Shii News – Academic Items

1.7-8 October 2021 Event: Call for Papers – Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiographies

The Aga Khan University Institute’s for the Study of Muslim Civilisations

This annual exploratory and informal workshop offers the opportunity to reflect on history writing in Arabic. We encourage contributions focused on methodologies, research agendas, and case studies that investigate history writing in the Middle East and North Africa in any period from the seventh century to the present.

We are interested in papers that consider the practical and conceptual challenges of working on history writing in the region. Papers might elucidate the following sorts of questions:

Through what practices of writing or otherwise encoding the past, and of remembering and forgetting, have different groups in the Middle East and North Africa viewed their pasts? At different times and places, how have the significant contours, events and actors in their histories been seen? Was the significant past the same for court historians as for literary historians; for bureaucrats as for the military; for Sufis as for Muslim lawyers and Traditionists?
How did non-Muslims and Muslims, men and women, adherents of different sectarian or juristic traditions, or speakers of different languages, within societies that became “Islamic” imagine the shape and meaning of their specific societies’ own pasts, and their relation to the universal history of the Islamic community?
How have urban and rural people, workers and peasants, the religiously educated and the technocratic elite, developed different ways of writing, remembering, or commemorating particular events in, or the broad sweep of, local, national, or “Islamic” history?
In what ways do educational institutions, museums, media organisations and proponents of heritage use history writing in Arabic to shape loyalties and senses of belonging in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe?
How can digital methods now enhance or change our understandings of the past? What additional information and perspectives do they offer?

Contributions are invited from scholars at all career levels, addressing any period and any part of the Middle East and North Africa, broadly defined.

This year we anticipate running the workshop from the Aga Khan Centre in London (subject to UK government guidelines on travel), with the possibility to have an online component featuring participants who are unable to travel to the UK. As in past years, there is a small budget to provide some travel assistance for scholars outside of London.
Date
The workshop will take place on 7-8 October 2021.
Organisers
Arabic Pasts is co-organised by Sarah Bowen Savant (AKU-ISMC), Hugh Kennedy (SOAS University of London) and James McDougall (University of Oxford).
Submission
Please submit an abstract of 300 words or less by 19 April to ArabicPastsConf@aku.edu.

2. The Center for Language Studies (CLS) at Brown University seeks a dynamic language professional for a full-time position as Visiting Lecturer in Persian beginning July 1st, 2021.

The ideal candidate has experience teaching both classical and modern Persian to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to heritage learners. This is a one-year renewable appointment contingent upon a successful review and the continued needs of the department. The teaching load is 6 courses per academic year (2 semesters).

Brown University has a thriving Center for Middle East Studies and wishes to expand its language program in Persian. The ideal candidate will be motivated to grow the program through excellence in teaching and programming relevant to undergraduate students. The new colleague will join the faculty in World Languages and Cultures.

Qualifications

Ability to teach multiple levels of Persian; 2. Familiarity with and commitment to innovative methods of language instruction; 3. Experience with online language teaching preferred; 4. Master’s degree or equivalent in Persian Studies (Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, South Asia), language pedagogy, applied linguistics or related field required; 5. Native or near native-proficiency in English and Persian; 6. Ability to teach a first-year undergraduate seminar in English on a topic pertaining to the candidate’s discipline and research is especially welcome; 7. Fluency in another language is desirable.

Application Instruction: http://apply.interfolio.com/85359

Please use the interfolio link above to submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, a teaching portfolio, if available, or a statement of teaching philosophy, two sample syllabi, and a statement on your commitment to a culture of equity and inclusion, as well as two letters of reference. Review of applications will start on May 1, 2021.

Any questions should be addressed to Jane Sokolosky, CLS Director, at languages@brown.edu.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

3. Book launch: Islam and the Liberal State

Online event: Thu, 22 April 2021, 17:00 – 18:30 BST

You are warmly invited to the launch of Stephen H. Jones’s book ‘Islam and the Liberal State’, published by IB Tauris in November 2020. In the book Jones narrates a gradual but, he argues, decisive shift in British Islamic institutions since Muslims settled in the UK in large numbers in the 1950s. Drawing on this narrative, he makes the case for a variety of liberalism that is open to the expression of religious arguments in public and to associations between religious groups and the state.

The event will be chaired by Daniel Nilsson DeHanas and will feature an introduction from the author as well as panel responses from Alyaa Ebbiary, Yahya Birt and Khadijah Elshayyal.

For more details and to register, see the following link:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-islam-and-the-liberal-state-tickets-145834949259

4. Words of Experience, Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst

Equinox, 2021

https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/words-experience/

5. Le Forum du GIS MOMM se poursuit les 30 mars et 6 avril prochains, avec des tables-rondes sur la recherche française et les nouvelles circulations régionales des savoirs

https://framaforms.org/inscription-au-forum-2021-du-gis-moyen-orient-et-mondes-musulmans-1614176644
——

30 mars 2021

9-12h : Table-ronde 4 : La recherche française et les nouvelles circulations régionales des savoirs : Égypte, Proche-Orient, péninsule Arabique

Modéré par Iyas Hassan (Sorbonne Université) Avec Frédéric Abecassis (IFAO), Agnès Deboulet (CEDEJ), Kamel Doraï (IFPO), Pauline Koetschet (IFPO), Frédéric Lagrange (CEFREPA) Dominique Pieri (IFPO) et Abbès Zouache (CEFREPA)

6 avril 2021

9-10h30 : Table-ronde 5 : La recherche française et les nouvelles circulations régionales des savoirs : Maghreb

Modéré par Choukri Hmed (Paris-Dauphine) Avec Katia Boissevain (CNRS, IDEMEC), Adrien Delmas (CJB), Oissila Saaidia (IRMC)

11h-13h : Table-ronde 6 : La recherche française et les nouvelles circulations régionales des savoirs : mondes turc et iranien, Asie Centrale

Modéré par Elise Massicard (CNRS/CERI, GIS MOMM) Avec Juliette Cleuziou (Université Lyon 2), Adrien Fauve (IFEAC), Denis Hermann (CNRS/IFEA), Sepideh Parsapajouh (CNRS/CéSor), Julien Thorez (CNRS/CERMI), Alexandre Toumarkine (INALCO)

Programme : http://majlis-remomm.fr/71441

Contact : Marielle Morin : marielle.morin@cnrs.fr

6. The conference (March, 25th) “The Umayyad and early Abbasid Reservoir-Enclosure of ‘Ayn Sawdā (Azraq Oasis, Jordan)” by Lorraine Abu-Azizeh, Julie Bonnéric, Barbara Couturaud and Aurélien Stavy (Ifpo) has been cancelled and will be rescheduled to next week (Thursday, April 1^st, 3h-4h PM CET, 4h-5h PM in Amman & Beirut).

NEW DATE:

Online Lecture – “The Umayyad and early Abbasid Reservoir-Enclosure of ‘Ayn Sawdā (Azraq Oasis, Jordan)” by Lorraine Abu-Azizeh, Julie Bonnéric, Barbara Couturaud, Aurélien Stavy (Ifpo)

April, 1st (3h-4h PM CET, 4h-5h PM in Amman & Beirut)

https://www.ifporient.org/archaeology-mena/

7. “Rethinking Halal: Genealogy, Current Trends, and New Interpretations”

(Brill, 2021)

https://brill.com/view/title/59875

Posted in: Academic items