Shii News – Academic Items

 

1.Position in Islamic Studies

Harvard University’s Faculty of Divinity seeks to make a full-time, tenure track appointment in Islamic Studies. We are particularly interested in a candidate with scholarly expertise either in: Islam in the Americas, Islam in Southeast Asia, or Quranic Studies. The candidate should be competent in the appropriate research languages and conversant with the broader, global history of Islamic religion and culture.

This is a tenure track position. The successful candidate will work closely with students in the Divinity School’s masters programs and the doctoral program in the Study of Religion. It is likely they will also teach undergraduates in the Comparative Study of Religion and graduate students in related departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It is expected that this scholar will be in conversation with those in other programs and schools at Harvard critical to Islamic Studies. Openness to our growing program in ministry studies in Islam will be an advantage.

Applicants should also be able to contribute to the Divinity School’s degree programs, including its multi-religious Master of Divinity program, and be familiar with forms of analysis that address race, gender, and social location. The doctoral degree must be held by June 30, 2020.

Applications should be made online at: http://academicpositions.harvard.edu . A CV, cover letter, writing sample, and the names of three references whom the School may wish to contact will be required of all candidates. Review of applications will begin in September 2019 and continue until the position is filled. Selected candidates may be invited to initial interviews at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, this coming November.

Letters of nomination are also welcome and should be sent to: Islamic Studies Search Committee, c/o Faculty Search Office, Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Divinity Hall 417, Cambridge, MA, 02138, or to islamicsearch@hds.harvard.edu . Applicants should address any questions regarding the position itself or the online application system to the Office of Academic Affairs at islamicsearch@hds.harvard.edu .

 

 

2. Viola ALLEGRANZI, Aux sources de la poésie ghaznavide. Les inscriptions persanes de Ghazni (Afghanistan, XI-XIIe siècles, 2 vols., Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2019. (ISBN: 978-2-87854-981-2)

Here in the link to PSN webpage with more information on the book (in French and in English): http://psn.univ-paris3.fr/ouvrage/aux-sources-de-la-poesie-ghaznavide-les-inscriptions-persanes-de-ghazni-afghanistan-xi-xiie-siecles#

 

 

 

3. CfP: CIWAS (The Centre for Islamic and West Asian Studies) Third Annual Conference

‘Urban Islam: Muslim Minorities, Identity and Tradition in West Asian, South Asian, and African Cities’

19 February, 2020

Royal Holloway,

University of London

 

Deadine for abstracts: 4 October, 2019.

 

Full details at:

http://ciwas.net/upcoming-events-2/

 

 

 

 

4. Mosques: The 100 Most Iconic Islamic Houses of Worship

Bernard O’Kane is Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo, where he has been teaching since 1980.

He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Timurid Architecture in Khurasan (1987), Studies in Persian Art and Architecture (1995), Early Persian Painting: Kalila and Dimna Manuscripts of the Late Fourteenth Century (2003), The World of Islamic Art (2007), The Appearance of Persian on Islamic Art (2009), The Illustrated Guide to the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo (2012) and The Mosques of Egypt (2016).

https://www.assouline.com/products/mosque-ultimate

 

 

 

 

5. Materials and Technologies in the Age of Transition: The Byzantine, Sasanian and Islamic Near East

Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 10–11 July 2019

Organisers: Moujan Matin (moujan.matin@wolfson.ox.ac.uk) and Alain George (alain.george@orinst.ox.ac.uk)

For registration please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/materials-and-technologies-in-the-age-of-transition-the-byz…

Between the late seventh century and the so-called Golden Age of Islam in the ninth to tenth centuries, the patronage of Islamic courts promoted the establishment of learned circles, observatories and semi-public libraries, the conduct of scientific research, and a translation movement from Greek and Sanskrit into Arabic. Various aspects of the transmission of knowledge in this period and the development of more abstract sciences of mathematics and astronomy, as well as medicine, have been discussed in the scholarly literature. However, very little is known about the development of materials technologies in this period, such as metalwork, ceramics, glass, manuscripts, textiles and cosmetics, that originated in the experimentation and hands-on knowledge of miners, smiths, scribes, potters and other craftsmen. Scientific analyses of archaeological materials in recent decades have produced a large body of scientific data on methods of production and technological links. Despite their crucial importance, these archaeological scientific projects tend to focus on only one type of material – e.g. metalwork, or pottery – and hence fail to provide a broader historical perspective on the development and spread of technologies and the cross-technology interactions. This symposium will provide a rare occasion to bring together historians and researchers engaged in scientific study of different materials, and to help transform their respective outlooks on the Byzantine-Islamic transition in different artistic media. This one-and-a-half-day symposium will be divided into six sessions:

 

 

 

 

6. 12th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age

November 21-23, 2019

Hooking Up

In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce the 12th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age, Hooking Up.

The concept of linked open data is the holy grail of the digital humanities. Yet the problem of how to link information across platforms has existed since civilization began. As knowledge and learning expanded in pre-modern society, the problems associated with collecting, combining, and disseminating information inspired new approaches to and technologies for the material text. In the internet age, we continue to grapple with the same problems and issues. While technologies have changed, the questions remain the same.

This year’s symposium explores the connections between historic and current approaches to data linkage in regard to manuscripts and manuscript research. Hooking Up addresses the topic from a variety of angles and considers how the manuscript book operates as a vehicle for information retrieval and dissemination from the technology of the page and the textual apparatus of a book, to the library, and finally, the internet. We will also consider such questions as how medieval practices of memory shaped information retrieval and gathering, how did the technology of the manuscripts book—in all its many forms—facilitate or hinder information processing, how can medieval solutions inform modern technologies, and how do modern technologies illuminate medieval practices? The program will also feature sessions highlighting projects that are advancing linked data technologies for manuscript researchers, including the T-AP Digging Into Data Challenge project Mapping Manuscript Migrations.

The program will begin Thursday evening, November 21, 5:00 pm, at the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Parkway Central Library, with a keynote address by Professor Mary Carruthers, New York University, and All Souls College, Oxford University. The symposium will continue November 22nd-23rd at the Kislak Center of Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania.

Other speakers include:

• Benjamin L. Albritton, Stanford Libraries
• Toby Burrows, e-Research Centre, Oxford University,
• Matthew Driscoll, University of Copenhagen
• Christoph Flüeler, University of Fribourg
• Katarzyna Anna Kapitan, University of Copenhagen
• Mikko Koho, Aalto University
• Megan C. McNamee, Warburg Institute
• Aylin Malcolm, University of Pennsylvania
• Sally Ragep, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University
• Helmut Reimitz, Princeton University
• Linda Safran, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto
• Elly Truitt, Bryn Mawr College
• Kelly Tuttle, University of Pennsylvania Libraries
• Athanasios Velios, Ligatus, University of the Arts London
• Hanno Wijsman, Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes
• Jeffrey Witt, Loyola University Maryland
• Elizabeth Yale, University of Iowa
• Kıvılcım Yavuz, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas

For more information, go to http://www.library.upenn.edu/about/exhibits-events/ljs-symposium12. Registration opens in September 2019.

 

 

 

 

7. CFP:  “Acts of Excommunication” in the Late Antique and Early Islamicate Middle East. March 12-13, 2020, Leiden University

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 dynamics implicit in the act of excommunication and associated practices: ostracism, anathema, and other forms of religio-social exclusion, among the major religious communities of the Islamicate world, 600-1200 CE: including various Christian and Jewish denominations, Sunni, Shiʿi, ‘Khārijī’ and other groups within Islam; Zoroastrians and other relevant groups.

The workshop will focus on “acts of excommunication”, meaning that its primary focus will be specific cases, whether real or imagined, which display the dynamics and implications of excommunicatory practices. The discussion of specifc (pseudo-) documents is particularly encouraged. While participants will be asked to focus on specific cases, they should show how these examples illuminate the larger frameworks within which their cases occurred.

Topics to be covered might include the following:

• Excommunicatory statements in contracts and oaths
• Excommunication as a tool in managing institutional hierarchies and hierocracies
• Maximal and minimalist excommunication
• Exclusions from ritual, social activities, trade, place and space
• Political rebels
• Overlapping or contested jurisdictions
• Enforcement issues
• Excommunication at centre and periphery
• Conversion and apostasy

Aims of the workshop

Scholars of Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam often study excommunication in separate silos, developing separate vocabularies and models. However, during the early Islamic period, these communities shared space and ideas. When compared, various contexts (theology, ritual, eschatology, social mores) indicate isomorphisms which suggest that different religious communities were as connected as they were divided.

Excommunication is a tool of coercion, and as such, it deserves to be studied in comparative context which might highlight the operation of intersecting power dynamics in society.

This workshop aims to move beyond the idea that acts of excommunication were purely the result of theological issues. Instead, this workshop aims to explore acts of excommunication as social and political as well as religious practice, with important implications for activities in local communities, but also for interactions with wider society and with governing authorities within the early Islamic empire.

While the theological, doctrinal and legal backdrop are important, an act of excommunication does not simply flow from the conceptual force of a doctrinal transgression, but rather the act is situated within a set of overlapping fields which may include economic, institutional, familial, political, ethnic, linguistic and generational aspects. These fields, in turn, contributed to how an act of excommunication came to be interpreted and positioned within evolving systems of law, theology and doctrine.

Format and logistics

The workshop will take place Thurs 12-Fri 13 March , 2020, Leiden University

The output of this workshop will be an open-access special issue on the topic of excommunication in and around the early Islamicate empire, to be published in Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists ( http://islamichistorycommons.org/mem/al-usur-al-wusta/).

Contributions to this workshop will be understood to be works in progress, with final versions to be submitted for the special issue.

Please send an abstracts of around 300 words to e.p.hayes@hum.leidenuniv.nl by October 1^st, 2019.

Pre-circulation of papers will not be necessary, but final versions of papers for publication will be requested by September 2020.

If you are unable to attend the workshop, but would be interested in submitting to the special issue, please indicate this.

Subsidies will be available for travel and accommodation.

 

https://emco.hcommons.org/

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/research/research-projects/humanities/embedding-conquest#tab-1

 

 

Posted in: Academic items