Shii News – Academic Items
1.For progress on the Islamic Painted Page (IPP) database, see www.islamicpaintedpage.com.
IPP is a freely available database of Islamicate Arts of the Book which exists to help users locate paintings, illuminations and bindings, and to signpost them onward with links to authoritative online and print publications.
The database now exceeds 38,000 references, spanning 27,000 works in over 270 collections, all searchable by picture description as well as by place, date, accession number and other metadata. There is now better coverage of works all the way up to about 1900 CE; and the site is now able to present images for over 30% of all its entries.
IPP recently began a relationship with the University of Hamburg’s Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures that will enrich the database’s features and aims to extend the coverage of works published online as well as in print, especially including collections where Creative Commons, Public Domain or special permissions make it possible to display actual images. By the end of 2018, this already included digitised works from the British Library, Cambridge University Library, New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum fur Islamische Kunst, New York Public Library, Paris Bibliotheque Nationale, Royal Asiatic Society, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, and the Baltimore Walters Art Museum (with grateful acknowledgements).
2. The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture is pleased to invite applications for self-supported (unfunded) Associateships and for Harvard-funded Fellowships, to conduct advanced historical research in Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology at Harvard University.
AKPIA Associateships and Fellowships are intended principally for overseas scholars–preferably, but not exclusively, from Muslim countries–to support research in art and architectural history and archaeology. Our program’s Associateship and Fellowship positions are not intended to sponsor professional design, conservation, or urban development projects, nor are they intended to support research travel.
Recipients are expected to be in residence, except for one or two short research-related trips. Please note—we offer unfunded Associate positions, and a limited number of funded (or partially funded) Fellowships. We will consider applications of scholars who can provide partial funding, or who have no other outside funding. Application proposals may be for up to an entire academic year in duration.
DEADLINE All application materials must be received by April 1, 2019. Results will be announced by late May.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Please direct any inquiries about the AKPIA Associateships and Fellowships at Harvard University to agakhan@fas.harvard.edu.
For the AKPIA Associate/Fellowship Application form and further information, visit the AKPIA website: https://agakhan.fas.harvard.edu/fellowships-associateships
3. POS: Library of Congress, Chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division
https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/527677600
Open & closing dates
03/18/2019 to 04/18/2019
4. The international conference Le lingue islamiche will take place July 2-3, 2019 at Roma Tre University. The event is co-organized by Roma Tre University, The University of Naples “L’Orientale” and the Seminar für Semitistik und Arabistik – Freie Universität Berlin.
Abstracts for presentation (max 250 words, bibliography excluded) are welcome, and shall be sent to lingue.islamiche@uniroma3.it. The deadline for the submission is April 19, 2019. Notifications on accepted contributions shall be sent by May 5, 2019. Contributions in either English or French, official languages of the conference together with Italian, are strongly encouraged.
Conference topics are inspired by Bausani’s ideas on ‘Islamic languages’ as presented in his paper “Le lingue islamiche: interazioni e acculturazioni” (in Bausani A., Scarcia Amoretti B., (eds.), Il mondo islamico tra interazione e acculturazione, Roma, Istituto di Studi Islamici, 1981, pp. 3-19). Bausani presents the category of ‘Islamic languages’, defined as the functional system(s) arising in a number of Islamicate societies through simultaneous—often specialized—use of genetically distinct languages by the same speakers and authors.
In Bausani’s own words: “a typological system to which the concept of ‘Islamic languages’ can meaningfully be applied is based on cultural superstrata or ethnolinguistic substrata, where cultural, rather than linguistic, considerations hold. […] the concept of Islamic languages is close (although by no means identical) to what justify talking about ‘Balkanic languages’ notwithstanding the diverse genealogy of languages in the Balkan area. The issue of the importance of a cultivated linguistic superstratum, and therefore of the non-ethnic unity of all Islamic languages […] is doubtless present, at least potentially, in the conscience of Muslim peoples.”
Read more at http://host.uniroma3.it/docenti/lancioni/lli/ or contact us at lingue.islamiche@uniroma3.it
5. XXIème Journée Monde Iranien
22 mars 2019
Auditorium du Pôle Langues et Civilisations
Inalco, 65 rue des Grands Moulins 75013, Paris
Organisation
Oliver Bast (Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 / Mondes iranien et indien)
Full programme at:
6. Call for Papers: “The Efficacy of Financial Structures for Islamic Taxes and Dues”
The 7th Annual Contemporary Fiqhī Issues Workshop
4th – 5th July 2019, at Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham, UK
Islam has institutionalised, endorsed, and at times even enforced different forms of paying dues with the objective of providing for different categories of social or individual needs and requirements. Both mandatory and recommended categories of taxes and dues that Islam promotes are classified under the generic title of ṣadaqāt, which include zakāt, khums, fidya, kaffāra, fiṭra, waqf etc.
In the contemporary age, Muslims reside in an array of governing models (from Islamic government models to secular states) and this raises important questions relating to the efficacy and the potential for the evolution of financial institutions for Islamic taxes and dues. These questions are pertinent for Muslims living in the West, wherein they are already subject to mandatory dues or state taxation structures, which are levied irrespective of a person’s religious identity.
The 7th annual Fiqhī workshop at the Al-Mahdi Institute seeks to facilitate scholarship by directly addressing questions that analyse the origins, current structures and further development of financial institutions for Islamic dues. The workshop encourages, and invites, paper proposals that survey at least one of the following areas:
- Historical and contextual studies regarding financial institutions for taxes and dues that were institutionalised and endorsed by Islam, and their efficacy for past and present Muslim societies.
- Critical analysis of textual and theological foundations used to derive rulings about financial institutions for Islamic taxes and dues.
- (Re)assessing potential developments in jurisprudential and theological approaches, affecting prospective efficacy of Islamic taxes and dues.
- Empirical research analysing grassroot performances and acceptance of financial institutions for Islamic taxes and dues. In particular, examining how taxes, dues and charity (ṣadaqa) are channelled through religious authority structures and their impact upon the ultimate beneficiaries.
The workshop is pleased to host presenters from both traditional seminary and academic backgrounds, presenting from a range of disciplines. As has become an effective format in our previous annual workshops, the Fiqhī debates will be positioned alongside contributions from broader theological, historical and anthropological approaches – thereby enriching a multidisciplinary understanding of contemporary outlooks dealing with theefficacy of financial structures for Islamic taxes and dues. Details of previous workshops held at AMI can be viewed here.. https://www.almahdi.edu/contemporary-fiqhi-issues-workshops/
Proposals for a single presenter should include the following:
- Contact information, and a brief bio of presenter
- Tentative title
- Abstract(s) (400-word limit)
The deadline for submission of proposals is 15th May 2019. Successful applicants will be notified by 22nd May 2019.
Accepted applicants from within the E.U. will be supported for their travel and hospitality during the workshop, with a further limited number of travel bursaries available for those applying from outside the E.U.
Proposals and queries should be sent by e-mail to: Muhammed Reza Tajri at tajrim@almahdi.edu
7. The Council For British Research in the Levant (CBRL) is pleased to announce our undergraduate dissertation* prizes for dissertations on topics relating to the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Israel, Palestine and Jordan), ancient or modern, for the academic year 2019:
- Levantine archaeology or history: the CBRL Prize for a final-year undergraduate dissertation, or major research paper
- Contemporary Levantine studies: the CBRL Prize for a final-year undergraduate dissertation, or major research paper
(*major final-year research papers are acceptable from departments where there is no dissertation.)
Please find more information on the prizes, including how to nominate dissertations from your department at this site: http://cbrl.ac.uk/news/item/name/2019-undergraduate-dissertations-prizes-in-levantine-studies
We would be very grateful if you would bring this to the attention of undergraduate degree exam boards this summer and to staff who are examining undergraduate dissertations on topics relating to the Levant.
With thanks and very best wishes,
The team at CBRL
8. 2019 Symposium: Death and Dying in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Friday & Saturday
April 5-6
Great Room, International House (1623 Melrose Ave.)
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Click here to view a PDF version of the full 2019 Symposium program:
https://marco.utk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeathDyingProgram2019.pdf
9. Call for Papers
Arabic Pasts: Histories and Historiographies
18-19 October 2019
This annual exploratory and informal workshop offers the opportunity to reflect on methodologies, research agendas, and case studies for investigating history writing in Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa in any period from the seventh century to the present
We are interested in papers that consider the practical and conceptual challenges of working on history writing in the region. Papers might elucidate the following sorts of questions:
- Through what practices of writing or otherwise encoding the past and of remembering and forgetting, have different groups in the Middle East and North Africa viewed their pasts?
- At different times and places, how have the significant contours, events and actors in their histories been seen? Was the significant past the same for court historians as for literary historians; for bureaucrats as for the military; for Sufis as for Muslim lawyers and Traditionists?
- How did non-Muslims and Muslims, men and women, adherents of different sectarian or juristic traditions, or speakers of different languages, within societies that became “Islamic” imagine the shape and meaning of their specific societies’ own pasts, and their relation to the universal history of the Islamic community?
- How have urban and rural people, workers and peasants, the religiously educated and the technocratic elite, developed different ways of writing, remembering, or commemorating particular events in, or the broad sweep of, local, national, or “Islamic” history?
- In what ways do educational institutions, museums, media organisations and proponents of heritage use history writing in Arabic to shape loyalties and senses of belonging in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe?
Contributions are invited from scholars at all career levels, addressing any period and any part of the Middle East and North Africa, broadly defined.
Arabic Pasts is co-organised by Sarah Bowen Savant (AKU-ISMC), Hugh Kennedy (SOAS) and James McDougall (Oxford).
Please send by 3 April an abstract of 300 words or less to sarah.savant@aku.edu. There is a small budget to provide some travel assistance for scholars outside of London.
Time and Venue
18-19 October 2019
Atrium Conference Room,
Aga Khan Centre,
10 Handyside Street,
London N1C 4DN
Booking
This event is free but booking is essential. Book your place soon.
10. I am very pleased to announce the online release of our digital edition of the ʿAyn al-Naẓar, a short Arabic treatise by Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ashraf al-Ḥusaynī al-Samarqandī (d. 722/1322) on three logical relationships essential to dialectical disputation. Collated from two manuscript witnesses held by the British Library, the edition is accompanied by an Introduction, Glossary, and Guide; and its features, accessed by hovering over the Arabic text or clicking on buttons, include line-by-line English translations, with glossary-linked Arabic terms; full critical apparatus for variants, scribal additions, substitutions, corrections, etc.; short glosses from the manuscript margins; and magnifiable folio images of one of the original manuscripts.
As co-creator Dr. Frederik Elwert explains: “A digital edition is not only an edition that is available online, it represents also a different approach to the very act of scholarly editing. As such, the edition consists of two parts: An XML file following the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative which captures scholarly statements about the text, and a rule set that converts these abstract statements into a navigable web page.”
The online edition is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, and is hosted by the Digital Humanities at the Center for Religious Studies (DH@CERES), Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Links to the project description and the digital edition itself are below. Feedback is welcomed, and we ask that you kindly disseminate this announcement to any who might find it of interest.
Digital Edition:
https://pages.ceres.rub.de/ayn-al-nazar/
Project Description:
https://dh.ceres.rub.de/en/projects/project/ayn-al-nazar/
—————————————-
Dr. Walter Edward Young
MA, PhD Islamic Studies
https://mcgill.academia.edu/WalterEdwardYoung
Society for the Study of Islamicate Dialectical Disputation
https://ssidd.org/
11. The Alwaleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh is pleased to announce the launch of a free 5-week online course entitled “The Sharia and Islamic Law: An Introduction”.
The course begins on 6th May, but prospective students can now sign-up via the course homepage: www.futurelearn.com/courses/an-introduction-to-the-sharia-and-islamic-law
Delivered via the FutureLearn platform, this groundbreaking course will explore some of the diverse roles that the Sharia and Islamic law have played in Muslim life, both historically and today, encouraging students to think critically about the nature of religious law and its many manifestations.
12. Call for Paper Proposals: The 3rd Great Lakes Adiban Workshop at IU Bloomington
The Great Lakes Adiban Society (GLAS) invites submissions for its third annual workshop, scheduled to take place at Indiana University Bloomington, on September 28–29, 2019. We welcome papers that are works in progress and would benefit from extensive discussion and feedback, and especially encourage graduate students to participate.
The Society aims to provide a regional forum for scholars of Islamicate adab, particularly of the medieval and early modern periods, to meet and share their work. We leave our parameters of language and genre intentionally open in order to invite as wide a collaboration as can be useful, but as a group we are generally interested in the literary production of the broad complex of premodern Muslim societies across the Eastern Hemisphere. This naturally includes the major Islamicate languages of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, as well as many others (Armenian, Georgian, Hebrew, Spanish, etc.) that participate in similar literary conventions.
Those who wish to participate can apply by filling out our online application at tinyurl.com/GLAS2019 by June 21, 2019. Please note that each accepted participant will be given 45 minutes to present and discuss their work; because of this, we have limited space and may have to turn down some submissions if we get too many. In such an event, preference will generally be given to scholars in the Great Lakes region, per the mission of this organization. While all participants are asked to cover the costs of travel and lodging, we will provide breakfasts, lunches, and at least one dinner over the course of the workshop. In addition, we hope to be able to offer small grants ($250) to offset graduate student travel expenses.
If you have any questions, please feel free to write Cameron Cross at kchalipa [at] umich.edu. We look forward to hearing from you!
Posted in: Academic items
- March 23, 2019
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