Categories : Uncategorized

Shii News – Academic Items

1. ONLINE Webinar: “Muslim Feminists Revolution!” by Dr Malika Hamidi (École des hautes études en sciences sociales),

Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies Lecture Series “Empowering Muslim Women in History, Literature, and the Arts”, University of Manchester, 16 March 2022, 5:00 pm GMT

The lecture series is organized by Prof Zahia Smail Salhi annd Dr Hatoon AL Al Fassi, University of Manchester.

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/95684776284

2. HYBRID Webinar: “Doctoral Journeys” (Focus Middle East Studies), Doctoral Finalists at the University of Sussex Talk About Their Experiences, 17 March 2022, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm GMT

The discussion is interactive and we’ll be able to engage with them and consider various approaches to conducting doctoral research (what’s worked, what hasn’t and how we could do things differently to improve our experience as doctoral researchers and international students).

Registration: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/99830605809#success

3. ONLINE Webinar: “Digging Deeper: How to Address Groundwater Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa?”, German Development Institute (DIE), Bonn, 23 March 2022, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm CET

This webinar brings together renowned experts in groundwater in the Middle East and North Africa to present their insights on related challenges in the region from different disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts. The presentations will also address ways forward for ecologically sustainable but also socially in-clusive and politically feasible groundwater governance in MENA.

Information, program and registration: https://www.die-gdi.de/veranstaltungen/details/digging-deeper/

4. HYBRID Workshop: “Reckoning with God: Divine-Human Relations after the Arab Spring”, Orient-Institut Beirut, 30 June – 2 July 2022

The workshop will reflect upon how God-human relations are colored by the socio-economic and political circumstances in which they are cultivated. It will highlight the importance of paying closer attention to how believers speak of and relate to God.

Deadline for abstracts: 20 March 2022.

Information: https://www.orient-institut.org/events/event-details/reckoning-with-god-divine-human-relations-after-the-arab-spring/

5. Panel: “Resisting Marginalization in Times of Crisis: The Politics of Gender, Race, Religion and Age in the MENA Region and Beyond” during the Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, Belfast, 26-29 July 2022

This panel will examine changes and challenges related to public activism and social movements in the post-Arab Spring era. We invite ethnographic papers that explore these and other questions around the concepts of oppression and resistance, transformation and change, marginalization and social justice within the An-thropology of the Middle East.

Deadline for abstracts: 21 March 2022. Information: https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/easa2022/p/11506#

6. HYBRID Conference: “Transition & Transformation: New Perspectives in Arts and Design”, University of Sharjah, UAE, and Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 19-21 November 2022

We are interested in papers, performances, and creative works that explore, from a global point of view, transitions and transformations in the theory, practice, and pedagogy of art and design since the turn of the 21st century.

Deadline for abstracts: 30 April 2022. Information: https://umevent.um.edu.my/TTNPAD2022

7. Session on “Post-Byzantine Literary Traditions in the Mediterranean” during the Annual Convention of the “Modern Language Association (MLA)”, San Francisco, 5-8 January 2023

This includes artistic production in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Slavic, Albanian, Turkish, French, Italian, Spanish. Topics include identity and aesthetics; multilingualism; East- West; secular criticism; transition to the Ottoman Empire; Orality and literacy; hagiography; collective memory; new Mediterranean epistemology; Mediterranean thinking.

Deadline for abstracts: 21 March 2022. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/8051/discussions/9714831/call-papers-mla-2023-post-byzantine-literary-traditions

8. International Conference: “Religious Renewal in Times of Crisis” (Focus Middle East and Islamic History), University of Nebraska Omaha and Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Jerusalem,

Postponed until 24-28 April 2023

The scope of this academic event is the study of religious renewal movements and their emergence in times of crisis across the world and history – with a special focus on how they have impacted the three Abrahamic religions and the city of Jerusalem.

Deadline for abstract: Fall 2022. Information: https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/religion/research/religious-renewal-in-times-of-crisis-conference.php

9. Research Fellow (Post-Doctorate Researcher) for Research Project “Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah”, Department of Near Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin

Candidates should have experience in the anthropology of texts and written culture. The project is to look at the history of Jews in the Middle East in medieval and pre-modern through literature, with a cultural- and socio-historical focus derived from a close examination of the Arabic poetry fragments preserved in the Cairo Genizah.

Deadline for applications: 17 May 2022. Information: https://apcairogenizah.com/blog/were-hiring-research-fellow-post-doctoral-researcher/

10. Assistant Director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University

Qualifications: A PhD in any field of modern Middle East Studies, plus 1-3 years of demonstrated academic and research experience in Middle Eastern Studies. Excellent editing skills. Superior organizational skills and an ability to manage multiple projects and tasks. Reading knowledge of Turkish, Arabic, or Persian is preferred.

Deadline for applications: 1 April 2022. Information: https://brandeis.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Jobs/job/Brandeis—Waltham-Campus/Assistant-Director-for-Research–Crown-Center-for-Middle-East-Studies_R0005818-1

11. General Editor of the “Middle East Forum”, Philadelphia

Qualifications: A deep familiarity with the Middle East and Islam. A master’s degree in Middle East or Islamic studies; doctoral degree preferred. Research with a resulting publication. At least eight years’ professional work experience. Hands-on experience with the relevant computer programs.

Deadline for applications: 1 April 2022. Information: https://www.meforum.org/63061/job-announcement-middle-east-forum-general-editor

12. Bi-annual Book Award 2022 of the Association for Middle East Anthropology (AMEA)

This award is given to an anthropological work (single or co-authored, but not edited volumes) that features creative ethnographic writing, innovative data collection strategies, and sophisticated analysis. We solicit books that make significant contributions to anthropological knowledge. Books submitted for the 2022 award must have a publication date in 2020 or 2021.

Deadline for nominations: 15 May 2022.

Information: https://mesana.org/resources-and-opportunities/2022/03/10/amea-bi-annual-book-award-2022

13. PhD Studentships (4 Years Fully Funded) in Political Science, International Relations, and Law at School of Law and Government, Dublin City University

The programme combines the rigour and professionalism of the largely taught US approach with the independence and imagination of the traditional European supervisory programme, and it is designed to prepare its students to conduct cutting-edge research and pursue successful academic careers.

Deadline for applications: 31 March 2022. Information: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CNF974/phd-student-ships-in-politics-and-international-relations-and-in-law-and-european-law

14. Summer Programme: “Islam and Muslims in the Modern World”, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London, 27 June – 2 July 2022

The Summer Programme is jointly organised with the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. It aims to critically analyse and discuss Muslim identities, Muslim societies, and the complex ways they engage with the issue of modernity.

Deadline for applications: 13 May 2022. Information: https://www.aku.edu/ismc/study/Pages/summer-programme.aspx

15. Ninth Edition of the TOMidEast Summer School: “The Politics of Gender in the Middle East and North Africa”, Organized by Prof. Rosita Di Peri, Department of Culture, Politics and Society, University of Turin, 4-8 July 2022

This Summer School critically unpacks gender studies to explore the role they have in re-defining regional trajectories. The challenging and highly intensive programme will provide the students with the necessary tools of analysis to better understand the complexity of the Middle East.

Deadline for applications: 31 May 2022.

Information: https://www.tomideast.com/

16. New website is available on the traditional crafts of Iraq. You can find this site at:

https://craftsofiraq.uvic.ca

The site is a companion to the Crafts of Syria website (craftsofsyria@uvic.ca), which has been online since 2018. The Crafts of Iraq site contains information about craft activities in cities, towns, and rural areas across Iraq, drawn from primary texts, archaeological and ethnographic publications, historical photographs, online sources, and signatures on objects, buildings and manuscripts. Entries cover a period from the seventh century to the present day. The site also comprises a glossary of technical terms, timeline, and other research supports.

The site has been a collaborative effort and I am delighted to acknowledge the research and design work undertaken by current and former students, Atri Hatef Naiemi, Siobhan Davis, Hala Qasqas, and Baylee Woodley.

More entries will be added in the coming months. We hope that the site will be a useful research and teaching resource for those interested in the material and visual cultures of Iraq.

Marcus Milwright,

Department of Art History and Visual Studies,

University of Victoria, B.C., Canada

17. CFP – 4th International Süleymaniye Symposium – The Baburid (Mughal) Empire: New Sources, New Approaches

the important dates of the 4th International Süleymaniye Symposium, to be held on September 16-18, 2022, have been announced.

The deadline for submitting the abstracts to the symposium has been set as April 30, 2022.

All the important dates of the 4th International Süleymaniye Symposium, which will be organized by the History Department of Ibn Haldun University (IHU) with support from the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye, are as follows:

Deadline for abstract submission: April 30, 2022.
Announcement date of accepted papers: May 15, 2022.
Deadline for the submission of the full paper: August 31, 2022.

We are aiming to publish the papers presented in the symposium in a book format by an international publishing house in the spring of 2023 after the required editorial work. Participants will have the option to revise their papers before, during, and after the symposium.

The organization committee will cover the travel (economy class round-trip flight tickets) and accommodation (four nights in a 4-star hotel near the historical Süleymaniye Complex) expenses of the symposium participants who submit their full papers by 31 August.

E-mail address for abstract submission and inquiries: suleymaniyesempozyum@ihu.edu.tr
https://www.ihu.edu.tr/en/the-4th-international-suleymaniye-symposium-will-be-held-under-t…

18. Webinar – Solving the Mystery of Crafting a Winning Book Proposal – March 30

Many scholars excel at writing academic manuscripts but are less confident when asked to pitch their work in the final stage ahead of submission: the book proposal. Laura Portwood-Stacer, author of The Book Proposal Book (Princeton University Press), will break down the book proposal process in a clear and attainable way and offer tips on how to (successfully!) pitch your proposal to prospective university presses and academic publishers.

Laura Portwood-Stacer will provide some much-needed clarity on how to craft a winning book proposal. You will get:

Insight into how to grab the editor’s attention with a sharp project description

A step by step breakdown of the book proposal process, and

Insider tips on how to define a target audience

March 30 at 4:30 PM Israel time/ 2:30 PM GMT/ 9:30 AM EST on Zoom

19. NES Lecture, March 23: Setting out from Mecca in 1481: About the possibly oldest extant Arabic travelogue from the Mashreq

Near Eastern Studies Lecture

March 23,12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Björn Bentlage (Orientalisches Institut, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)

Hosted by Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS).

A rare find from the late Mamluk period offers new insights into the origins of a literary form and practice which, over the next centuries, would continue to develop into an important and many-faceted genre tradition in the Mashreq. Whereas the Arabic travelogue is usually associated with a long line of Maghrebi scholars heading East, the production of travel descriptions in the Mashreq, in contrast, has in general received less scrutiny, and today’s knowledge of its contours and beginnings remain vague. Now, the (re-)discovery of an anonymous hajj account from the late 15th/9th century, which I believe to be the so far oldest extant travelogue from the East, opens up a window on the earliest phases of literary Arabic travel writing in the Mashreq, just as it sheds more light on the cultural context of the period. Setting out from Mecca in 1481, the travelogue’s narrative finally arrives in the scholarly scene of late Mamluk Damascus, featuring its own variegated selection from Arabic literary tradition along the way. The lecture will throw a spotlight on the manuscript text itself, and it will emphasize those aspects of its form and content that could make it a valuable source for other researchers interested in the period and literary history.
Register in advance here
After registering, you will receive an email containing information about joining the event.

20. CFP: Mystique and Politique, MLA 2023

From Mystique to Politique: Scholarship, Mysticism, and Politics in the 20th c.

Working Group, MLA Conference, San Francisco, Jan. 5th-8th, 2023

Submission Deadline: Saturday, April 2nd, 2022

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2023/webprogrampreliminary/Paper19223.html

This working group hopes to bring together scholars across a wide disciplinary and geographical range to investigate the cultural politics of the 20th century study of mysticism. Following the cataclysm of the Great War, thinkers in a wide range of fields—from philosophy to philology, from religious studies to history—turned to the study of mysticism, often in opposition to cultural forces of mechanization, materialism, and colonial domination. From interwar Egypt to Weimar Germany and beyond, this mystic turn coalesced into a suspect syncretism deserving of interrogation: Kabbalah, Sufism, and Hermeticism, but also Neoplatonism, Bergsonian intuitionism, and Theosophy all entered into a fraught dialogue. Taking our cue from Charles Peguy’s maxim “Tout commence en mystique et finit en politique”, our working group sets out to discuss the commitments, affects and concepts that impinged upon these scholars’ work. Possible topics include discourses on ‘the total Man’ (e.g. Ernst Kantorowicz, Henri Corbin or Abd al-Rahman Badawi), conceptions of the “irrational” (e.g. E.R. Dodds), spiritual or pneumatic conceptions of national tradition (e.g. Paul de Lagarde), aesthetic and literary engagements with “the mystical” (e.g. surrealists or Robert Musil), the group dynamics within which these studies were carried out (e.g. Collège de Sociologie or Eranos), and many more. We welcome contributions that study the implication of mysticism and politics across languages and tradition in the 20th century. In so doing we hope to both radically historicize—returning these studies of mysticism to the historical backdrop against which their cultural politics arose—while also giving due attention to the metaphysical elaborations that these scholars set out to forge.

For questions contact Peter Makhlouf (makhlouf@princeton.edu) or Simon Conrad (sjconrad@princeton.edu).

21. Book Announcement: Authors as Readers in the Mamlūk Period and Beyond (ed. Élise Franssen, Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2022).

The whole text is freely available from here: http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-560-5
Abstract:
Authors read. They read to inform themselves and stay up-to-date, they read for their pleasure and to get inspired. And they write, by definition, using their readings in the course of their writing process. Authors often keep written traces (sometimes dated) of what they have read: a short statement on a manuscript page, a blurb, an anecdote in a letter to a colleague or friend, a résumé or notes jotted down in a notebook, a reading journal, an explicit quotation in their own work or the use of information unknown elsewhere than in a specific source.
Scrutinising authors’ readings is informative on a variety of levels. It provides information on their tastes and interests, on the subjects of their work at a given period, on their methodology and possible note-taking strategies, or on their scholarly milieu. It also brings a lot to intellectual history, giving information about the texts and manuscripts circulating at a certain period, in a certain place and milieu.
The research project RASCIO (Reader, Author, Scholar in a Context of Information Overflow, Marie Curie Grant Agreement no. 749180, 2018-21, Élise Franssen) aimed at getting a better sense of al-Ṣafadī’s (d. 764/1363) working method, his scholarly network, his habits as a reader and as a scholar in the extremely rich context of the beginning of the Mamlūk period. Reaching the end of the project, an international conference was to be organised in order to share the results of RASCIO and to broaden the scope by confronting these results to other situations: other authors, other periods, other places… The world pandemic of COVID-19 obliged us to cancel the event, and to turn it into a thematic volume.
Authors as Readers in the Mamlūk Period and Beyond gathers eight contributions investigating the readings of different authors from different points of view. The studied authors are mainly from pre-modern Islam – al-Qādī al-Fāḍil, Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ṣafadī, al-Subkī, al-Maqrīzī – with three notable exceptions: an incursion in the Ottoman nineteenth century with Esʿad Efendi, a detour by the French court of King Charles V with his physician Evrart de Conty working as a translator, and a preface mentioning the papyrus of Philodème de Gadara, from Greek Antiquity.
Keywords:
Authorship. Readings. Library. Scholars’ library. Literary tastes. Collecting. Methodology. Scholars’ networks. Book circulation. Intellectual history. Correspondence. Commentaries. Marginalia. Paratext in manuscripts.
Contributors:
Frédéric Bauden, Mehdi Berriah, Tiziano Dorandi, Élise Franssen, Yehoshua Frenkel, Antonella Ghersetti, Michèle Goyens, Stefan Leder, Jaakko Häameen-Anttila, Nazlı Vatansever.

22. CFP – HIAA-Sponsored Panel at CAA 2023 (NY February 15-18, 2023) – DUE April 15, 2022

HIAA will sponsor a session at CAA’s Annual Conference in New York, February 15-18, 2023. We are now asking for proposals for a complete panel from HIAA members.

For complete sessions (90 minutes in length), the organiser brings together a chair, three or four speakers and perhaps a discussant, and also assembles complete information about the session including names and affiliations of all session participants, presentation titles, abstracts, etc.

Please see: http://collegeart.org/programs/conference/proposals for full details.

Proposals are due April 15, 2022 and should be submitted by emails to Fatima Quraishi at sec.hiaa@gmail.com as a single pdf document with the following included:

cover sheet with the organiser’s name, academic status, contact information (postal address, email address, telephone number/s) and title of the proposed session;
an abstract of no more than 250 words that describes the proposed session;
individual titles and abstracts for each speaker, also no more than 250 words each, along with their contact information

Notification will be sent by April 22, 2022

Please note that all those selected to present must be members of HIAA. Additionally, participants of the selected panel are also required to be CAA members within 90 days of panel acceptance.

23. MLA CfP: Transcontinental relations across early modern Afro-Eurasia

300-word abstracts about inequalities and asymmetries, both historical and scholarly, of textual production and representation in trans-continental relationships, networks, or systems in Eurasia or Afro-Eurasia, discussing at least two linguistic, political, or religious communities.

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 20 March 2022

Abstracts can be emailed to András Kiséry, City C, City U of New York (akisery@ccny.cuny.edu ) and Nigel S. Smith, Princeton U (nsmith@princeton.edu )

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2023/webprogrampreliminary/Paper19691.html

Posted in: Uncategorized

March 15, 2022
by Andrew Newman
0 Comment

Shii News – 2 research fellowships and 1 PhD studentship on transnational Twelver Shiism (Birmingham, UK)

The Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham is seeking applications for 2 post-doctoral research fellowships and for 1 PhD studentship. The fellows and PhD student will work as part of the ERC-funded project “Creating an alternative umma: Clerical authority and religio-political mobilisation in transnational Twelver Shiism”. For more information on the project, see: https://alterumma.bham.ac.uk/

Further information and particulars on the fellowships and the PhD studentship are available here:

– Research Fellowship on the development of Shii ritual practices: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BRR683/research-fellow

– Research Fellowship on Shii devotional poetry: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BRR704/research-fellow-alterumma-5

– PhD studentship: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BRR988/phd-studentship-alterumma-creating-an-alternative-umma-clerical-authority-and-religio-political-mobilisation-in-transnational-shii-islam

Posted in: Uncategorized

April 30, 2019
by Andrew Newman
0 Comment

Shii News – Bahrainis Stripped of Citizenship

Bahrain: Hundreds Stripped of Citizenship

(Beirut) – Bahraini authorities should restore citizenship to hundreds of nationals whose citizenship they revoked through executive orders or court decisions since 2012, rendering most of them stateless, Human Rights Watch said today.

Posted in: Uncategorized