Categories : Field-specific (academic)

‘To be God’s Sign in the Age of Globalisation: MarjaꜤiyya between Crisis and Progress’
Contacts: Minoo Mirshahvalad, Bianka Speidl // mmirshahvalad2@gmail.com
More information at:
http://www.sesamoitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/25.-Mirshahvalad-and-Speidl.pdf

The XV Conference of SeSaMO, Explaining Crisis, Beyond Chaos. The Middle East and North Africa in Global Change will take place in presence at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, Naples – Italy the 22-24 of June 2022.

The Psycho-Architectonics of the Imżā Inscriptions: Denotations and Connotations of Text in the Arts of the Safavids

The Courtauld, University of London
March 3, 2022, 18:00-19:30 (London)

By Dr. Mahroo Moosavi

By working between the two media of art and literature, this paper challenges some manners by which the textually infused arts of the early modern Iran have been conventionally perceived. While through the inherited discourse of Western art history, the inscription or epigraph is an appurtenance of the object’s visual and thematic language or is, on some occasions, reduced to a purely scientific and palaeographic element, this paper suggests an alternate discourse that extends the significance of such texts, especially the imżā [signature] inscriptions, beyond the normative, emphasising their particular agency as possible strategic ‘interventions’ envisioned and adopted by the artist, architect, or the patron.

Tracing its earlier roots in the increasing use and thematic specificities of text in the artistic productions of the Persianate societies from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries onwards, this paper aims to open the current methodologies and understandings of the arts of the Safavids (1501-1722 AD) to a rereading. It does so by engaging with the ‘signature inscriptions’ as systematic architectonic design strategies that constantly de and re construct the object/space and the inter-woven micro politico-cultural context around it through activating the emotive-cognitive recipients of the user. By focusing on a number of cases such as the early seventeenth century mosque of Luṭfullāh in Isfahan and the mid-sixteenth century Sultan Ibrāhīm Mīrzā’s manuscript of Haft Awrang of Jāmī, this study shows how the application of text in the arts of early modern Iran operates as a mechanism through which the boundaries between different branches of art and knowledge may blur, making space for the reception and perception of art as an abstruse apparatus that functions through the layers of connotations of Persian psyche, language and literature.

Dr Mahroo Moosavi is Bahari Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book at University of Oxford, Oliver Smithies Lecturer at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and Lecturer in architectural history, theory, and design at the University of Sydney. Her research is concerned with the intertext of art/architecture and poetry/prose, with a particular focus on the early modern Iran, through an interdisciplinary study of art/architectural history, literature, and post-structuralist philosophy. Her current project analyses the interpretations of form and structure of rhetorical devices in the chancellery writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Iran to discern possible resonances within the artistic and urban system of the new city of Isfahan.

Please register at: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/imza/

1. “Tekye-ye Dowlat” a documentary
Babak Rahimi is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tekye-ye Dowlat
Time: Feb 15, 2022 12:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Meeting ID: 918 3376 2354

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2. “Photography of Moharram Rituals inside the Golestan Palace(1860s-1900s)”
Pedram Khosronejad (Powerhouse Museum, Sydney)
Time: Feb 17, 2022 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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Meeting ID: 994 0483 8317

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Meeting ID: 994 0483 8317
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Studies in Shiʿi Materiality, the Sensorium, and Ritual
Proposed Book Series, Edinburgh University Press
Series Editors: Karen Ruffle (University of Toronto) and Babak Rahimi (University of California, San Diego)

The goal of this proposed book series is to provide a forum for innovative works that contribute to new studies of Shiʿi traditions that are in conversation with and contribute to broader scholarly discussions on everyday life and sensory experiences while bringing attention to lived traditions and understudied locations and temporalities. Studies in Shiʿi Materiality, the Sensorium, and Ritual welcomes books that make bold claims, present fine-grained studies, explore theories and concepts related to material culture, the sensorium, its related rituals, practices, and relation to architecture, literature, the body, and more.

With the aim of inclusivity of wide historical contexts and geographies of Islam, Studies in Shiʿi Materiality, the Sensorium, and Ritual attempts to expand the line of critical enquiry to reconceptualize Shiʿism beyond the normative models of text/scripture, Twelver Shiʿism, and the Iranian world. Projects that reframe these models are encouraged. The series aims to foster approaches that engage with the body and memory, and by and large sensory and material practices that shape lived Shiʿism. The series also embraces empirical methods within the humanities and the social sciences ranging from ethnography to discourse analysis. While the geographical focus of the series is on the Shiʿi world between the Balkans and Southeast Asia, we also welcome research that focuses on often-overlooked regions such as China and sub-Saharan Africa. In broad scholarly terms, the series aims to publish diverse disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches ranging from anthropology, art history, history, media studies, urban studies, philosophy, religious studies and sociology.

More specifically, we encourage submissions for innovative research that include:

Studies on Zaydi, Ismaʿili, Alevi, Bektashi, Bohra, and other communities of ʿAlid devotion, including Sufi-oriented
Ritual, theater, and performative studies
Qualitative methodological approaches such as ethnography, including autoethnography
Urban, space and critical border studies
Comparative historical studies from the medieval to modern periods
Technology and mediated practices

For full consideration, email a two-page proposal and CV to Karen Ruffle (karen.ruffle@utoronto.ca) and Babak Rahimi (brahimi@ucsd@edu).

The Journal of Safavid Studies is an academic journal published by Safavid Studies center, University of Isfahan. The journal welcomes the articles that engage with any aspect of Safavid Studies that provide a scholarly platform for critical and informed articles with a historical approach.

The journal conscientiously aims to provide a scholarly platform for critical and informed articles with a historical approach in all fields of Safavid studies such as religious, political, cultural, social, economic, educational, artistic, international relations. The articles will cover the most debate-worthy issues in the aforementioned fields in the hope of ultimately contributing to the resolution of various theoretical, methodological and practical dilemmas encountered in Safavid Studies.This journal also aims to pave the way to increase cultural exchanges at the international level with an approach to introduce Safavid history and Shi’ism

https://ssj.ui.ac.ir/
Open Access Current Issue: Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 2022

Abstract deadline: 28 February, 2022
For full information and to register:
https://www.islamic-college.ac.uk/publications/shiistudies/