Shii News – Academic Items

1.Cassettes and Mass Culture in Egypt with Andrew Simon – History Sounds Podcast

In the latest conversation of the Borderlines series History Sounds, Andrew Simon tells Olga Verlato about the history of cassette culture in Egypt, the “death” of public taste, and the advent of cassette piracy, introducing along the way the music of Ahmad Adawiya, Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, Shaykh Imam and many others.

You can listen to the conversation here and find links to Spotify, Substack, and Apple.

Interview and sound design by Olga Verlato.

2. Scholarly Correspondences Among Orientalists during the Early and Late Modern Period as a Historical Source: A Series of Lectures.

You are cordially invited to join us for the third lecture of the series:

February 10, 9:00 am EST – Ernst Herb, Leo Strauss’s Letters to the Arabist Paul Kraus, between the Search of the Hidden Truth and Exile in Mizraim.

The German born American scholar Leo Strauss has become a lasting influence on US foreign policy as well as the ideological discourse of the Chinese Communist Party. But at his times he was in quest of classic political philosophy, by which he sought to overcome the moral relativity of modern society. One stepping stone to this ideal was medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophy. Letters written by him in the mid 1930s to Paul Kraus, a professor of semitic languages at Cairo University, give insight not only into their common search for underlying meanings in ancient manuscripts, but also his quest of the political refugee for exile in Egypt. While ultimately he would not migrate to Mizraim, his brother-in-law Kraus would stay on in Cairo, where the letters are kept till today in a private archive. The question of how the correspondence has ended up at the present location, is a journey to the lasting fascination of the West with ancient Egypt as well as a region that was already in the 1930s heading towards an ongoing internal and external strife.

Pre-register: http://bit.ly/3CrnUh6. After registering, you will receive an email containing information about joining the event.

The object of this lecture series is to bring together scholars and librarians engaged with collections of correspondences and/or include related projects that use appropriate digital tools to map and analyze such corpora. All lectures will be held online from 12-1 pm (EST) (except February 10 to be held at 9 am). It is hosted by Sabine Schmidtke (NES@IAS) and María Mercedes Tuya (Digital Scholarship@IAS).

For additional information about the upcoming lectures, please visit: https://albert.ias.edu/20.500.12111/8044

3. Zoom: UCLA Pourdavoud Center

Telling Tales: Constructing Sasanian History in the Landscape

Pourdavoud Center Lecture Series: Eve MacDonald

Friday, March 3, 2023 at 11:00am Pacific via Zoom

https://pourdavoud.ucla.edu/event/pourdavoud-center-lecture-series-eve-macdonald/

4. The Iran Society present:

What have the Persians ever done for us?
with Ali Ansari and Tom Holland
16 February 2023, 7PM. Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS.
Buy your ticket on Eventbrite.

5. The Smithsonian Institution is pleased to announce a new Open Access publication:

Simon Rettig and Sana Mirza, eds., The Word Illuminated: Form and Function of Qur’anic Manuscripts from the Seventh to Seventeenth Centuries, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2023.

The volume results from the symposium which was held in conjunction with the exhibition The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (part of the National Museum of Asian Art).

It is available for free download at: https://doi.org/10.5479/si.21948098

6. University of Manchester: Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Lecture Series

Empowering Muslim Women in History, Literature, and the Arts

Wednesday 08 February 2023, 17:00 GMT in Samuel Alexander A102

and on Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/92724461401

‘One of us will be next’: affect, territory and the (un)making of feminist subjects during the #Mahsa_Amini protests in Iran.

Dr Sara Tafakori

University of Leeds, UK

7. The Planetary King: Humayun Padshah: Inventor and Visionary on the Mughal Throne (Ahmedabad: Mapin in association with The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2022). ISBN: 978– 93 –85360 –88 – 6

Ebba Koch

https://www.mapinpub.com/products/the-planetary-king?variant=43461357207766

8. HIAA Events at CAA

See below for details of upcoming HIAA events during CAA 2023.

The full schedule of the conference can be accessed here.

We request that members RSVP for the Majlis by emailing sec.hiaa@gmail.com. Please note that all attendees must be in compliance with NYU’s COVID-19 vaccination requirements (fully vaccinated and boosted, once eligible and by NYU’s deadline) and be prepared to present proof of compliance. Please review the University’s COVID guidelines in advance of your visit.

Please note that registration is required to attend CAA, including the business meeting for which there is a no-cost registration option. To choose a registration option, go here.

The HIAA Majlis will be held in-person on Thursday, February 16, 7 – 9:30 pm (EST) at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU (1 East 78 Street, New York, NY). The panel will be followed by a reception.

The Majlis will feature the following papers:

** Janet Purdy (Art Institute of Chicago), “Sacred Homes: Recontextualizing Inscriptions on Domestic Doorways in Zanzibar.”

** Sarah Sabban (American University of Beirut), “A History of Arts and Crafts in Late Ottoman Beirut.”

** Saarthak Singh (Institute of Fine Arts, NYU), “The provincial mosque in Indo-Islamic architecture: Moti Masjid at Udaypur in the Malwa Sultanate.”
** Courtney Stewart (Bard Graduate Center), “Arabic and Indian Contributions to the Brilliant Cut Diamond.”
** Selin Ünlüönen (Oberlin College), “The Intelligence of the Page.”

The HIAA-Sponsored panel at CAA will be held in-person on Friday, February 17, 9 – 10:30 am (EST), Madison Suite (2nd floor), Hilton Midtown, New York.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Study of Islamic Art and Architecture – Round
Table Discussion
Chair, Kishwar Rizvi (Yale University)
** Gule Kale (Carleton University), “Islamic art and architecture in conversation with Indigenous, race, and gender studies.”
** Aparna Kuma (University College London), “Challenges and opportunities for the study of Islamic Art.”
** Jennifer Pruitt (University of Wisconsin), “Its fine, I’m fine. Everything is fine: Islamic fieldwork in the 2020s.”

The HIAA Business Meeting will be held in-person on Friday, February 17, 1 – 2 pm (EST), Madison Suite (2nd floor), Hilton Midtown, New York.

We invite HIAA members to join the discussion!

9. ISMC-AKU

Muslim Cultures and Societies: 2023 Online Short Course Series

https://www.aku.edu/ismc/study/Pages/short-courses.aspx

10. Inventing the Middle East: Britain and the Persian Gulf in the Age of Global Imperialism

Guillemette Crouzet,

Montreal/London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022

https://www.mqup.ca/inventing-the-middle-east-products-9780228014065.php?page_id=120834&

11. GRM 2023 CALL FOR PAPERS GRM 2023 CALL FOR PAPERS

The Gulf Research Center is pleased to announce that we are accepting abstract applications for the 13th annual Gulf Research Meeting (GRM), an annual academic conference highlighting critical issues of importance to the Gulf region and providing a basis for undertaking and engaging in academic and empirical research. GRM 2023 will take place from July 11-13, 2023.
This year’s GRM workshops will cover a wide range of topics in the fields of politics, economics, gender, culture, energy, security, and the social sciences as they relate to the wider Gulf region (GCC countries in addition to Iraq and Yemen).
GRM 2023 Workshops:
– Sustainable Development Financing and the Role of the Financial Sector in the GCC Region
– Circular Economy and Sustainable Development Model: Its Role in the GCC States’ National Visions
– Perspectives on Hard Security Issues in the Gulf
– Industrial Policies in the Gulf and the Middle East
– The Renewed & Expanded Role of the Gulf on the Global Energy Scene
– Recent Labour and Migration Reforms and Policies in the Gulf: Impact on Economies and Societies
– The Leading Role of Gulf Higher Education in Achieving Sustainability and Addressing Climate Change
– Cultural Heritage in the Gulf – Emerging Trends, Identity Politics Challenges and Concerns
– Women in the GCC: Negotiating Leadership, Power, and Change
– Israel and the Gulf Monarchies: A New Regional Security Complex or Just Complex Regional Security?
– The Future of the GCC as an Institution
– The Gulf and the Horn of Africa: Trans-Regional Competition and Cooperation
– Innovation and Development of Knowledge Societies – The transformational Impact of Intellectual Property on Knowledge based Economic growth with a focus on Frontier Technologies, Artificial Intelligence and IP financing
We welcome applications from both established academics/scholars as well as young and emerging researchers.
More information on the GRM and full descriptions of workshops can be found on the Gulf Research Meeting website at https://gulfresearchmeeting.net/. <https://gulfresearchmeeting.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0fb4e4f66740367d2023bea93&id=cc1bbd73c2&e=0cdea062eb> and you can download the poster _*here <https://gulfresearchmeeting.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0fb4e4f66740367d2023bea93&id=028726ed7b&e=0cdea062eb>The deadline for abstract applications is February 24 and all applications should be submitted at https://www.gulfresearchmeeting.net/register-paper-user. <https://gulfresearchmeeting.us7.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0fb4e4f66740367d2023bea93&id=7cbdce9abe&e=0cdea062eb>