Shii News – Academic Items
1.CfP: “The Ties that Bind”: Mechanisms and Structures of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire, 2-6 December 2019
Deadline for submission of abstracts, January 31st 2019.
As part of the ERC-funded project, “Embedding Conquest, Naturalising Muslim Rule (600-1000)”, at Leiden University, this conference aims to bring together both senior and junior scholars to present research which illuminates the structures and mechanisms that allowed the early Islamic empire to function. The period to be focused on at the conference is roughly focused on is roughly 600-1000 CE.
Structures and mechanisms
The papers should describe the way that local and regional elites were both embedded in larger structures of power and dependency, and employed specific mechanisms to achieve their goals. By structures, we refer to frameworks such as administration, tax-collection, political networks, religious communities, legal systems, social conventions and patronage networks. By mechanisms, we refer to specific instances which establish relationships between actors, including documentary cultures, mechanisms of social integration and embedding (such as oaths, contracts, pledges, marriage, inheritance and succession conventions), mechanisms of social exclusion (such as ostracism, imprisonment, excommunication) and so forth.
Papers may deal with mechanisms and structures that hold the empire together, or examine the fissiparous and centrifugal forces that tend in the opposite direction. Moments of crisis and breakdown are understood as particularly useful both illuminating the precise nature of structures and mechanisms and they are contested, renewed or replaced.
Local and regional elites
In focusing on local and regional elites, we aim to understand how the authority and power of the caliphate was actualized within the daily lives of the empire’s inhabitants. This focus cements a shift in recent years to thinking about the caliphate as a multipolar entity, rather than a pyramidical hierarchy of power (Neff and Tillier), and as a set of relationships and interfaces between actors whose influence derives from being embedded in a particular local context, and power-brokers at the centre of the empire (Paul, Heidemann) . This conference aims to push the field further, by inviting participants to dissect with greater precision the specific structures, mechanisms, behaviours, strategies and conventions that enabled key stakeholders to achieve goals which shaped the lives of the inhabitants of the empire.
Source material will be open to presenters, but we particularly welcome papers that combine literary sources with documentary and material sources.
In addition to the presentation of papers, invited presenters will be encouraged to prepare visualizations of the structures and frameworks that they perceive in their materials, to be discussed in a separate session. These visualizations might be formed in terms of networks, hierarchies, blocs, or other models of conceptualizing the relationships between the diverse stakeholders in the empire.
One of the outcomes of the ERC project, Embedding Conquest, will be an edited volume which records the results of this and other conferences. Participants may be invited to submit their contribution as part of the edited volume. If you will be unable to contribute your research to this volume, then please signal that when you submit your abstract.
Details
The conference will take place 2-6th December, 2019.
Papers will be 30 mins with 15 for Q&A. Participant may also be requested to participate in additional discussion and visualization sessions.
Please send an abstracts of around 300 words to e.p.hayes@hum.leidenuniv.nl by January 31st 2019.
Travel and accommodation will be subsidized.
Link to the call for papers:
2. Lecturer in Islamic History 600-1800 at QMUL (London) (closing date 06/02/19)
https://webapps2.is.qmul.ac.uk/jobs/job.action?jobRef=QMUL17414
3. The Research Training Group *Philosophy, Science and the Sciences* (RTG 1939) (ancient-philosophy.hu-berlin.de ) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin is offering several
*salaried positions for doctoral candidates*
*stipends for pre-doctoral studies*
to candidates working on a research project within the RTG 1939 on the dialogue between different forms and models of knowledge in ancient Greek, Roman and Arabic thought (including its medieval and early modern reception). Topics involve both philosophy and some special science or other (including mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines that we might not today consider special sciences, such as grammar or divination).
Salaried doctoral positions (T-VL Berlin E13 at 65%) will be funded for three years, starting on 1 October 2019.
Stipends for pre-doctoral studies have guaranteed funding for one year, starting on 1 October 2019. Pre-doc students making good progress toward the doctorate will receive a further three years of funding, leading to the completed doctorate.
Additional funding is available for conference travels, research stays abroad and other qualification measures, such as language training.
Applications: Please follow the instructions given on our website (ancient-philosophy.hu-berlin.de). The application deadline is 31 January 2019.
4. 1st International Conference on “Peace and Conflict Resolution (ICPCR)”, Tehran, 29-30 April 2019
The University of Tehran, the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO and the Iranian Peace Studies Scientific Association will host this Conference.
Deadline for abstracts: 4 February 2019, Information: https://icpcr.ut.ac.ir/
5. 41st International Annual Conference of the European Association of Middle East Librarians (MELCom International): L’Orientale, Napoli, 18-21 June 2019
MELCom International is devoted to the study of collections, librarianship, projects etc. of resources and sources from and on the Middle East at large.
Information: www.melcominternational.org
6. Two Research Fellowships at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford
The fellowships are tenable from October 2019 for a three year period, offering a competitive salary determined by qualifications and experience in the range of £24,000 – £31,000.
Closing date is 15 April 2019. Information: www.oxcis.ac.uk/vacancies.
7. Senior Research Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford
The successful candidate will be engaged in research and publication in any area of the arts, humanities or social sciences which contributes to a more informed understanding of the Islamic world – its history, economics, politics, culture, civilisation and contemporary life. The fellowship is for a three year renewable period, and may be extended. Salary in the range of £39,000 to £53,000.
Closing date is 15 April 2019. Information: www.oxcis.ac.uk/vacancies
8. Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture, University of Rhode Island
The lecturer will teach courses at all levels, from beginning language courses to upper-level content courses taught in the Arabic language, and potentially English-language content courses on cultural topics in the Arabic-speaking world.
Deadline for application: 15 February 2019. Information: https://jobs.uri.edu/postings/4608
9. Articles for the First Issue of “Diyâr. Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies”
Unpublished contributions from the Humanities, Cultural Studies and Social Sciences with a geographical focus on Turkey, the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus are invited in German, English and French.
Extended deadline for full articles: 15 April 2019. Information: https://www.diyar.nomos.de/en/; contact Tabea Becker-Bertau (diyar@ergon-verlag.de).
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- January 21, 2019
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