Shii News – Academic Items
1.Postponed: Seventh Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies, scheduled to be held in Nicosia, Cyprus, July 2–4, 2020, will be postponed, not cancelled. All being well, the conference will be held in the same location July 1–3, 2021. The accompanying intensive course will be held June 28–30, 2021, and the trip to visit Famagusta will follow the end of the conference on July 4, 2021.
More information will be available on the official website of the SMS: https://mamluk.uchicago.edu/school-of-mamluk-studies.html.
2. ‘Why Religious People Support Ethnic Insurgency? Kurds, Religion and Support for the PKK’
E. Karakoc, Z. Sarigil
3. Digitised East India Company ships’ journals and related records
British Library
4. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology:
(Contact Persons: Prof. Mira Sievers / Prof. Serdar Kurnaz)
Two PhD positions, limited to three years
Application deadline: 02.06.2020
- https://www.personalabteilung.hu-berlin.de/de/stellenausschreibungen/research-assistant-all-genders-welcome-with-1-2-part-time-employment-e-13-tv-l-hu-for-a-limited-period-of-3-years
- https://www.personalabteilung.hu-berlin.de/de/stellenausschreibungen/research-assistant-all-genders-welcome-with-1-2-part-time-employment-e-13-tv-l-hu-for-a-limited-period-of-3-years-1
5. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Institute for the Study of Islamic Culture and Religion:
(Contact Person: Prof. Rana Alsoufi)
Two research fellow positions, limited to two years
Application deadline (extended): 29.05.2020
6. Ristow Prize in the history of cartography–June 1, 2020 deadline
Students of the history of cartography are invited to submit papers for the 2020 Ristow Prize competition. Undergraduate, graduate, and first-year postdoctoral students of any nationality are eligible to compete. Papers must be in English, not exceeding 7500 words, and should be submitted digitally as a PDF document to kaparker18th@gmail.com by 1 June 2020. Appropriate illustrations, especially maps, are encouraged. The winning essay will receive a cash prize of $1000 USD and will be published in The Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The prize, named in honor of the late Dr. Walter W. Ristow, is sponsored by the Washington Map Society of Washington, D. C. For more information, including a list of previous winners, go to the website www.WashMapSociety.org or contact Dr. Katherine Parker at kaparker18th@gmail.com.
7. The University of Hamburg’s Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and Islamic Painted Page are happy to announce the launch of a new online facility, specifically to assist Qur’an manuscript scholars and researchers.
The database at www.islamicpaintedpage.com now has a new “Qur’an Details” search page, which allows scholars to search among 4,700 detailed entries for historically interesting Qur’an pages, spanning 110 collections from all over the world, and representing all eras and all places of production. Using this facility, scholars can make specialist searches for terms including
- Qur’an page description (type of illumination, decoration or binding),
- Qur’an type (fragment, Juz etc.),
- Qur’an Sura reference,
- Script (kufic, naskh, etc.),
- Number of lines per page,
- Page size (height and width),
- Qur’an name (e.g. Oljaytu’s Baghdad Qurʼan), and
- Calligrapher name.
This is in addition to all the standard search parameters such as date and place of production, holding collection, accession number and folio, and full publication details. The data covers items published online as well as in print and includes bindings. Search results include images for about 20% of the entries.
Meanwhile the website’s existing “Main search” page remains unchanged and now offers access to all 48,000 entries in the site’s overall database, which covers published Islamic manuscript miniatures, illuminations, bindings and other painted works, as well as the Qur’an entries, from over 300 collections worldwide. At present the site is able to display images for about 50% of the overall database, and supportive item-specific links are also provided to VIAF, WORLDCAT and FIHRIST.
The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures aims to enable the continued development of the Islamic Painted Page database, and the site is hosted and supported by the University of Hamburg. We hope that the new facility will assist Qur’an scholars and their work. We also invite and warmly welcome feedback as well as any suggestions for future developments,
Stephen Serpell
Islamic Painted Page & Research Associate,
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC),
University of Hamburg
e-Mail: stephen.serpell@uni-hamburg.de
8. Qur’anic Matters, Material Mediations and Religious Practice in Egypt
N. Suit
Qur’anic Matters spans the time between two important technological shifts-the introduction of printed Qur’anic books in Egypt in the early nineteenth century and the digitization of the Qur’an almost two centuries later. Throughout, Natalia Suit weaves together the theological, legal, economic, and social “presences” of the Qur’anic books into a single account. She argues that the message and the materiality of the object are not separate from each other, nor are they separate from the human bodies with which they come in contact.
9. OPEN CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTER CONTRIBUTIONS
Handbook on Islamic Environmental Law
Editors: Nadia Ahmad, Saba Kareemi, and Oluwakemi Ayanleye
Islamic Environmental Law is simultaneously a classical legal framework and contemporary approach for environmental protection, human rights, and an earth-centered jurisprudence. This area of the law, while nascent in many respects, but developed in others, may be able to reconcile many global environmental challenges and corporate disputes; disputes that emerge from human and commercial interactions with nature along with the tensions between the Global North and Muslim-majority countries in the Global South due to scarce natural resources.
The book develops the synergies between Islamic Law, Environmental Law, and Corporate Social Responsibility to situate the concern of environmental degradation looking at regional, transboundary and global disputes between the state, corporate actors, and stakeholders. This book will lay the foundations of Islamic thought related to environmental protection, air quality control, and water rights. Through the lens of environmental law, the work will broaden the framework for Islamic law and critique political and economic dynamics in Muslim-majority countries that give rise to increased levels of environmental toxicity, hazardous waste, water stress, and rampant extractivism. This collection examines these concerns in terms of rigidities and interdependencies, between competing claims to resources, rights and responsibilities, strategy and governance, between state and corporate actors, and the implications for equity and the common good over the long term.
The book explores three jurisprudential features of classical Islamic thought and integrates them with a contemporary formulation for environmental protection: 1) Taharah – Cleanliness of the Earth; 2) Hurmah – Sanctity of Life; and 3) Waqf – Endowed Future. The majority of research on Islamic Environmental Law has thus far focused on the field as the unit of analysis, set within a developed Islamic Law framework. Less examined is the ongoing debate within Muslim-majority countries in the Global South (on pragmatic and ideological grounds) about whether environmental legal constructs are a function of an Earth-centered approach to jurisprudence. There is a desire for self-determination and sovereignty, which is wedged between the harnessing and extracting of scarce human, natural, and financial resources, and a desire to contextualize the responsibilities and duties of Investor and Host Nations in the Islamic Environmental Law framework.
There is also a desire to consider the significance of stakeholders in the national and subnational legal constructs as agents of environmental innovation, compliance, and enforcement. To what extent have faith-based approaches to environmental protection worked to achieve and enhance efforts at sustainability? What is the possibility of Islamic Environmental Law as an alternative legal framework to aspire to sustainability?
This book will be a valuable resource to researchers, professors, lecturers, practitioners, postgraduate and final year undergraduates in environmental studies, environmental law, international relations, area studies, business strategy, international business and international management, public sector policy and management, international development, political economy. It is also suitable for more specialist courses on sustainability, corporate responsibility, governance, international development, Islamic law, water law, and transboundary disputes.
We seek contributions that provide theoretical and empirical perspectives on these issues from scholars around the globe, in any relevant discipline and at any career stage.
Handbook is organized by section, around the following key topics:
1) A Historico-Legal Trajectory of Islamic Environmental Law
2) Challenging Existing Environmental Law Paradigm
3) Reconciling Islamic Customs and Norms
4) Corporate Actors and Sustainability for a Faith-Based Approach
Authors’ Instructions
Interested colleagues are requested to submit extended abstracts of 400-500 words by June 15, 2020. Please indicate which of the sections above you see as the best fit for your contribution. Contributions should be no more than 8,000 words. Please direct all submissions to nahmad@barry.edu.
Decisions regarding abstracts will be communicated by late June 2020.
Timeline for completion of papers:
- First draft of papers due by September 2020
- Final revised pieces received and edited late 2020
- Plan to submit final manuscript in spring 2021
10. MESA Undergraduate Research Workshop of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), Washington, DC, 10 October 2020
The workshop is an opportunity for students in any academic discipline with a focus on the Middle East to present their research in conjunction with MESA’s annual meeting.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 June 2020. Information: https://mesana.org/annual-meeting/undergraduate-workshop
11. 5th Annual International Conference of the Gulf Studies Centre: “Social Change in the Gulf Societies in the 21st Century, Qatar University, 11–12 November 2020
This conference aims to explore the role of economic transformation, education, social media, migration, and urbanization in the social changes in the Gulf societies, with a focus on their directions, magnitudes, and relevant policy options.
Deadline for abstracts extended: 30 June 2020. Information: http://www.qu.edu.qa/research/gulfstudies-center/events/Social-Change-in-the-Gulf-Societies-in-the-21st-Century
12. Two Workshops on „Jews in the Muslim World: Histories, Memories, and Narratives“, Penn State (February 2021) and Ben Gurion University (June 2021)
Proposals are invited on histories, memories, and narratives about Jews in the Middle East in the 20th and 21st centuries in order to counter the broad narratives that lament the end of Jewish existence in the Middle East and the Muslim World and promote a one-dimensional understanding of the Jewish experience in the recent century and a half.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 June 2020. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/6151424/jews-muslim-world-histories-memories-and-narratives
13. 7th Regional Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS), University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 24-27 June 2021
We invite submissions relating to all aspects of humanities and social science scholarship. The geographic domain of Central Eurasia encompasses Central Asia, the Caucasus, Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, Mongolia, Siberia, Inner Asia, the Black Sea region, the Volga region, and East and Central Europe.
Deadline for abstracts: Early 2021. Information: https://www.centraleurasia.org/conferences/regional/
14. Professor (W1, Tenure Track) of the History of the Medieval Middle East and the Mediterranean (7th-15th Century), University of Tübingen
Requirements: Completed doctorate which demonstrates potential for outstanding publications in leading international journals; teaching experience; ability to read historical sources in at least two different languages (Greek, Arabic, Syrian, Persian, Coptic, etc.).
Deadline for applications: 29 June 2020. Information: https://mailchi.mp/mediterraneanseminar/job-history-of-the-medieval-middle-east-and-the-mediterranean-tbingen?e=82aeb6c61d
15. Fellowships for Research about Oman, Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center
The fellowship is open to PhD candidates and university academics who are US citizens or affiliated with an American university, and funds one scholar or team of scholars to carry out research in Oman each year. The fellowship awards up to $51,000 for the fellow or team of fellows.
Deadline for applications: 15 September 2020.
Information: https://www.sqcc.org/Scholarships-0024-Fellowships/Research-Fellowship-Program.aspx
16. Posts:
Lecturers in Middle East and South Asia Studies, University of California Davis
The Middle East/South Asia Studies Program seeks instructors for lecturer positions in the broad areas of Middle East studies and South Asia studies, pending administrative approval and funding, for the academic year 2020-2021. Demonstrated experience in teaching and advanced degree in the specific language or related discipline is desirable.
Deadline for applications: 22 May 2020.
Information: https://professorpositions.com/lecturer-in-middle-east-south-asia-studies,i9140.html
Lecturers in Arabic, Hebrew and Persian, University of California Davis
Demonstrated experience in teaching and advanced degree in the specific language or related discipline is desirable.
Deadline for applications: 22 May 2020.
Information: https://professorpositions.com/lecturer-in-middle-east-south-asia-languages,i9032.html
Lecturer in Turkish Language, University of California Los Angeles
The candidate must have experience teaching Turkish language courses at the university level. A Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages or related field is required.
Deadline for applications: 1 June 2020.
Information: https://professorpositions.com/lecturer-in-turkish-language,i8989.html
Eastern Armenian Language Lecturer, University of California Los Angeles
The candidate must have experience teaching Armenian language courses at the university level. A Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages or related field is required.
Deadline for applications: 1 June 2020.
Information: https://professorpositions.com/lecturer-in-eastern-armenian-language,i8988.html
17. Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Awards Offered by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA)
Students completing their dissertations between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 may submit entries for the 2020 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Awards. Winner in each category (social sciences and humanities) is awarded $1000.
Submission deadline: 1 July 2020.
Information: https://mesana.org/awards/category/malcolm-h-kerr-dissertation-awards/kerr-guidelines
18. Graduate Student Article Prize of the “Women Historians of the Middle East (WHOME)“
Applications and nominations are invited for the annual prize for the best article about Middle Eastern history written by a female-identifying graduate student (Masters or PhD).
Deadline for applications: 1 July 2020. Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/8378/discussions/6152822/whome-graduate-student-article-prize-call-applications-and
19. TOMidEast Summer School: “Understanding the Middle East: Dis(order) in the Middle East: Space, Power and Politics “, University of Torino, 22-27 June 2020
The aim is to critically deconstruct the relationship between space and politics by exploring the role they have played not only in redefining the boundaries of sovereignty and power, but also of socio-cultural and economic identities and assets.
Deadline for registration: 2 June 2020. Information: http://www.to-asia.it/to-mideast/
20. New Book Series “Worlding the Middle East“ (Stanford University Press)
Books in this series engage in three areas: Rule: Who rules, who is ruled, and how has this dynamic been contested over time? – Resilience: How do contemporary issues like climate, energy, and health shape social, economic, and political life? – Religion: How do religious perceptions and beliefs (or a lack thereof) shape social life throughout the region and around the world?
Information: https://cmes.berkeley.edu/worlding-middle-east-book-series
Posted in: Academic items
- May 19, 2020
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