Shii News – Academic Items

1.The Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London, is organising online short course on “Decolonisation: Knowledge, Power, and Politics” by Dr Sanaa Alimia.

Decolonisation: Knowledge, Power, and Politics (Short Course)

In the twentieth century, anti-colonial and anti-racist movements in Asia, Africa, and the Americas appeared to be radically remaking the modern world. Yet the creation of new and politically independent nation-states was only one stage of decolonisation. The configuration of global power is still unequal. The ways in which we think and engage in the world continue to be marked by a colonial past and present. Yet alternative possibilities have been and are being imagined and practiced.

Situated across the disciplines of Politics, History, and Sociology this introductory course examines the unfinished business of decolonisation. The course will:

1. Introduce students to key ideas in decoloniality, post-colonialism, Marxism, gender, and ecological studies.
2. Analyse the historic contexts of political decolonisation.
3. Ask how are our everyday lives impacted by colonial legacies using the example of race, gender, and desire?

Download the Course Structure.

Learning Outcome

To understand how the current world system has developed over a period of 500 years of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation, making modernity and coloniality two sides of the same coin.

Course Convenor

Dr Sanaa Alimia is interested in analysing structures of power and how they play out in our everyday lives. Her first manuscript reconstructs microhistories of refugees, undocumented migrants, and low-income groups in Pakistan. An Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Sanaa Alimia holds a PhD from the Department of Politics and International Relations at SOAS, London where she also taught (2011-2014). She was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Peshawar (2013-2017) and a Research Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School for Muslim Societies, Freie Universität, Berlin (2014-2016) and Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin (2014-2019).

Some of the courses she has taught include:

• Understanding Frantz Fanon
• Global Racialised Migration in the 20th-to-21st Centuries
• The Politics of Modern Muslim Mobility
• Social Movements and Political Protest
• Urban Housing in the Global South
• Comparative Politics
• International Relations

  One-on-one Sessions

Interested participants are invited to arrange two individual one-on-one online sessions (each for 45 minutes). These can be used up to 8 weeks after the course has been delivered. They can discuss key texts, pieces of writing, or reflections in those sessions. These sessions must be booked in advance.

Course Preparation

Participants will be asked to listen to a 10-minute pre-recorded lecture before attending each session. They will also be asked to read a mixture of academic texts, poetry, political speeches, and news articles, and to listen to and/or watch songs, performances, and short visual clips.

Time 

28, 29 and 30 September 2020, 9.00-11.30

Tickets and Booking

£75.00 for professionals | £45.00 for students, AKU alumni, and AKU staff. Register as soon as possible.

*The course will be delivered via Zoom. Further details will be provided later upon registration. 

 

 

 

 

2. The HIAA-sponsored discussion of online resources for the teaching of Islamic art is now freely available at this URL:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSpDdDx7kmGgOEJy8WaNyv7LHI-zm-CA/view?usp=sharing

The discussion includes a synthesis of online resources by Christiane Gruber (University of Michigan), an exploration of museum online collections of Islamic art by Ruba Kana’an (University of Toronto, Mississauga), and an overview of Archnet by Michael Toler and Matt Saba (Archnet/MIT).

 

 

 

 

3. International Conference “Mapping South-South Connections: Networks, Alliances and New Actors on the International Scene during the Decolonization Process and Cold War in Latin America, Asia and Africa (1810–1990)”, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, 21–22 November 2020

This conference is organized in collaboration with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and aims to explore historical, political and cultural South-South connections from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Deadline for abstracts: 10 September 2020. Information: https://southsouthconnections.atu.ac.ir

 

 

 

 

4. Three Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships in Art and Humanities, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (2021-2023)

These fellowships foster the academic careers of scholars who have recently (since January 2020) received their Ph.D. degrees by permitting them to pursue their research while gaining mentored experience as teachers and members of the departments and/or programs in which they are housed, including Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies.

Deadline for applications: 15 September 2020.

Information: https://leslie.dartmouth.edu/opportunities/post-docs/mellon-postdoctoral-fellowships

 

 

 

 

 

5. Research Papers and Project Demos on “Jews, Christians, and Muslims as Colleagues and Collaborators in the Abbasid Near East” for Special Issue of “Medieval Worlds: Comparative & Interdisciplinary Studies”

Relevant topics: Surveys of trends in dynamics between scholars of different religious communities, illustrated by case studies or by quantitative approaches; Comparative studies of attitudes among different linguistic or religious communities (Arabic, Syriac, Greek; Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Samaritan); Network analysis involving relationships among people, places, or books; etc.

Abstract Deadline: 28 August 2020– Information: http://t.usaybia.net/forum2020/index.html

 

 

 

 

6. Resource: Academic Search-Engine of Free eJournals: JURN

JURN is a curated academic search-engine, which helps you find free academic articles and books. JURN harnesses all the power of Google, but focusses your search through a hand-crafted and curated index covering Social Sciences and Humanities, including Middle East Studies and selected university fulltext repositories as well as many additional ejournals in science, business and law.

Search millions of free academic articles, chapters and theses at www.jurn.org

 

 

 

 

7. New Methods in the Study of Islam

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Methods play a notable role in the scholarly cognition of available data and shape (and even direct) scholarly productions. In the study of religions, methods also highlight possible connections between various traditions by utilizing a multitude of socio-cultural, anthropological, legal, textual and other disciplinary approaches. When it comes to disclosing methods and methodologies, the study of Islam remains no exception. However, many in Islamic studies tend to employ established or classic methods that seemingly echo (neo-)orientalist and political inclinations. This volume seeks to offer an alternative, and we welcome new, innovative, and inter-/multi-disciplinary approaches. Framed boldly, we want to encourage new ways to think about and study Islam.

This call asks a set of broad questions: What are (the) new methods in the study of Islam? Can newer approaches to methods and methodologies provide different lenses to examine Islam and Islamic Studies? Can technology revolutionize our method and methodological preferences? Can textuality, once the dominant method, be replaced by non-textual methods to understand Islam and its relations with other religions? Can one theorize the ethics of method application in the study of Islam?

New Methods in the Study of Islam offers a modest proposal to discover new methods, methodologies and approaches that can be applied, utilized and conceived in the study of Islam and Islamic Studies. The volume also seeks to show how such methods and approaches help us understand Islam’s relationship to other religious traditions.

Potential themes in the volume include (but are not limited to) the following,

• The concept of New Method in the Study of Islam
• Method vs. Methodology in the Study of Islam
• Existing Paradigms in Methodological Study of Islam
• Decolonizing Methods/Methodologies in Islamic Studies
• Easternism, Westernism and Centrality in Methods
• Historicizing and Universalizing Methods in Islamic Studies
• Ethics of method production and application in the Study of Islam
• Evaluating and Assessing Established or Emerging Methods
• New Methods for Comparative Study of Islam and Other Religions

Scholars, researchers, and instructors are invited to send an abstract of their proposed chapters (max. 200 words) and a short bio-note to the editors, Abbas Aghdassi and Aaron W. Hughes before November 30, 2020.

Abstracts and subsequent chapters should be submitted in English.

Notification of abstract acceptance will be communicated by January 15, 2021. Following the notification, authors will be invited to submit their full chapter by April 30, 2021. Chapters would then undergo a review by the editors, at which point authors will be notified if revisions are required.

We plan to publish the volume in Brill’s Supplements to Theory and Method in the Study of Religion (SMTR).

Please, circulate this call. For any general queries, feel free to contact us at (aghdassi@um.ac.ir).

 

Editors                            Abbas Aghdassi, Ed., (aghdassi@um.ac.ir)

Aaron W. Hughes, Ed. (aaron.hughes@rochester.edu)

 

Abstract submission       Nov 30, 2020

Acceptance note            Jan 15, 2021

Chapter submission       Apr 30, 2021

Initial reviews                May 30, 2021

Revised chapter             June 30, 2021

 

CHAPTER FORMAT

The following format will help ensure coherence. A full chapter should be 6000-8000 words (approx.) including, reference, tables, figures etc.

 

TITLE	Clearly defined and relevant to the text
ABSTRACT	200 words
INTRODUCTION	750 words (approx.)
LITERATURE (context, concepts, methods)	1500 words (approx.)
DISCUSSION	3000 words (approx.)
CONCLUSION	500 words (approx.)
REFERENCES/CITATIONS	CHICAGO 17TH ed. (notes and bibliography***)
KEYWORDS	3-6 (required for indexing)
LANGUAGE	English U.S.

 

*** See this for some examples: https://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/c.php?g=508212&p=5426978

 

 

 

 

8. What’s wrong with talking about maps that we want to consider historically as “historical maps”?

https://www.mappingasprocess.net/blog/2020/8/13/rehabilitating-historica…

 

 

 

9. The Great Lakes Adiban Workshop will take place on Zoom on September 5-6, 2020. The workshop will feature two roundtable discussions and eight presentations by both veterans of our workshops and newcomers, ranging across Arabic, Persian, and Urdu literature, from the 3rd/9th century to the 14th/20th. The schedule is available on our website (https://greatlakesadiban.github.io/), along with further information about GLAS.

 

Attendance is free and open, but we do ask that all participants register through this link: https://forms.gle/pDV2V59N1Mn9nHmG9. Please register by Friday, August 21st so that we can ensure full participation, and please contact the organizers if you require accommodations or have further questions.

 

Posted in: Academic items