the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-1576). It was conveyed to the Ottoman State during the 16th century and preserved in Ottoman palaces until it was placed in the Library of Istanbul University at the beginning of the 20th century. It is commonly believed that the album was among the diplomatic gifts sent by Shah Tahmasp to Sultan Murad III (r. 1574-1595). The texts written in Persian, Arabic or Chagatai Turkish are related to various fields of knowledge. They include poetry, samples of calligraphy, model texts, and continuous works displayed in several folios. The album had drawn specialists’ interest especially for its miniatures, some of which were taken from illustrated copies of well-known texts existing at the time. The present book, authored by Lâle Uluç and Bora Keskiner, focuses essentially on calligraphy which contributes to understanding the purpose and significance of its compilation. Based on comparisons with other calligraphic works from the same centuries located in Istanbul libraries, it examines the scripts, compositions, and provenance of the texts, traces the influences of eminent calligraphers and artistic characteristics of the Safavid period, and in the process, supplies a lot of information to the researchers concerned.
To join online, please register here.
URL
https://royalasiaticsociety.org/lectures-event/the-shah-tahmasp-album-from-the-…
6. EUP: special journal issue of Afghanistan (Open Access)
Explore an open access special issue of Afghanistan
Why did Afghanistan’s government collapse in 2021, with the Taliban seizing power? Bringing together international and local perspectives, it explores the failures of the US-led intervention and Afghan political leadership, the problems of centralised government and the role of local approaches to governance.
Visit the special issue homepage ( https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fddlnk.net%2Fc%2FAQjSfRC34bgHGPmorJQFILnK1K8BKLHU_UJ0VKm21-L4BdlnF9hhMw1IhikRNH3xdtN9624IaONyPA&data=05%7C02%7C%7Cfa3c83a052664b6e9e6708df0f094721%7C2e9f06b016694589878910a06934dc61%7C0%7C0%7C639246204648189565%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=HB3OFZpl%2FaqQjtTeFio4RSTCYsElhQ8nibubQTza1jQ%3D&reserved=0)
7. “The Birth of the Muslim Plague Martyr: A Story from Late Antiquity” inStudies in Late Antiquity (Open Access). Article is: https://online.ucpress.edu/SLA/article/10/3/219/219194/The-Birth-of-the-Muslim-Plague-MartyrA-Story-from
Abstract: This article attempts to explain why the Muslims of the first two hijri centuries came to view as martyrs those who died of a mysterious illness that they called the Stabber (al-ṭāʿūn). It finds the answer to that question at the intersection of the unique social pressures attendant on the Arab conquests, the presence of endemic Yersinia pestis in Greater Syria, the prior inheritance of Jewish and Christian ideas about the meaning of disease, and the distinctive view of salvation history found in the Qurʾan.
Early Muslims simultaneously affirmed the ancient Jewish and Christian theory of epidemic disease as divine punishment and gave it a separate meaning for their own community, as a martyrdom and a mercy, which set the conquering minority of Muhajirun apart in death as well as in life. In illuminating this process, the article writes a new cultural history of epidemic disease in the late antique world and revisits some of our fundamental assumptions about retrospective diagnosis and the discourse of disease in premodern culture. Its findings should be relevant to scholars of Christianity and Islam, to Syriacists, scholars of premodern disease, and to anyone invested in the current conversation about Yersinia pestis, epidemic disease, and environmental history in Late Antiquity.
8. Two new book reviews published in MELA Notes, both engaging with modern Persian literature and intellectual history.
The first is my review of A Scholar for Our Times: A Celebration of the Life and Work of Shahrokh Meskoob, edited by Abbas Milani and C. Ryan Perkins. The volume brings together contributions on Meskoob’s life, writings, cultural identity, exile, and intellectual legacy. My review pays particular attention to Farokhfal’s discussion of yād- memory and remembrance-and his understanding of language as a space in which cultural memory survives. I read this alongside Meskoob’s reflections on Iranian cultural identity and the ruptures of exile: how literature, language, and archives allow cultural memory to persist across displacement and historical breaks.
https://www.mela.us/2026/09/11/scholar-for-our-times-book-review/
The second, reviewed by Nader Nasiri, is Shahriar Khosravi’s An Approach to Contemporary Persian Poetry 1906–2013. Khosravi offers an innovative way of mapping modern Persian poetry through ideas and poetic currents rather than primarily through individual poets. His “Triple-P” framework-the Poetic, Political, and Philosophical-provides a conceptual approach to understanding the transformations of Persian poetry from Nima Yushij onward.
https://www.mela.us/2026/09/11/approach-contemporary-persian-poetry-book-review/
9. 2–10-Week Intensive Persian Language Winter School in Yerevan
ASPIRANTUM is pleased to announce its 2026–2027 Persian Language Winter School in Yerevan, Armenia, running from November 29, 2026 to February 5, 2027.
Participants can choose a program lasting anywhere from 2 to 10 weeks, depending on their schedule and study goals.
The program offers 20 hours of intensive Persian language instruction per week in small groups, together with cultural activities and excursions in Armenia.
Full information about dates, tuition fees, program structure, and the application process is available here:
https://aspirantum.com/courses/persian-language-winter-school
Best regards,
Khachik Gevorgyan
Director
ASPIRANTUM – Armenian School of Languages and Cultures
10. Call for Applications: Teaching & Organizing Assistant (Internship)
The ISJ Writing Program is seeking a motivated Teaching and Organizing Assistant to run a dedicated parallel class in future rounds of the program. This internship offers a valuable opportunity to support junior scholars and graduate students specializing in Iranian studies as they develop high-quality academic work and navigate the publication process.
Key Responsibilities:
- Class Coordination
- Session Support
- Participant Guidance
Qualifications:
- Graduate students or junior scholars specializing in Iranian studies or related humanities fields.
- Strong organizational and communication skills.
- Familiarity with academic publishing conventions and the needs of researchers in the region.
Compensation & Details:
Stipend: A $1,000 stipend is offered by the Association for Iranian Studies for this role.
Format: Virtual / Online.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should submit the following application materials:
- Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Cover Letter (maximum 1,000 words) outlining your background, teaching philosophy, and specifically addressing how your experiences make you a good candidate for this particular workshop.
Application Deadline: September 20, 2026
For inquiries or to submit your application materials, please contact the program directors at:
Kind regards,
Iranian Studies Journal
11. CSMBR Upcoming Lecture: Beyond Contagion
Beyond Contagion
Rethinking the History of Leprosy in the Medieval Mediterranean
Anna Gili
22 September 2026 – 5 PM (CET)
Given the variety of its pathological manifestations, leprosy was difficult for physicians in the past to recognise. They attempted to provide different pathological descriptions, distinct aetiologies, and varied clinical portraits to grasp its nature. Even the proposed treatments, although often influenced by the Galenic discovery of theriac, show considerable variation.
This talk explores some of the texts composed in the medieval Arabic, Latin, and Greek worlds that sought to capture this multifaceted pathology, with the aim of providing a commentary that goes beyond the narrow focus on contagion typical of scholarship on the subject.
Drawing on my recent book Leprosy in the Mediterranean Medical Literature (De Gruyter, 2025), I examine these texts through the combined lenses of philology and the history of medicine to reconstruct a history of leprosy that is, at the same time, a history of authors, texts, translations, and cultural exchanges.
At the centre of the talk will be al-Majūsī’s Kitāb al-Malakī, a work that both draws upon and goes beyond antique and late antique doctrines on the nature and treatment of the disease. This text will be placed in dialogue with earlier Arabic works such as Sarābiyūn’s Compendium, al-Ṭabarī’s al-Muʿālajāt al-Buqrāṭiyya, and al-Zahrāwī’s Kitāb al-Taṣrīf.
I will then turn to the Latin and Greek translations of the Kitāb al-Malakī to examine how the Arabic author’s biologically grounded, non-moralising approach to the disease was conveyed by its translators.
To register for this event, please click here.
Kindest regards,
Andreas Hylla
Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) – Assistant Coordinator
Domus Comeliana, Via Cardinale Maffi 48, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Tel.: +39.02.006.20.51 – Mobile: +39.333.13.12.203
Email: ah@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org
12. CFP for ACLA 2027 Seminar on Middle Eastern Modernisms
I am organizing an in-person seminar titled “Uneven Modernities and the Middle East ” for ACLA 2027. See below for the full proposal.
Please consider submitting an abstract by September 22, 2026: https://www.acla.org/seminar/0264089a-bcda-4b56-8bfe-9f2f6b266941
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at zahram2@illinois.edu.
Warmly,
Zahra Meshkani
PhD Candidate
Program in Comparative and World Literature
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
——————————————————
Challenging the persistent tendency to read Middle Eastern modernity as belated, derivative, or reactive to European models, we seek to foreground the region as a site where the modern was actively negotiated, reinterpreted, and reinvented. From the Ottoman Tanzimat and the Arab Nahda to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, writers, reformers, jurists, translators, and artists engaged with modernity through innovation as much as imitation, navigating rapid political, legal, religious, and linguistic transformation.
The seminar aims to stimulate comparative inquiry into the asymmetries and convergences between Middle Eastern and Western experiences of the modern, debating issues such as: the politics of translation and the circulation of ideas, books, and periodicals across the Mediterranean and beyond; contested relations among secularism, religion, and tradition; competing philosophies of time and the trope of “catching up”; the role of the state, constitutionalism, and reform; and the reshaping of gender, the public sphere, and selfhood.
I invite proposals that examine modernity in the Middle East from a comparative and transregional perspective across literature, intellectual history, law, music, medicine, and beyond and that interrogate Eurocentric narratives by treating Middle Eastern and Western modernities as mutually constitutive. For any questions, please reach out to zahram2@illinois.edu.
13. A new issue of Arabic Sciences and Philosophy (ASP) has published with Liverpool University Press. An international journal on the Arabic sciences,
If you would like to read content from Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, you can recommend a subscription to your librarian using our online form and gain access via your institution, or subscribe as an individual for personal access.
Sign up to our mailing list | Follow us on Bluesky
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Volume 36. Issue 2.
Table of contents
THEMATIC FILES: Savoirs scientifiques en Méditerranée: Scientific knowledge in the Mediterranean: A tribute to Pascal Crozet
SAVOIRS SCIENTIFIQUES EN MÉDITERRANÉE: INTRODUCTION
ROSHDI RASHED
AL-SIǦZĪ, POURQUOI ?: GÉOMÉTRIES AU Xe SIÈCLE
ROSHDI RASHED
RÉFLEXIONS SUR LE RÔLE DU MOUVEMENT EN GÉOMÉTRIE: LE CAS PROCLUS
DAVID RABOUIN
À PROPOS DU CALCUL AÉRIEN: ABŪ BAKR AL-KARAǦĪ, KAMĀL AL-DĪN AL-FĀRISĪ ET QUELQUES AUTRES
PASCAL CROZET
ALGORITHMS, PROOFS AND COUNTING RESULTS IN AL-FĀRISĪ’S MULTIPLICATION
LEÏLA HAMOUDA
VARIA
UNE INFLUENCE PROBABLE DE QUṬB AL-DĪN AL-ŠĪRĀZĪ SUR AL-FĀRISĪ ET LA RÉDACTION DU TANQĪḤ AL-MANĀẒIR
DOMINIQUE RAYNAUD
14. Review of Global Qur’anic Studies of the Year (RGQ3rd) Sponsored by Ind. Int. Qur’anic Parliament
Wednesday, Sept. 16 2026 (10-12 Tehran Time)
10-11 AM : Western Exegesis of Holy Qur’an (No.1: Fātiḥa: 1-7) (This is the first volume of the continuous project from the first to the end of Qur’an focusing on the western Qur’anic scholars)
11-12 : World Qur’anic Arts and Museums – Case study: Qur’anic Botanic Garden (QBG)- Dr. Zenia Henriksen, University of Southern Denmark
For Registration:
https://event.fourwaves.com/iqp2026/registration
https://event.fourwaves.com/iqp2026
http://zabanshenasitarikhi.ir/
15. ONLINE Webinar: Authority in Attire: The Politics of Moral Order in Iran
with Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS), 29 September, 2026, 5:00 pm UK Time
This presentation considers the continuing controversies around state-sanctioned unveiling and reveiling in Iran. I will focus on how clothing became a way to exert authority and define identity. Fashion became a revealing political statement because of its public visibility and because the Iranian state had relied on attire to promote a culture of urbanity and sociability. I analyse the prominence of clothing as public expressions of state authority, religious power, social order, and moral purity. This essay departs from previous studies of the unveiling/veiling movement by expanding the analytical framework beyond ideology and assessing such directives as contests over social control and everyday life. In this way, both veiling and unveiling, at different moments, came to function as registers of ethically superior citizenship, each casting the other as its antithesis and transforming bodies into oppositional sites of moral order
Information and registration:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/5317890304868/WN_eVnHyyUwQU6aeC4hTwp4Qg#/registration
16. Forthcoming Book
Title: An American Educator in Iran: The Life and Times of Samuel Martin Jordan.
By: Houchang Chehabi
MORE:
https://www.mazdapublishers.com/book/an-american-educator-in-iran
17. HYBRID Lecture “The Impish Revolutionary: Mischief, Play, and Counter-Sovereignty in Iran” by Alireza Doostdar (University of Chicago), Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, 24 September 2026, 17:00 – 18:30 CET
Can revolutionary energy be understood as a form of mischievous play? This lecture takes up shaytanat – deviltry, roguishness, impish mischief – as an overlooked idiom of Iranian revolutionary life, one that runs alongside the more familiar registers of heroic piety and martyrdom. I ultimately suggest that the revolutionary state is not only one that devours its children but one that teaches them to revolt against it.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/2nwdxc37. Registration: https://tinyurl.com/mu6642r8
18. HYBRIDE Séance « La question kurde à l’horizon des années 2030 ? » avec Hamit Bozarslan (Directeur d’études à l’EHESS), Institut français du Proche-Orient, Erbil, 24 septembre 2026, 15h30 CET
Information et inscription : https://tinyurl.com/23wrvn3n
19. 6th Biennial University of Michigan International Conference on Arabic Applied Linguistics, University of Michigan, 31 October – 1 November 2026
The conference is an open forum for scholars interested in exploring empirically topics and issues in Arabic applied linguistics. The topics of the conference cover three main strands: – I. Topics which deal with Arabic second language acquisition (SLA). – II. Topics which deal with the theory and practice of Arabic second/foreign language teaching. – III. Topics which deal with applied research related to Ara-bic as an L1.
Programme: https://tinyurl.com/3ummjrpb. Registration: https://tinyurl.com/4zjjnxuv
20. Workshop “Family in History, History in the Family: Historical Approaches to Family, House-
hold, Kinship, and Generations (Focus Turkey)”, Istanbul University, 20-21 November 2026
While dynasties, political elites, and notable families have received substantial attention, the families of religious scholars and intellectuals, merchants and artisans, migrants, non-elite households, and fami-lies in the Republican period remain comparatively understudied. The workshop approaches the family not simply as a line of descent or a collection of individual biographies, but as a unit of historical anal-ysis. With particular interest in Ottoman and Turkish history, it also welcomes original, source-based research on other periods and geographical contexts.
Deadline for abstracts: 28 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/2mukwbkp
21. ONLINE Seminar “Counter-Futures: Dystopia and the World-Building of Arab Fictions”,
American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), 15-16 May 2027
This seminar has the dual purpose of exploring the affordances of ‘dystopia’ as a sub-genre of science fiction for writing from the Arab world, and of testing the potency of the term ‘counter-futures’ as a way to identify and explore the political valences of such writing. We are interested in any scholarship on Arab science fiction, in particular on dystopian writing, and in approaches which insist on subjecting the literary-theoretical categories of science fiction and dystopia to historicising critiques.
Deadline for abstracts: 22 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/483r7zr5
22. Symposium “Dutch Levantines in the Ottoman World”, Levantine Heritage Foundation, Uni-versity of Amsterdam, 11-13 June 2027
This conference will emphasize the theme of the Dutch in the Levant as a vital force in the creation of a Levantine world, with complex socio-economic networks giving rise to social, cultural, political, and material exchanges with resonances lasting till today.
Deadline for abstracts: 31 December 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/3dwe3kcd
23. POSTE DE PROFESSEURE, PROFESSEUR
LES ISLAMS : SOURCES, HISTOIRE ET PRÉSENCE DANS LE MONDE
CONTEMPORAIN
Université du Québec, Montréal
Exigences: Doctorat en sciences des religions ou dans une discipline connexe. – Expérience profes-sionnelle pertinente d’au moins 3 ans, incluant les activités de recherche doctorales. – Connaissance approfondie et critique de l’islam et de ses contenus fondamentaux. – Connaissance approfondie du corpus fondateur de l’islam. – Dossier de recherche et de publications solide. – Maîtrise de la langue française, tant à l’oral qu’à l’écrit*
Limite : 23 octobre 2026. Information : https://tinyurl.com/bdhmkjsn
24. Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) in Global History (Focus Middle East), Suffolk University, Boston, MA
We seek a teacher-scholar with research focus in Global History, broadly defined. Applicants should be able to teach and lead initiatives related to one or more of the following topic areas: Africa; Europe and European empires; Latin America; the Middle East; and/or Russia/the Soviet Union.
Deadline for applications: 15 October 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/yw9yep32
25. Contributions to the “Middle East and North Africa Profile” of the Online Encyclopedia “Atlas of Today`s World”
We are currently accepting contributions on topics including: – Human Rights, Minorities and Gender. – Living Standards & Impacts of Conflict. – Environmental Conditions. – Economic Systems and Cor-ruption. – Ideology and Religion (including Sunni-Shia dynamics and religious minorities). – Society, Demography, Migration & Social Tensions. – International Relations & Regional Power Dynamics. – Colonial Legacy, State Formation & Post-Independence Transformations. – Political Upheavals, the Arab Spring, Youth and Digitalization. – Etc.
Deadline for abstracts: 31 October 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/mstr36k5
26. ONLINE New Volume: “Radical Encounters: Islamists and Leftists in the Middle East and North Africa (1960s-2010s)” edited by Laura Guazzone and Rossana Tufaro, Sapienza University of Rome Press, September 2026, 316 Pages
This volume uncovers tactical alliances, biographical conversions, and hybridizations of languages and symbols. Drawing on case studies that move from the Maghreb to Iran and from universities to rural communities, the book develops an original typology of cooperation and conflict, restoring the historical depth of relations that have redrawn the boundary between the “secular” and the “religious” and con-tinue to shape oppositional politics in the contemporary Middle East.
View: https://tinyurl.com/56bkf426
27. Nouveau livre: “Changer d’alphabet Turquie 1850-1950” de Emmanuel Szurek, PUF, 1 octo-bre 2026
En 1928, la Turquie abandonne la graphie arabe au profit d’une écriture à base latine. En replaçant cet épisode dans une histoire longue, ce livre montre que la romanisation du turc ne saurait se réduire à sa dimension spectaculaire. Elle s’inscrit dans une série de transformations souterraines qu’il faut saisir à l’échelle globale : pression des technologies, reconfigurations des savoirs linguistiques, inégalités d’accès à l’écrit, redéfinition du rapport entre langue, nation et « civilisation ».
Information: https://tinyurl.com/bddzkjcj
28. New Book: “The Life and Memoirs of Fakhri al-Barudi – The Renaissance Man of Syria, 1887-1966” by Sami Moubayed and Fakhri al-Barudi, AUC Press, 25 August 2026, 156 Pages
Born into an aristocratic Damascene family in about 1887, Fakhri al-Barudi was universally acclaimed as one of the country’s founding fathers and a leading figure in the country’s struggle for independence from French rule during the 1920s. Drawing on both private papers and published sources, Sami Mou-bayed’s authoritative epilogue takes up al-Barudi’s life in Syrian politics from where the memoirs leave off, through to al-Barudi’s death in 1966.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/4njsrdaa
- September 12, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- September 11, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1.Persian Empire’s 2,500th Anniversary Anthem Score Is Out
The 2,500-year celebrations of the Persian Empire are among the most controversial events in the history of Iran during the Pahlavi era. Discussions and debates about the celebrations have almost always focused on their political aspects, whereas, alongside the celebrations, numerous cultural programs were taking place both inside and outside Persia. One such aspect is the special anthem composed for the celebrations. It was recorded for the first time in 1971 by the Tehran Symphony Orchestra and the Tehran Choir, but its score was never published.
This handwritten score, which was at risk of being destroyed, was recently discovered in an archive in Tehran and has now been published in the Netherlands, together with historical information and related photographs. You may listen to the anthem via the link below—and, if possible, please recommend that your libraries add this work to their collections for historical and musicological research:
https://persiandutch.com/2026/08/29/for-the-first-time-the-persian-empires-2500th-anniversary-anthem-score-is-out/
All the best,
Pejman Akbarzadeh
—- www.pejmanakbarzadeh.com
2. Call for Papers
Conference of the Medieval Studies Working Group at the Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel
29 September–1 October 2027
Coherence: The Construction of Meaning in Medieval Miscellaneous Manuscripts
The question of what criteria determine whether items that appear together actually belong together arises in the case of medieval miscellaneous manuscripts already at the level of their materiality. The coexistence of heterogeneous elements on the same folio, within the same quire, or between the same set of book covers constitutes a material fact that calls for interpretation. Are the pragmatically motivated practices of writing into previously blank space and assembling loose materials into codicological units merely strategies for the efficient use of writing materials and the preservation of texts? Or do they also reflect intentional attempts to generate intertextual and intermedial meaning? More fundamentally, how can we methodologically determine whether the relationship between such elements is purely material or also constitutes semantic coherence?
In recent years, the relationship between individual components and their integration into larger wholes has increasingly been studied from the perspective of structural relationality, with particular attention to the conditions that produce cohesion and coherence. Originating in textual linguistics and the study of textual unity, the concept of coherence has, above all in German medieval studies, increasingly been explored from a narratological perspective. Discussions have focused on the relationships between heterogeneous textual elements of different provenance and on the coherence of narratives, thereby addressing processes of narrative meaning-making. Particular attention has been paid to gaps, omissions, and contradictions in medieval narrative literature and lyric poetry.
The conference, organised by the Medieval Studies Working Group, proposes a shift in perspective. Rather than concentrating on the so-called “irritation phenomena” (Christian Schneider), it seeks to explore the interdisciplinary potential of the concept of coherence by examining its transferability and applicability to questions of textual transmission and transmission contexts in medieval miscellaneous manuscripts. The conference invites an exploratory discussion of the extent to which the concept of coherence can be fruitfully applied to relationships between texts (both within transmission clusters and within seemingly self-contained sub-collections), between text and image, text and paratext, text and musical notation, as well as to codicological units themselves.
The relationship between coherence and contingency in medieval miscellaneous manuscripts presents a methodological challenge in three respects. First, there is a terminological problem inherent in the conceptually ambiguous notion of the “miscellaneous manuscript.” Depending on the context, the term may refer either generally to any manuscript transmitting more than one text (a multiple-text manuscript) or, more specifically, to a deliberately planned collection of texts. Matters are further complicated by the subsequent combination of codicological units that may—or may not—have originally belonged together.
Second, the historicity of coherence itself must be taken into account, since phenomena of coherence are inseparable from the historical development of the manuscript as an object. The involvement of multiple agents in the compilation, copying, deliberate rearrangement, and accidental rebinding of different codicological units gives rise to a range of distinct—and at times competing—notions of coherence, all of which must themselves be historicised. By what means are individual texts, text-image ensembles, and intermedial constellations connected within miscellaneous manuscripts, and from whose historical perspective do these relationships appear coherent? At what stage in the manuscript’s history such connections were established, and at what stage they were recognised, interpreted, or reshaped by later users?
Third, any historically oriented research into the coherence of miscellaneous manuscripts—whether understood as units of textual transmission or as containing internally coherent sub-collections—must address the persistent problem of confirmation bias. Although this conference deliberately shifts the focus, in the spirit of the principle of charitable interpretation, away from inconsistency and towards coherence, it also calls for methodological reflection on the conditions under which patterns of coherence identified by modern scholarship may legitimately be regarded as historical features of medieval manuscripts, and where contingency provides the more convincing explanation. A conference devoted to the coherence of medieval miscellaneous manuscripts must therefore also engage in fundamental methodological reflection.
We welcome both theoretically informed contributions and case studies from all areas of medieval studies. Possible questions include, but are not limited to:
• How can relationships of coherence and equivalence within groups of texts be described?
• How is coherence established in intermedial constellations within manuscripts, especially in text-image relationships?
• To what extent can external and internal forms of coherence be distinguished?
• What functions do paratextual elements perform in their various verbal, non-verbal, and pictorial forms (e.g. headings, rubrication, chapter and section divisions, initials, or the division of texts into books)?
• Which elements provide structure across textual boundaries and thereby create connections between texts? What role codicological units do play in this process?
• Which strategies for creating coherence can be identified, including those related to processes of understanding and cognitive models?
• To what extent is it meaningful—or even possible—to distinguish between principles of external coherence (e.g. structural and paratextual features, episodicity, organisation principles, etc.) and internal coherence (e.g. repetition, doubling, equivalence, analogy, or correspondences on the textual and visual surface)?
Papers may be presented in either German or English. Please submit proposals of approximately 300 words (c. one page) by 1 October 2026 to: Tobias Daniels (Tobias.Daniels@mg.fak09.uni-muenchen.de).
3. A special issue of Religions, “Women in Islam: Spirituality, Mysticism, and the Occult,” explores women’s diverse engagements with spirituality, mysticism, and occult practices in Muslim contexts. We welcome contributions addressing topics including spirituality, saints, healing, dreams, divination, talismans, magic, the paranormal, culture, ethnography, film, fiction, and folklore.
Paper submission deadline: 1 June 2027.
Further details and submission information can be found here:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/5837PA6OZ8
For any questions, feel free to contact Amina Inloes (a.inloes@islamic-college.ac.uk) or Maryam Abbasi (abbasimaryam525@gmail.com).
4. Al-Ghazali on Proper Conduct in Seclusion
Book XVI of the Revival of the Religious Sciences
(Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din)
5. Persian Courses
Introduction to Pahlavi: Autumn School of Zoroastrian Middle Persian(October 19 – November 5, 2026).
An introduction to Middle Persian grammar, vocabulary, and script (inscriptonal), with readings from Sasanian inscriptions and major Zoroastrian and literary texts such as the Kārnāmag ī Ardaxšēr ī Pābagān, Bundahišn, Ardā-Wīrāz-nāmag, etc. The course also explores the language’s historical development and the literary, religious, and cultural world of Sasanian Iran.
Learn Persian Through Iranian Media: Introduction to the Media Landscape of Iran(September 27 – November 15, 2026).
An intermediate-level course focused on developing Persian reading, comprehension, vocabulary, and speaking skills through authentic articles and headlines from a range of Iranian newspapers and news outlets. The course also introduces participants to the Iranian media landscape, including the different orientations, styles, and approaches of major outlets, with guided discussions of current topics.
Ferdowsi School of Persian Literature
Yerevan, Armenia
Website: www.ferdowsi.org
6. The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA)is pleased to invite undergraduate and graduate students to participate in its Poster Competitionat the Nineteenth Annual Conference being held November 7 – 9, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
Presenting a poster is an excellent opportunity for young scholars to showcase their work in a visual format that promotes discussion, enables interaction with seasoned academics, and to gather feedback about their projects.
Information for applicants:
- Undergraduate applicants must be juniors or seniors in the 2026-27 academic year.
- Graduate applicants must be enrolled at a higher education institution for the 2026-27 academic year.
- Interested students must submit an application via the online submission portal and include a 300-word abstract of original unpublished data.
- Topics must be related to the Middle East and/or Africa.
- Successful applicants will be required to register for the Conference.
- Scoring is based on how well the presenter demonstrates understanding of their subject matter as well as by the clarity of their presentation.
- More submission details and guidelines for final poster projects will be made available to confirmed participants.
- Applications are evaluated and accepted on a rolling basis until October 5, 2026.
For further information, please visit our Call for Posters pageor contact info@asmeascholars.org.
Contact Information
Emily Lucas
Membership and Operations Director (ASMEA)
Contact Email
URL
https://www.asmeascholars.org/call-for-posters-2024
7. Indiana University – Bloomington – Roger E. Covey Professorship in Silk Road Studies (Open Rank)
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/70303/indiana-university-bloomington-roger-e-covey-professorship-silk-road-studies-open-rank
8. Wabash College – Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of History
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/70282/wabash-college-byron-k-trippet-assistant-professor-history
- September 08, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Daiber Collection II, MSS 1–50, has now been made available on “The Daiber Collection Beta Database “
The Daiber Collection Beta Database Project, “Team Daiber,” is pleased to announce that the fourth installment of images and metadata, covering Daiber Collection II, MSS 1–50, has now been made available online. The project aims to develop a renewed database of the Daiber Collection, one of the largest collections of manuscripts in Arabic script in East Asia held by the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo.
For further details, please visit: https://u-parl.lib.u-tokyo.ac.jp/english/notice20260902
2. Zahra Institute’s 2026 Fall Speaker Series
Lords of the Mountains: Kurds and Kurdistan in English Writing
Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Time: 12 PM CT / 1 PM ET
Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/D0zY9DldT6eo45TkPns_lw#
3. University of Arizona’s remote Persian language courses, offered online via Zoom. These courses are open to visiting and non-degree seeking students from other universities as well, so they may be a great option for any of your students who still need to fulfill a foreign language requirement, regardless of their home institution.
Course details:
– Elementary Persian (PRS 101/102) – available in-person and online
– Intermediate Persian (PRS 401/402) – available in-person and online
– Advanced Persian (PRS 403/404) and 4th Year Persian (PRS 407/408) – in-person only (500-level graduate sections also available)
Who can enroll:
– University of Arizona Main Campus students (remote students only)
– Visiting and non-degree seeking students from other universities (upon admittance to Main Campus as a non-degree seeking student)
The program offers small class sizes, individual consultation, and instruction from experienced, published faculty, with levels available from beginner through superior proficiency.
For any questions, students can reach out directly to oconklin@arizona.edu.
4. Le CeRMI a le plaisir de vous convier, le jeudi 10 septembre, à la première édition du colloque « PhLIrT : Philologia Linguisticaque Iranica et Turcica » à la Maison de la recherche de l’INaLCO (2 rue de Lille, 75006 Paris, dans l’auditorium Georges Dumézil).
Cette première édition du colloque est organisée, avec le concours du CeRMI et de l’INaLCO. Le colloque aurait vocation à se tenir au mieux tous les deux ans, et à donner lieu à une publication de ses actes dans le courant de l’année suivant sa tenue.
Veuillez trouver le programme ci-joint et sur le site web du CeRMI : https://cermi.cnrs.fr/phlirt-philologia-linguisticaque-iranica-et-turcica/.
L’entrée est libre dans la limite des places disponibles.
Dans le cas où vous souhaiteriez suivre le colloque « PhLIrT : Philologia Linguisticaque Iranica et Turcica » à distance, les informations sur le lien Zoom se trouvent sur cette adresse : https://www.inalco.fr/evenements/phlirt-philologia-linguisticaque-iranica-et-turcica-premiere-edition
Les organisateurs de l’édition 2026
Sébastien Gréal (CeRMI – INaLCO) et Dorian Pastor (Université de Lausanne)
——————————————————–
CeRMI – CNRS UMR 8041
Centre de Recherche sur le Monde Iranien
Campus CNRS Ile-de-France Villejuif
7, rue Guy Môquet – 94800 Villejuif – FRANCE
cermi@cnrs.fr – https://www.cermi.cnrs.fr
—-
5. Richard M. Eaton Recipient of the 25th Levi Della Vida Award
Richard M. Eaton, a well-known and respected social-cultural historian of Islam and premodern India (1000—1800), has been awarded the 25th Giorgio Levi Della Award in Islamic Studies by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. As part of the award, CNES will host a scholarly conference on a theme selected by Eaton, at which he will deliver a formal lecture. The conference, “Sufis in Premodern Persianate Societies and Politics,” will be held at UCLA on November 5, 2026. UCLA historians and CNES Faculty Affiliates Nile Green and Choon Hwee Koh are organizing the event, with the proceedings to be published as a new volume in the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Series in Islamic Studies. Read more here.
6. The recording for the recent Library of Congress event, “From South Asia to the American South: A Discussion about the History and Trade of Seersucker”, is now available on the Library of Congress website and YouTube page:From South Asia to the American South: A Discussion about the History and Trade of Seersucker. Please feel free to share this link with anyone who might be interested.
Contact Information
Charlotte Giles, PhD
South Asia Specialist, Asian Division
Library of Congress
Contact Email
URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVLbutMA2-o
7. A new anthology ‘Erwerbungen und Provenienzen Islamischer Kunst zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Acquisitions and Provenance of Islamic Art between 1933 and 1945)’ edited by Franziska Bloch and Miriam Kühn brings together 15 essays examining current research into the acquisition and provenance of Islamic art during the Nazi era.
A central focus is the fate of Jewish collectors and their collections, including Felix Ganz, Alfred Cassirer and Dr. Max Ginsberg. Their stories are closely connected to the holdings of the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin and demonstrate how persecution, forced sales, displacement and the dispersal of collections also shaped museum collections.
The volume also examines acquisitions by museums and libraries, including the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and explores approaches to making provenance research visible and accessible through museums.
Provenance research is essential to understanding an object’s biography: who owned it, how it changed hands, and under what circumstances it entered a collection. Where gaps remain, research can nevertheless reveal networks, historical contexts and responsibilities that are crucial to the way museums understand and care for their collections today. By bringing together current research and methodological perspectives, it provides a basis for further investigation into the histories of Islamic art collections in Germany.
The publication is mainly in German. Published by arthistoricum.net in 2026 and is available open access online.
Access the publication: https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1638
Contact Information
Museum für Islamische Kunst (im Pergamonmuseum)
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 6
D-10117 Berlin
Contact Email
URL
https://doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.1638
8. Applications are now open for the 2026 Canadian Friends of Sufi Arts, Culture, and Knowledge™ (CFSACK®) Research Awards.
The CFSACK Research Awards support research and scholarly or creative projects that advance the study and understanding of Sufi arts, culture, and knowledge. With the support of the American Friends of Sufi Arts, Culture, and Knowledge (AFSACK), the program is open to eligible applicants affiliated with institutions in both Canada and the United States.
The Research Awards welcome proposals across a broad range of disciplines and areas of practice. Eligible fields include, but are not limited to, art and art history, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, classics, cultural studies, curatorial practice, ethnomusicology, fine arts, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, sociology, and related interdisciplinary fields.
Projects may involve fieldwork, archival or collections-based research, community-engaged research, creative or curatorial work, conference participation or organization, and the development and dissemination of research outputs.
Award Amounts
- Undergraduate and master’s students: up to CAD 2,000
- Doctoral students/candidates and postdoctoral fellows: up to CAD 5,000
Eligibility
Applicants must be one of the following:
- Undergraduate students
- Master’s students
- Doctoral students/candidates
- Postdoctoral fellows
Applicants must be enrolled at or formally affiliated with an eligible Canadian or U.S. post-secondary educational, research, or cultural institution, including a university, college, research institute, museum, or archive.
Citizenship is not an eligibility requirement.
Research Access Opportunity
Award recipients may, upon request and subject to approval, be granted funded research access to the Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO™ in Chatou, France. Depending on the nature of the project and availability, this may include consultation with members of the Museum’s curatorial or research teams and access to relevant collections or research resources.
Important Dates
- Applications Open: September 4, 2026
- Application Deadline: October 25, 2026 at 23:59 PDT
- Notification of Results: Mid-December 2026
Full program guidelines, eligibility requirements, FAQs, and the online application portal are available at:
https://www.cfsack.org/research-awards
Contact Information
Nooshin Esmaeili, Chair, CFSACK Research Awards Committee
Shahed Ejadi, Board of Directors, CFSACK
Contact Email
URL
https://www.cfsack.org/research-awards
9. The first lecture in the Virtual Islamic Art History Seminar Series for the fall 2026 semester will take place on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, at 12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul.
Rachel Winter (MSU Broad Art Museum) and sculptor and installation artist Armita Raafat will present “History in Motion: A Conversation between Armita Raafat and Rachel Winter about Contemporary Art and Islamicate Visual Cultures.”
To attend, please register in advance here:
https://wellesley.zoom.us/meeting/register/LvXw8DkPQxWbxiXkWNK5Rw
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!
Contact Information
Drs. Alexander Brey, Jaimee Comstock-Skipp, and Rachel Winter
Contact Email
URL
10. HYBRID Colloque “PhLIrT : Philologia Linguisticaque Iranica et Turcica – Première edition”, inalco, Paris, 10 septembre 2026, 9h00 – 19h00 CET
Information, program et inscription : https://tinyurl.com/2we5r3ae
11. Workshop: “Conceptual History and Translation – Between Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East”, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, 10-11 September 2026
This workshop brings together scholars and translators working between Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to examine, through concrete case studies, how key concepts – from critique and secular-ism to ʿasabiyya, boko and civil society – are made and unmade as they cross languages such as Arabic, French, English, German, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Kashmiri, Hausa and Kiswahili.
Information and program: https://tinyurl.com/bdcn4bep
12. Conference “The Concept of Health and the Concept of Illness in Judaism, Christianity and Islam”, BaFiD, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen, 23-25 September 2026
Themes: – The Concept of Health in Judaism: Prof. Dr. Catherine Hezser, SOAS University of London. – The Concept of Health in Christianity: Prof. Dr. Isolde Karle, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. – The Concept of Health in Islam: Prof. Dr. Ali Ayten, Marmara Üniversitesi. – The Concept of Illness in Judaism: Prof. Dr. Laura Zoloth, University of Chicago. – The Concept of Illness in Christianity: Prof. Dr. Ashley Moyse, Baylor University (USA). – The Concept of Illness in Islam: Prof. Dr. Mehmet Sayilgan, Georgetown University.
Program and registration: https://tinyurl.com/2kj6emh3
13. HYBRID Lecture Series “Political Order beyond Westphalian Statehood: Perspectives from Asia and Africa”, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, 24 September 2026 – 25 Feb-ruary 2027
Themes: – The Impish Revolutionary: Mischief, Play, and Counter-Sovereignty in Iran. – A Polypoly of Legitimate Violence? Political Orders on the Sahara Frontier. – Ruling Strategies and State-Building after Multi-Actor Civil Wars: Evidence from Syria and Beyond. – Jihadist Debates over Political Identity and Technologies of Government in the Lake Chad Basin. – The Southwest Caucasian Republic (1918-1919) and the Limits of Pseudo-Statehood.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/5dum4pyv
14. International Conference “God, Human, Machine: Images and Imaginaries of Religion in the Age of AI” (Focus Islam Studies), 28-30 September 2026, University of Erfurt, Germany
The conference critically examines how AI technologies are reshaping religious images and imagi-naries, encompassing the symbolic, affective, and sensory dimensions of religious life and practice across traditions, cultures, and social contexts. The conference brings together theoretical and empiri-cal perspectives, connecting scholars and practitioners working at the intersections of Religious Stud-ies, Anthropology, Art History, and Science and Technology Studies.
Deadline for registration: 16 September 2026. Information, program and registration:
15. ONLINE Three-Part Workshop “Studying East of Byzantium XIII: Centers and Hubs”, Hellenic College Holy Cross & Harvard University, 9 October 2026 / 12 February 2027 / 3-4 June 2029
The workshop intends to bring together doctoral students and recent PhDs studying the Christian East to reflect on the usefulness of the role of Centers and Hubs in studying the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with one another and senior specialists in the field.
Deadline for abstracts: 13 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/3pbrvdww
16. International Conference “Villes du Levant: Mémoire, Identité et Avenir Urbain”, Levantine Heritage Foundation & Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 29 October 2026
Themes: – Cities defining the Levant: Beirut, Saida, Tyre, Haifa, Jerusalem, Damascus, Aleppo, Alex-andria etc. Separate entities and rivals or a cultural collective? – Cosmopolitan cities: the nature and evolution of Levantine urban identity. – Memory, destruction and the politics of reconstruction in the Levant. – Reflections of the Levant in literature and film. – The future of Levantine cities and communi-ties: resilience and renewal. – The history of foreign communities in Lebanon and beyond. – Etc.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/2zuvpsca
17. “60th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA)”, Boston, 21-24 No-vember 2026
We will have several special events reflecting on the past and looking ahead. These include a special session, “Former MESA Presidents Reflect on Major Events in the Last 30 Years”, about some of the challenges various presidents faced and how MESA responded. Another special session, “MESA at 60: The Past, Present, and Future of Middle East Studies”, considers the evolution of the field and where we might go from here. A roundtable, “Teaching MES in Different Generations:Culture Wars, Geopoli-tics, Retaliation, and the Teacher”, discusses 60 years of undergraduate teaching in Middle East stud-ies.
Preliminary program: https://tinyurl.com/va6bjvtx
18. ONLINE “Ninth Annual Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium on Islamic and Middle
Eastern Studies”, AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies, George Mason University, 3 December 2026
The Colloquium invites advanced graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in the so-cial sciences and humanities to submit reviews on noteworthy books published since 1 January 2025 in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies. At the Colloquium, the accepted students will have the opportunity to present their book reviews in pre-organized panels lasting 20 minutes.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 October 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/bdhua4t3
19. Conference “On the Orientalists’ Divan: Questions of Reflexivity from the 18th to the 21st Cen-turies”, Inalco, Paris,15-16 March 2027
The academic aim of this conference is to highlight the explicit and conscious relationship between the scholar and their subject of study, and to capture the reflexivity of Orientalists – that ‘close, intimate and entirely personal bond they maintain with their work’. Researchers are invited to catch Orientalists in the act of explaining, as historians, the link between the history we have made and the history that has made us.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/3u2jeyd5
20. Candidatures pour des bourses de recherche en islamologie, Master 2 (1 à 3 mois), Doc-torant/es/Jeunes docteur/es (6 mois), L’Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (I-REMC), Tunis
L’octroi d’une bourse de mobilité devra permettre aux masterant/es, doctorant/es ou jeune docteur/es d’accomplir un travail de terrain de recherche en islamologie en étant accueilli/es dans une ou deux UMIFRE. La discipline « islamologie » est entendue au sens large et pourra intégrer les axes suivants. – Histoire de l’Islam. – Étude et analyse critique du corpus des textes religieux, théologiques, juridiques, doctrinaux et philosophiques de la période de l’Islam Classique. – Etude en sciences sociales des groupes musulmans. – Etc.
Limite : 15 octobre 2026. Information : https://tinyurl.com/y7vvh3h2
21. Summer School “Fatih Sultan Mehmed: 1420-1500”, Arkhé Campus in Şirince, İzmir, 5-12 September 2026
The summer school will examine the period through political thought, law, historiography, intellectual history, philosophy, and court culture. Particular attention will be given to Mehmed’s relationship with the Roman and Byzantine imperial past, the reorganization of the Ottoman court and state, the trans-formation of Istanbul into an imperial center, and the relationship between political authority and schol-arly life. The language of instruction is Turkish.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/y7vvh3h2
22. New Book: “An Ottoman Perception of Greek History: Mahmut Efendi’s History of Athens”, Translated by Thomas Sinclair, Edited by Thomas Sinclair & Gülçin Tunalı, Edinburgh University Press, August 2026, 584 Pages
This edition comprises a transliteration, translation and commentary of a history of Athens written from the 1710s to the 1740s by Mahmut Efendi, a locally born Ottoman court official. The text describes the city’s early history, the reforms of Solon, the battles of Marathon and Salamis, Socrates’ teaching, Al-exander the Great’s involvement with the city and exploits in Asia, and the city’s conversion to Christi-anity. It also outlines the involvement of Venice in the city’s fortunes starting in the 13th century and complains of the second Venetian occupation (1686-87) of the Peloponnese and Athens.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/ykf6pjhh
23. New Book: “Curating Islamic Art in European Museums: Postcolonial Perspectives and Mus-eological Transformations” by Constance Jame, Routledge, 16 June 2026, 278 Pages
Since the early 2000s many museums around the world have been either re-organising or creating ex nihilo galleries dedicated to Islamic art. This movement has often been attributed by the press and scholars as a response to international geopolitical events. Challenging this prevailing narrative, in this book Jame examines these developments as part of a longue durée process rooted in evolving art historical perspectives and institutional efforts to de-Europeanise their approaches. Thus, she explores how Islamic art was presented and interpreted within Western European museums in the 2010s.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/29d3m8tc
24. New Book: “Kurdish Women’s Transnational Resistance: Revolutionary Politics in Everyday
Life” by Nisa Goksel, University of Washington Press, June 2026, 302 Pages
Goksel draws on years of multisited ethnography and archival research to illuminate the lives of ex-guerrillas, local activists, politicians, activist mothers, and migrant women who have carried the struggle across borders, advocating for the democratic and gendered transformation of Kurdistan and the wider Middle East. The book shows how they have created alternative political subjectivities, new political spaces, and novel gendered strategies at the precarious intersection of local and transnational politics.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/6cubfnkz
25. New Book: “A Trade in Dreams: A Century of Egyptian Print Advertising” by Bahia Shehab, AUC Press, 26 May 2026, 252 Pages
Drawing on over 350 images of magazine and newspaper ads, Bahia Shehab reveals how consumer culture intertwined with political, social, and economic change during the period between 1880 and 1980 in Egypt. She shows how the Egyptian market navigated the influx of European and American luxury goods, from fine fabrics and jewelry to agricultural machinery, and how these items became symbols of aspiration and, at times, ignited a wave of national resistance.
Information: https://aucpress.com/9781649033024/
26. New Book: “Social Movements and Democratization in North Africa, 1912-2024” by Moha Ennaj, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, 338 Pages
This transdisciplinary book examines social movements in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It focuses on nationalist, democratic, women’s, Islamist, Berber (Amazigh), and youth movements since 1912 through the post-Arab Spring era. The book takes current debates on the topic to a more inclusive level, involving linkages among policy, cultural identity, democratic culture, and social justice. It analyzes the role of social movements in driving social change, democratization, development, and social cohesion.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/nxwj8ja5
- September 05, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
- September 03, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Zoom: ‘A Re-Evaluation of the Shiʿi Approaches to the Textual History of the Qurʾan’ – S Kara (21.9.26, 5pm UK time)
- September 02, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
1. Panel for the Association of Persianate Societies Biennial Conference in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (9-12 August 2027).
Race-Making in the Premodern Persianate World
While Critical Race Theory has established itself firmly in the methodological toolbox of the study of the modern Persianate world and its diaspora, there is a dearth of studies that employ Premodern Critical Race Studies as developed by Geraldine Heng, Lynn Ramey, Dorothy Kim, Cord Whitaker, and others, in the context of the premodern Persianate world. As opposed to assuming that the Middle Ages are “pre-racial,” these scholars have demonstrated that that race and race-making encompass a broad constellation of social, physical, cultural, and religious categories through which human difference has been hierarchized and essentialized across historical contexts.
This panel seeks to engage with this scholarship in order to employ Premodern Critical Race Studies in the context of pre-1500 CE Persian literary productions. The panelists may address questions such as the relationship between lineage and race-making; the intertwinement of race and religion; the overlap between race and monstrosity as images of alterity; and the ends to which certain figures in premodern Persianate literature and art were racialized.
Since the deadline for panel submissions is approaching fast, please send a message to alexandra.hoffmann@ubc.ca to express interest by Sept. 4th, with the full paper abstract of 300 words due Sept. 21.
2. Davidson College – Assistant Professor of History
https://networks.h-net.org/jobs/70252/davidson-college-assistant-professor-history
The Department of History at Davidson College invites applicants for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Middle Eastern history, broadly defined to include North Africa, West Asia, and the Islamic World. Deadline: Sept 14, 2026
- September 01, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment
Shii News – Academic Items
A decade after Nicole Seymour’s chapter “Trans Ecology and the Transgender Road Narrative” in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism, following Susan Stryker’s foreword to the 2020 book Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature, and after TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly’s November 2024 issue on trans* ecologies, which built on the Queer and Trans* Ecologies (QTE) Interdisciplinary Initiative symposium that drew more than six hundred participants, transecology as a field needs a comprehensive reference handbook. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Transecology will be the first such volume: covering 38 topics, organized across four sections moving outward in scale from the molecular body to the deep-time planet. See the full list of topics with descriptions at the end of this CFP.
Gender-variant nature imagery in medieval material invites direct comparison with the distinct literary and philosophical traditions of the medieval Islamic Middle East. Monstrosity reclaimed as an affirmative rather than stigmatizing category has direct application to the rich tradition of hybrid and composite creatures in medieval Islamic manuscript illustration and cosmography.
All 38 topics with descriptions are listed at the end of the above url.
Trans embodiment reorganizes our sense of time and scale — through hormonal transition time, community time, and geological time — and this clustering is reflected in the Handbook itself. To preview the Handbook’s overarching structure, a short Foundations section comes first, gathering topics that examine transecology’s own genealogy and disciplinary boundaries. Chapters in this section stand outside any single scale — they are about the field’s history and self-definition, not about a body, a community, or a planet. The three-part structure of the rest of the Handbook then begins. Part I opens at the molecular and individual scale: chemistry, sensation, the single body. Part III closes at the planetary and deep-time scale: the atmosphere, the ocean, the epoch. Part II is the connective tissue between them: community, region, law, and culture, the scale at which intimate experience becomes shared knowledge and shared knowledge becomes political. By spanning scales ranging from the body to the planet, with the mediating communal scale between these extremes, the Handbook emphasizes that transecology’s center of gravity is not the isolated body or the abstract planet, but the connecting community.
The senior editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Transecology, Douglas Vakoch, has edited over two dozen books, including Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature (2020), Transgender India: Understanding Third Gender Identities and Experiences (2022), and The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (with Sabine Sharp, 2024). Vakoch also serves as the general editor of four book series in environmental studies and transgender studies for Bloomsbury Academic: Ecocritical Theory and Practice, Environment and Society, Critical Plant Studies, and the recently launched Trans Studies.
Submitting Your Proposal and Timetable
Interested authors should submit a 300-word abstract, a 200-word biography, 5 key scholarly references, and a sample of a previously published chapter or article to https://bit.ly/Handbook_of_Transecology no later than November 15, 2026. Proposals submitted by email will not be accepted. Abstracts, biographies, and scholarly references should be combined into a single Word document, and previously published chapters or articles should be submitted as PDFs. Both Word files and PDFs should contain the author’s name in the file names. Please include your email address in your Word document so we can contact you with our decision about your proposal.
Your abstract should clearly state which of the Handbook’s 38 topics is most relevant to your chapter, listing both topic number and name (see full list below).
All chapters must have specifically transgender and ecological dimensions, and not merely a more broadly queer focus.
In addition to the Handbook, we will also be creating standalone books on topics for which we receive an especially strong response of outstanding proposals. Your proposal will automatically be considered for both the Handbook and standalone volumes.
You are welcome to submit more than one abstract. If you decide to submit multiple abstracts for different chapters, please add a note at the top of each abstract to indicate whether you wish to be considered for writing only a single chapter, or whether you wish to be considered for writing more than one chapter.
The most competitive proposals will detail the author’s argument. It is not enough to describe what you plan to do in your chapter. You should summarize what you will conclude.
Authors will be notified whether their proposals are accepted by December 15, 2026. Partial first drafts are due by March 1, 2027; solid first drafts of full chapters are due by May 1, 2027; and final versions that cross-reference other chapters extensively are due July 15, 2027. All authors must have completed a PhD. In your 200-word biography, please note the year and university where you earned your doctorate. Only previously unpublished works will be considered.
2. CFP/ Global Theory: Premodern, Otherwise
This project begins with one question. What would a global, nonmodern/premodern theory survey look like, if it did not assume that premodern thinking about literature, word, voice, text, sound, and language would necessarily end up pointing toward or arriving at something like the modern Euro-American/North Atlantic theory canon? Greek, Latin, and medieval European texts regularly populate anthologies of premodern literary theory and form the core of most premodern theory survey courses. But how would centering Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, sub-Saharan African, Pacific, and Indigenous American concepts transform our notions around premodern theorization of literature and culture?
To parse these larger questions in more precise ways.
- What is ‘literature’? How have various premodern thinkers understood or sought to describe demarcations between everyday communication and the literary (be it performative, oral, or written)? Or are such demarcations not present in some traditions? Is literature something that only human animals do or is literature embedded in a more diverse cosmology or ecology, resonant with communicative practices of other ontologies? Where does literature ‘sit’ in relation to other disciplines or art forms (is it ‘next to’ rhetoric, dance, law, or music, for instance)?
- How do we engage with ‘literature’? How have various thinkers understood the relations between language, writing, reading, voicing, singing, composing, etc? What metaphors do they employ (for instance, likening reading to visionary flight, to bees gathering honey, or to cooking) and what are the implications of those metaphorical conceptions? What senses and/or forms of bodily comportment does reading entail, or does the body not matter to reading?
- What does engagement with ‘the literary’ do? What powers or effects have various classical thinkers from a range of world traditions ascribed to engagement with the literary? Does such engagement, for instance, heal, purify, corrupt, ensnare, or transform? Does it shape the cosmos? What ramifications are there to these different understandings of engagement with the literary?
Selected participants will receive a $500 USD honorarium to deliver a 30-minute presentation, followed by a 30-minute directed conversation conducted via Zoom. I will use these conversations (either live or pre-recorded) to teach a pilot version of a graduate seminar on global premodern theory in January-May 2027. Ultimately, the goal is to produce a publicly available set of materials for teaching and engaging with literary and cultural theory from a fuller range of the premodern world. (I am in active conversation with the editorial team at postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies where several publications resulting from this collaborative venture have already been published.)
To apply, send the following documents to Charlotte Eubanks at cde13@psu.edu by October 15, 2026.
- A keyword of conceptual interest and elasticity with a 500-word paragraph about it. (Examples might include: darśan (Sanskrit), wen (Sinitic), alef (Arabic), and so forth.)
- The name of one primary text which illuminates or meditates on/around that word, along with bibliographic information for an original language version of that text and for an English translation of that text.
- A short biosketch (200 words).
- Your CV.
Please note: to receive the honorarium, participants need to have clearance to receive pay for work done in the US. Junior scholars, advanced graduate students, and international scholars are heartily encouraged to apply.
Charlotte Eubanks (cde13@psu.edu)
Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies
Penn State University
3. The Library of Congress Asian Division is now accepting applications for the Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship for the 2027 fellowship cycle. Please note that this is opening earlier than recent years, and it will close at
All important information, including information on eligibility and instructions for the online application, at this link: https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/asian/about-this-research-center/fellowship-information/.
- Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents
- H-1B visa holders are not eligible
- All other visa types will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by emailing visas@loc.gov
For information about visa eligibility, please contact visas@loc.gov.
Please pass along to those who might be interested and feel welcome to reach out to us with questions at ask.loc.gov/asia.
Contact Information
Charlotte Giles
South Asia Specialist, Asian Division
Library of Congress
Contact Email
URL
https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/asian/about-this-research-center/fellowshi…
4. ONLINE Annual Conference of the Institute for Law and Society in Afghanistan (ILSAF): “Cli-mate Change, Resilience, Law, and Policy Cooperation in Fragile States: The Case of Afghani-stan“, Paderborn Institute of Islamic Theology, 4-5 September 2026
The contributions will explore the intersection of climate change with law, governance, human rights, economic development, gender, migration, natural resource management, and regional cooperation.
Information, programme and registration: https://tinyurl.com/4nrf2upd
5. Workshop: “(Re)Crafting Knowledge After the Ottomans: Remembering and Forgetting Scientific Legacies in the Post-Imperial Era”, University of Geneva, 11-12 September 2026
Organized by Caroline Montebello and Aline Schlaepfer, this workshop will address the question of transition between the late and post-Ottoman periods from the perspectives of former provinces of the Empire, and with a particular focus on scientific and scholarly cultures. What has become of scientific authorities and Ottoman scholarly cultures in post-Ottoman contexts? How did scientists from various disciplines (history, geography, medicine, anthropology, legal studies, or others) reevaluate their own canons, methodologies, and analytical frameworks? Etc.
Information and programme: https://tinyurl.com/5at8xu2e
6. 2nd Annual Meeting of the “Belgian Association for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society (BASICS)”, Ghent University, 25 September 2026
The annual meeting of the Belgian Association for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society (BASICS) provides an interdisciplinary platform for discussing the latest evolutions in research in Belgium about Islam, the Middle East and the connected regions ad well as the challenges facing this field of research.
Deadline for registration: 20 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/44knay8n
7. HYBRID Conference “Leaves in the Wind: Fragmentology of Persianate Manuscripts”, Persian Manuscripts Association & Royal Asiatic Society, London, 5-6 December 2026
This conference proposes to explore the reconstruction – material, intellectual, and digital – of dis-persed manuscripts and fragments, in all traditions of the vast geographical region of Greater Iran and eastern Islamic lands, including (but not limited to) Persian, Arabic, Armenian, as well as Avestan and Middle Persian (Pahlavi) codices within Zoroastrian traditions.
Deadline for abstracts: 4 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/msprm9m7
8. Conference “Arabic Publishing Beyond the Arabic-Speaking Areas: Field Reconfigurations, Crisis, and the Politics of Circulation”, MMSH, Aix-en-Provence, 18-19 March 2027
The conference seeks to combine macro-level analysis of the Arabic publishing field with micro-level attention to actors, practices, and material gestures through which books are produced, circulated, and valued. It invites inquiry into the social trajectories of publishers, editors, translators, designers, booksellers, librarians, rights managers, festival organizers, and other cultural intermediaries; their pro-fessional training, cultural capital, networks, and forms of socialization into the craft of publishing; and their relations to writers, critics, funders, book fairs, libraries, and platforms.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/yp38m766
9. International Workshop “The “Oriental” Book Trade in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twen-tieth Centuries“, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), University of Hamburg, 29-30 April 2027
The expansion of Oriental Studies beyond the Middle East, together with the spread of the printing press within the region, created a growing demand for manuscripts and printed books in Arabic, Per-sian, Ottoman Turkish, and related languages across North Africa, West Asia, Europe, the United States, and Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries This workshop invites case studies of book publishers, traders, and intermediaries, examining their networks, business practices, and/or contributions to the transregional circulation of knowledge.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 October 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/8saz2zne
10. Associate Professor (Permanent) in Middle Eastern Politics, Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oslo, Norway
Qualification: PhD with a specialisation in politics in the Middle East, whether from a humanities or social sciences background. – A demonstrated ability to use oral and written sources in Arabic, Turk-ish or Persian in research. – Documented pedagogical skills. – Fluent oral and written communication skills in English. – Proficiency in a Scandinavian language will be an advantage. – Ability to contribute to the teaching of courses in Middle Eastern Studies at all levels.
Deadline for applications: 15 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/yb8cs4ms
11. ONLINE New Article: “The Politics of Provenance Research: Reassessing the Appropriation of Finds from the Samarra Excavations“ by Vincent Engelhardt and Jakob Wigand, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 36(1): 4, 27 August 2026, 17 Pages
This article re-examines the archaeological excavations in Samarra conducted between 1911 and 1913 under the direction of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. By critically engaging with existing scholarship and drawing on new archival evidence, we argue that a significant number of artefacts were unlawfully exported from the Ottoman Empire to Berlin and no legal division of finds ever took place. Additionally, we interrogate the institution’s exclusion of independent provenance research.
View: https://tinyurl.com/2zduwj93
12. ONLINE New Article: “The State Waqfs of Ottoman Istanbul, 1453–1923” by Mustafa Batman and Timur Kuran, SSRN, 20 July 2026, 46 Pages
Drawing on a quasi-random sample of waqfs, this study defines the state waqf as an analytical category, distinguishes it from the private waqf, and identifies its functions. Unlike private waqfs, state waqfs functioned as instruments of governance and delivered urban services at scale. Prior to reforms of the 19th century, religious services, education, potable water, and lodging for visitors were funded almost entirely by state waqfs. Only one-quarter made explicit provisions for the poor.
View: https://tinyurl.com/3z6wwzu3
13. ONLINE New Articles: “The Religious Cultures of Premodern Islamicate Courts in Transregional Perspective”, Special Issue Edited by Christian Mauder of “Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean”, Vol. 38, Issue 2, August 2026, 166 Pages
Recent years have seen a growing interest in the role of Islamicate courts as centers of political, social, and literary life in the premodern period. However, our knowledge of Islamicate courts of this time is still extremely limited in other areas, including that of religious history. This special issue seeks to fill this gap by studying for the first time the role of Islamicate courts in premodern religious cultures from a deliberately broad transregional and diachronic perspective.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/2e4ktumm
14. ONLINE New Article “Uneven Modernization in the Muslim World” by Timur Kuran and Fasih Zulfiqar, “Annual Review of Economics”, Vol. 18, August 2026, 28 Pages
This article distinguishes among continuous, punctuated, and latent modernization trajectories and or-ganizing the literature around four leading explanations for persistent developmental lags: collectivist attitudes, Islamic religious tenets, Islamic legal institutions, and colonial institutional legacies. The re-sulting framework highlights various sectoral contrasts, such as rapid progress in health and basic education alongside persistent deficits in political and religious liberties.
View: https://tinyurl.com/upcmp7hv
15. International Conference
The Translatability of the Scriptures in Christianity and Islam
April 12th-14th 2027 at CMCS Oxford
Call for Papers
Co-organized by the United Bible Societies’ (UBS) TAZI initiative (Taurat Anbiya Zabur Injil) and the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies Oxford (CMCS)
https://www.cmcsoxford.org.uk/cmcs-news/c8hg6cxa9hdtzfztj1oznqqme8pnla
Submission Guidelines: Proposals (300-400 words) plus a short biography (150 words) should be sent to Dr Martin
Whittingham, m.whittingham@cmcsoxford.org.uk by October 31st 2026.
- August 29, 2026
- by Andrew Newman
- 0 Comment