Categories : Field-specific (academic)

Call for papers

Bodies Matter
Death and Shiite Muslim Migrants

Conveners
Emel Akçalı (Swansea University, U.K.)
Pedram Khosronejad (Oklahoma State University, U.S.A.)

This is a call for a one-day brainstorming meeting regarding Death and Shiite Muslim Migrants which will be held in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Swansea University, in the United Kingdom from July 8-13, 2019 (the precise day will be announced later).

The aim of this international and interdisciplinary meeting is to bring together scholars of different fields in social and human sciences (anthropology, sociology, religion, politics, international law, international relations, refugee studies), NGOs and GOs, policymakers, journalists, and religious leaders to discuss how Shiite Muslim migrants (including refugees and asylum-seekers) deal with the phenomenon of death and its related matters once they are no longer in their mother country, and how the host countries, their governments and institutions, and consequently local communities respond to this.

The main aim of this gathering is to ascertain who is who in the field of research and encourage participants to collaborate in an international research project within a new research network.

Based on information from the Missing Migrants Project (https://missingmigrants.iom.int), since 2014, more than 4,000 fatalities have been recorded annually on migratory routes worldwide and this is why death and dying in the context of migration will become a key issue for the specialists of the field.

Since the past two centuries, Shiite Muslims of different countries, for different reasons, and at different points in time have migrated to other continents and countries. Therefore, Shiite migrants, their religion, related ceremonies and traditions have been brought into close proximity with others, in most cases, Western Christian host countries.

By studying the beliefs, customs and practical actions surrounding the death of Shiite Muslim migrants, we can gain access to deeply held values and also to the assumptions, worldviews and reactions of the host countries. Dying as a Shiite migrant in a Western country should be considered a particularly intense experience, and certainly people are challenged and forced to deal with legal, political, and socio-cultural problems, which may not be compatible with their original needs and values.

In this international program, we are interested in exploring and discussing legal, religious, political, socio-cultural and economic aspects of the death and dying of Shiite migrants and also the institutionalization of Shiite Islam in this regard among Western societies. Even though our focus will be on Shiite Muslims migrants in the United Kingdom, European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, other researchers working on the same topics but in a non-western context and also those who are working on other Muslim groups are welcome to submit their proposals.

Following this general framework, some of our main sub-topics of interest will be:
– Death at the borders
– Death on the high seas
– Death in refugee camps and detention facilities
– Death during deportation or forced return to the homeland
– Burial rituals and ceremonies as sign and expression of identity
– Treatment of corpses
– Legal death organizations, cemeteries and burial plots
– Tombstones and funerary epitaphs

You are invited to send the title and abstract of your paper (500 words) including your official affiliation and e-mail address by March 25th, 2019 to (pedram.khosronejad@okstate.edu).
Draft papers must be pre-circulated to participants by May 10th, 2019.
All participants will be responsible for their travel, accommodation and related costs.

Ergon Verlag Online

Ergon Verlag is an academic publisher in the humanities and social sciences. We publish books and periodicals in oriental studies, literary studies, philosophy, history, political science, information science, pedagogics, sociology and religious studies.

The conference programme can be found here.

Iranian-Islamic Illumination Course: Islīmī Patterns

Anahita Alavi Date: 14 January 2019 Time: 6:30 PM Finishes: 18 March 2019 Time: 8:30 PM Venue: MBI Al Jaber Building, 21 Russell Square Room: MBI Al Jaber Seminar Room Type of Event: Workshop Please note that the course will commence on 14 January 2019 and not 7 January 2019 as previously advertised and that it will run until 18 March 2019 instead of 11 March 2019.

Call for Papers: The Fifth Annual Conference on Shi’i Studies

null

Materials for the Intellectual History of Imāmī Shīʿism in the Safavid Period

In 1934 the New York Public Library (NYPL) purchased a sizable collection of 250 volumes of Arabic manuscripts through the fund for Semitic literature that had been provided by Jacob Heinrich Schiff. Ms New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Arabic Manuscripts Collection, Volume 51985A, a facsimile of which is included in the present publication, belongs to the Shīʿī material among the collection.

null

null

Half of my Heart

As Abû ʿAbd Allâh al-Ḥusayn, son of ʿAlî and Fâṭima and grandson of Muḥammad, moved inexorably towards death on the field of Karbalâʾ, his sister Zaynab was drawn ever closer to the centre of the family of Muḥammad, the ‘people of the house’ (ahl al-bayt).

IBBNB

Home

International workshop: “Sunni-Shi‘i Relations in Europe: How to Study Them?”, Migration Institute of Finland, Turku, 13–14 December 2018.