Categories : Field-specific (academic)

Call for Papers

International Workshop Co-Organised by
the University of Bonn and the University of Münster
February 17–19, 2027, University of Bonn
Deadline for Abstract Submission: April 30, 2026

This international workshop explores laudatory and hagiographic biographies in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in the pre-modern Islamic world. Often referred to as manāqib/menāḳıb (“virtues” or “outstanding traits”), these works celebrate the merits and deeds of exemplary individuals or groups. Their subjects range from the early caliphs and Companions of the Prophet Muhammad to Shiʿi Imams and other descendants of the Prophet’s family, and from rulers, the founding figures of the Islamic legal schools, and renowned scholars to Sufi saints. Manāqib were also dedicated to women – especially the wives and descendants of the Prophet and female Sufis.
Such texts appear in a variety of literary forms: as stand-alone biographies, entries in biographical dictionaries, or chapters within hadith collections and Sufi manuals. Emerging from the earliest centuries of Islam, they constitute a vast corpus in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages, and remain a living tradition to the present day. Beyond recording the lives and deeds of individuals, manāqib works fulfilled a variety of functions – from shaping group identities, (re)producing genealogies and spiritual lineages, and establishing or reviving the fame of local shrines to bolstering claims in disputes between religious groups, legal schools, and Sufi orders. They could serve polemical, apologetic, didactic, edifying, or entertaining purposes.
While scholarship has mainly focused on individual works or figures, especially from the Sufi milieu, comparative studies across regions, periods, languages, and sub-genres remain underexplored. The conference aims to bring together specialists working on a variety of texts in order to facilitate comparisons across different case studies. We welcome papers on individual manāqib texts, on larger textual traditions surrounding a particular figure or group, and on the transformation of such texts – for instance through rewriting, abridgement, or intra-Islamic translations – and the interpretive choices these transformations entail. We are keen to broaden the scope beyond hagiographic texts on Sufis and therefore especially invite submissions on manāqib devoted to the founders of the Islamic legal schools, scholars, caliphs, the Companions of the Prophet, and the Shiʿi Imams and other Shiʿi figures. Contributions that situate case studies in comparative, diachronic, or trans-regional perspectives are particularly encouraged, as are papers exploring manuscript traditions.
Participants are invited to reflect on questions such as:
– Who wrote or commissioned these texts, and why? What were the historical, social, and religious contexts of their production?
– What were the authors’ motivations and agendas? What structural and narrative elements characterise their works?
– How were manāqib texts devoted to the same figure adapted or rewritten over time?
– How, and in what contexts, were such texts read, transmitted, or translated?
– What social, political, or religious functions did manāqib texts serve, e.g., in establishing role models, teaching doctrines, or promoting a person, school, or Sufi order?
Building on the case studies presented by the participants, the conference seeks to trace the evolution and significance of manāqib traditions across time, space, and languages, to identify communalities and differences, and ultimately to ask what constitutes an exemplary life in the Islamic tradition.

Submission Guidelines and Practical Information
If you are interested in participating, please submit
· an abstract (max. 300 words)
· a short biography (max. 200 words)
as a single PDF file titled with your surname to paula.manstetten@uni-bonn.de.
Deadline: April 30, 2026
Notification of acceptance: May 2026

The conference will be held in English, beginning on February 17 at 10:00 AM and ending on February 19 after lunch. Accommodation in Bonn (three nights) will be covered (pending funding application). Limited travel funding is available for scholars without institutional support – please indicate if needed when submitting your abstract.
The conference will result in an edited volume. Please only apply if you are willing to submit your completed article by October 1, 2027.

Organisation
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Paula Manstetten, Department for Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Languages, University of Bonn (paula.manstetten@uni-bonn.de)
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Philip Bockholt, Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of Münster (philip.bockholt@uni-muenster.de)

Call for Proposals – Conference Taʿzieh, Shared Passions Beyond “Religious Theatre”, or Rethinking the Performative Ritual Event

International conference in INALCO, Paris France on June 2-3, 2026. Organized by Julie Duvigneau and Yassaman Khajehi (ANR THETA, Inalco, Université Clermont Auvergne, IUF)

This international conference with a starting point based on comparative study of ritual performative events, both historical and contemporary, will focus on taʿzieh while placing it in dialogue within European medieval mystery plays, Christian processions, and other forms of rituals arising from diverse cultural contexts. While grounded in a comparative historical perspective, the conference also welcomes multidisciplinary approaches: cultural studies, anthropology, literature, performance studies, religious studies, and digital humanities. The aim is to confront and enrich reflection on the nature, transmission, and reception of these performative events, as well as their capacity to articulate memory, corporeality, emotion, and communal participation.
The objective is not only to establish formal parallels, but also to question the very descriptive categories of these practices. Expressions such as “religious theatre” or “sacred drama” facilitate their inclusion within the history of the performing arts, yet they also tend to impose a theoretical framework centered on representation, fiction, and aesthetics. However, performance cannot only be reduced to a scenic dispositif in these contexts. Rather, it involves symbolic efficacy, an economy of affects, a territorial inscription, and a social function that exceed theatrical logic in the modern sense.
The conference therefore proposes to privilege the notion of the “performative ritual event” in order to conceive these forms as situated collective actions generating social bonds, memory, and identity through corporeality and participation.

Please submit proposals (in French or English), to yassaman.khajehi@uca.fr and julie.duvigneau@inalco.fr before 15 April 2026.

The Islamic College
133 High Road, London NW10 2SW

Eleventh Annual Conference on Shiʿi Studies

ʿAzīz Nasafī and Ismailism

Institute of Ismaili Studies

Call for Papers: Fatimid Sicily – History, Memory, and Legacy