Shii News – Academic Items
1.The Islamic Manuscript Association—in partnership with the Orient-Institut Istanbul, the Bibliotheca Arabica Projectat the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig, and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation—is pleased to announce that it will hold a part-day symposium entitled New Research on Ottoman-Era Manuscript Libraries at the Orient-Institut Istanbul on Saturday, 8 September 2018 from 13.00 to 17.00.
The symposium’s speakers are Prof. Dr. Hans Georg Majer, emeritus chair of Turcology and the history and culture of the Near East at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich; Dr. Konrad Hirschler, professor of Islamic studies at the Free University of Berlin; Dr. Boris Liebrenz, research fellow with the Bibliotheca Arabica Project at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig; and Dr. Berat Açıl, associate professor in the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at İstanbul Şehir University. The symposium’s programme, papers’ abstracts, and speakers’ biographies are available on the Association’s website.
The symposium will be followed by the Association’s 2018 annual general meeting, which will only be open to Association members who have paid their fees for the 2018 membership year.
Admission to the symposium is free of charge, but registration is essential. Please register via the Eventbrite widget at: http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/symposia/new-research-on-ottoman-era-manuscript-libraries.aspx
Please note that the symposium is an English-language event: neither English-Turkish nor English-Arabic interpretation will be available.
The address of the symposium venue, the Orient-Institut Istanbul, is Susam Sok. No. 16, Apt. 8, Cihangir, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey.
Please do not hesitate to contact the Association via admin@islamicmanuscript.org if you have any queries about the symposium or our organization.
2. Call for Submissions: Muslim-American Writers at Home
We all possess plural self-identities. North American Muslims are, however, increasingly viewed by their co-citizens through a biased lens in which ‘American’ and ‘Muslim’ are plotted as diametrically opposed to each other. And yet for Muslims, whether newly arrived or having immigrated in an earlier century (or converts), the United States or Canada represent at least one pole of what “home” is. For a projected anthology, we are looking for submissions of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, or memoir that address themes of “identity” and “home” from North American writers who fully self-identify as Muslim. Themes could include, but are not limited to, topics like:
How you experience your Muslim American identity.
How you or your ancestors made your home in America.
How your Muslim beliefs and practices are integrated into your life here.
What connects you with the home your family migrated from.
How/when you have felt the most welcome here.
How/when you have felt the most misrepresented or misunderstood here.
What you would most like for other people to know about your culture, your beliefs, your journey, etc.
Please send 3-5 poems or prose up to 3500 words to the editors Kitty Costello and Valerie Behiery at muslimamericansathome@gmail.com before October 1st, 2018 (Extended to 15th). Authors will receive a response by the selection committee (Kitty, Valerie, and Hanan) by December 30th 2018 and hopefully earlier.
About the editors:
Kitty Costello is a poet, writing facilitator, and psychotherapist who uses writing as a tool for insight and healing. Her recent poetry book is entitled Upon Waking. She has served for nearly 30 years on the editorial board of Freedom Voices Publications, which publishes works that speak to and from communities on the margins.
Valerie Behiery, Ph.D., is an arts writer specializing in contemporary culture related to the Muslim World. Dedicated to healing social divisions, her writing has been published in academic journals, art catalogues, and freelance publications like Intense Art Magazine, Azizah, Tribe, Nafas, or esse. She has taught at universities in Canada, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
Hanan Hazime is a multidisciplinary artist, community arts educator, and writing facilitator. She has a M.A. in English Literature & Creative Writing. Hanan’s writing aims to empower Muslim women and other individuals who have experienced mental health issues. Her debut poetry chapbook “Aorta” was published by ZED Press in April 2018. She is currently working on her first novel.
3. Call for Papers: “From the Ruins of Preservation” A symposium on rethinking heritage through counter-archives, to be held in London, 11-12th July 2019
Colonial legacies in heritage preservation have intersected and clashed with local realities since their inception. Heritage sites have often been created by way of processes which segregate them both temporally and geographically from the contemporary world, and the people who live with and amongst them. This might result in restrictions of habitation and cultivation, religious and ritual practice, and the removal of entire local settlements from inside and around natural and cultural heritage sites. Individuals and communities, however, have always had their own ways of preserving and engaging with material and immaterial significances. Objects, places and landscapes were and are embedded and reactivated in the domains of contemporary life. These realities defy and challenge the disciplinary baggage, canons and categories as well as prevailing methods, discourses, concepts and practices of heritage studies, which in many cases have proved unhelpful in engaging such records outside of “the archive” as it is conventionally understood.
The problem of adequately engaging the histories of these intersections has been exacerbated by methodological challenges. Historians have long ignored the gaps and unspoken emotions and bodies in written and visual archival sources. Visual analyses often lack the methods to engage with different iterations of the diverse and heterogenous agencies of both humans and nonhumans outside of the scope of official archives—the locals going about their lives in ancient ruins; the workers who labour on archaeological excavations; those often nameless individuals who serve as human scales next to an excavated building; the local guides who help “open up” landscapes to preservationists; or the agencies and affordances of forms of material culture themselves. Due to a turn against the forms of authority empowered in conventional archival sources, critical heritage studies have largely denied the usefulness and significance of archives for the study of such non-official forms of heritage preservation, which has led to the de-privileging of historical and visual analysis. This frustration has resulted in a general turning away from such sources by researchers within heritage studies to focus on contemporary issues, and their accompanying methods, especially “oral history” and ethnography. However, this move has frustrated historians who have seen heritage studies as a field in which the historical contexts of the contemporary phenomena which such scholars study has been effectively written out of the picture.
In order to address these issues, we are seeking contributions for a symposium (to be held at the German Historical Institute London) and linked edited volume that aims to reconstruct new histories and viewpoints in order to re-examine the “ruins of preservation” and to rethink the varied agencies—both human and non-human—which surround both natural and cultural heritage preservation practices through new conceptual and methodological approaches. We expect such papers to engage with a range of alternative sources and counter-archives (neglected aspects of photography; engagement with more-than-human agents; rethinking objects, landscape and built environment as archives), and/or to discuss new approaches to oral and public history. Re-engaging such histories is not only important in building a new historical approach to heritage, but will also help researchers to reconceptualise and recontextualise contemporary heritage phenomena. By re-centring the discourse about “heritage” to examine specific non-state practices (or conflicts between state and non-state practices) through such methods we also seek a more nuanced and effective understanding of how preservation has been determined over time and from different perspectives. Papers should thus present a methodological intervention into reductionist preservation histories by developing a new diachronic, more diverse vocabulary and directions for future research in and on this field.
CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Assistant Professor of African Studies, Hampshire College
Trinidad Rico, Director of Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies, Rutgers University
Karen Salt, Director of the Centre for Research in Race and Rights (C3R), University of Nottingham
Please send abstracts of 300-400 words and queries to: fromtheruinsofpreservation@gmail.com
DEADLINE: November 1, 2018. Speakers will be notified in late November. We have a modest budget to cover travel for participants who require this; please indicate whether you would need to have your travel covered when you send your abstracts, and where you would be travelling from. All accepted participants will have their accommodation covered in London for three nights.
Co-organized by Mirjam Brusius (Research Fellow in Colonial and Global History) German Historical Institute London and Rodney Harrison (AHRC Heritage Priority Area Leadership Fellow/Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology).
Visit the conference site at GHIL https://www.ghil.ac.uk/from_the_ruins_of_preservation/
4. Call for Papers
(Deadline Sept. 19th, 2018)
Summer Doctoral School
“Religion and Atheism in Pluralist Societies”
Nantes, 17-19 June 2019
The Institut du pluralisme religieux et de l’athéisme (IPRA ; www.ipra.eu) is organizing a summer school on religion and atheism in pluralist societies. We seek to bring together doctoral students in different disciplines (history, religious studies, sociology, law, art history, anthropology, etc.). Presentations may be given in English or in French. Participants should be able to understand both languages. We seek in particular to bring together doctoral students from Iran, France, other European countries and the USA.
Eligibility:
The summer school is open to doctoral students enrolled in any country, in any discipline, as long as their dissertation subject, and the proposed talk, are related to the theme of the summer school.
Costs:
The summer school will be financed by IPRA and the University of Nantes and will be free of cost to the students accepted. Participants will be lodged in student housing at no cost. Lunch will be provided free to participants. Travel to Nantes will not be paid by IPRA, and participants should seek funding from their home institutions.
Format:
The summer school will take place 17-19 June 2019. Doctoral students will each make a 20-minute presentation; faculty from IPRA and other partner institutions will chair the panels and give their reactions to student presentations.
For more information, please visit:
Students from Iran should contact pedram.khosronejad@okstate.edu.
5. Panels on Sixth Annual Conference of the British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS 2019), University of Nottingham, 15-16 April 2019
The organisers invite proposals for whole panels or individual papers. Islamic Studies is broadly understood to include all disciplinary approaches to the study of Islam and Muslim societies (majority and minority), modern and premodern.
Deadline for proposals: 30 November 2018. Information: http://www.brais.ac.uk/conferences/brais-2019-call-for-papers
6. Conference: “Religion and Resistance”, American Academy of Religion Western Region (AARWR), Arizona State University, 2-3 March 2019
The Islamic Studies Section invites papers and panels focusing on the main theme of the conference addressing questions such as: how might resistance best be understood within Islam and Islamic traditions theologically and/or culturally? How have the different forms of resistance in Islam changed throughout history? Etc.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 October 2018. Information: https://www.aarwr.com/call-for-papers.html
7. Conference: “Global Islam in the Interwar World”, University of Leuven, 27-29 March 2019
We are seeking contributions from different disciplines by junior and senior researchers dealing with the Muslim global history of the period 1914-1945 in the wider sense. We aim to discuss new methodological perspectives about how intellectual Muslim networks and figures (including minor or less prominent figures) tried to position themselves and their actions in the world history of that era.
Deadline for abstracts: 26 October 2018. Information: http://www.muslims-in-interwar-europe.com/CallForPapers.html
8. Director of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program, Hartford Seminary
Preference will be given to candidates whose work exhibits appreciation for contemporary significance and relevant methods. The successful candidate must be able to teach at the introductory and advanced graduate levels, and must be able to guide and advise students within the Islamic Chaplaincy Program, including field placements and CPE settings. Rank is open; Ph.D. or suitable equivalent degree strongly preferred.
Review of applications start: 1 October 201. Information: http://mideast.unc.edu/hartford-seminary-director-of-the-islamic-chaplaincy-program/
9. Islamic Studies Position, Bard College
This is a full-time, tenure-track position in the area of Islamic Studies, to begin September 2019. Applicants should possess a strong foundation in the formative or classical traditions and literatures of Islam, with appropriate language proficiency such as Arabic and/or Persian, and an understanding of later and contemporary developments within Islamic societies.PhD or near completion is required.
Deadline for applications: https://apply.interfolio.com/54151 . Information: https://apply.interfolio.com/54151
10. Lecturer in Arabic Language, Columbia University
The position is at the rank of Lecturer in Discipline and beginning July 1, 2019. We are seeking a professional language teacher with a serious commitment to teaching languages for academic purposes while developing pedagogical materials and incorporating technological innovations into the curriculum. Preference will be given to applicants who have a Ph.D., but those with a Master’s degree and considerable language teaching experience are also encouraged to apply.
Review of applications start: 1 October 2018. Information: https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=57205
11. Assistant Professor in the History of the Modern Middle East, Texas Tech University
Candidates who have very strong records of scholarship supported by extramural funding and who have the proven capacity or clear potential to bring externally sponsored research to Texas Tech University are encouraged to apply. Service duties include program-building, as well as commitment to extra-curricular activities. Service to the department, college, university, and community is expected. Applicants should have completed a PhD in modern Middle Eastern history at the time of the appointment.7
Review of applications start: 15 October 2018. Information: https://sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Search/Home/Home?partnerid=25898&siteid=5637#jobDetails=414845_5637
12. Persian Language Winter School 2018, Yerevan, Armenia, 2-22 December 2018
This 14 or 21 days’ winter school offers participants to master skills in written and oral modern Persian, reading and interpreting Persian texts from different periods as well as rapidly deepening their knowledge in colloquial Persian. This school is designed for students, at least 18 years-old, who want to make well-grounded progress in their knowledge of the Persian language, deepen their knowledge of Persian Grammar, colloquial speech and literary language.
Deadline for registration: 10 October 2018. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/2319313/persian-language-winter-school-2018-yerevan-armenia
13. Training Course on the Study of Oriental Manuscripts: “Codicological and Paleographical Aspects of Islamic Manuscripts, with a Special Focus on Manuscript Notes”, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 25-29 March 2019
The training course is intended for advanced MA and doctoral students as well as other junior researchers in the fields of Oriental Philology, Islamic Studies, Ethnography or Comparative Manuscript Studies.
Deadline for registration: 30 November 2018. Information: http://staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/die-staatsbibliothek/abteilungen/orient/aktuelles/
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- September 11, 2018
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