Shii News – Academic Items

1.Call for Proposals, CAA 2021

The Classical is Political

109TH CAA (College Art Association of America, Inc.) ANNUAL CONFERENCE

New York City, February 10–13, 2021

‪Since the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the modern nation has defined state identity in the present by redefining its ties to the distant past. No longer an historical—or art historical—given, the temporal, geographic, and ethnic construction of “the classical” became a function of the particular geo-political ambitions of the nation state. Throughout the late modern period, the territorial claims of imperialist nations were motivated by notions of ethnic and cultural lineage connecting occupying powers to the classical pasts of occupied lands. Meanwhile, some countries looked to notions of local classical history to define their distinct cultural identities as defense against the incursions of imperialist powers. The classical remains the subject of contestation in the contemporary. Whereas the right mobilizes classical aesthetics as the language of reactionary nostalgia, the left appropriates these forms as a vehicle for staging progressive positions on discourses on race, gender, religion and disability.

‪We solicit papers, focusing on a range of geographic and cultural localities, which examine the conflicts surrounding the construction of the classical. How and when did definitions of “the classical” take hold? How are claims on the classical past mobilized and what role has art and architecture played in these claims? What types of trans-cultural influences and hybrid cultural forms do definitions of the classical aim to distill or purify? How has the rise of post-colonial theory de-centered hegemonic constructs of the classical?

Please send your proposal, including the completed proposal form, title, 250 words (max.) abstract, 2-page CV, as well as a short statement explaining why your proposal would be a good fit for this panel: titrand@buffalo.edu and beringol@buffalo.edu. We encourage early submissions, and we can only consider proposals received on or before Sept. 16, 2020. Please note that panel participants must be active CAA members at the time of selection.

https://caa.confex.com/caa/2021/webprogrampreliminary/Session7906.html?fbclid=IwAR2yo-Biu-WgKsefszlpjBkHrVqzb2DMpvBfd8wIuf_4tRmhEDGw_WCKQC4

2. Islamic Manuscripts of Late Medieval Rum, 1270s-1370s: Production, Patronage and the Arts of the Book (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) – C. Jackson

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-islamic-manuscripts-of-late-medieval-rum-1270s-1370s-hb.html

3. The Armenian School of Languages and Cultures – ASPIRANTUM is inviting you to apply and participate in the “Learn Persian through the Shahname” online course.

You may find the details about this course and apply through this link: https://aspirantum.com/courses/learn-persian-through-shahname

The syllabus of the course is available here: https://aspirantum.com/curriculum/learning-persian-through-shahname-syllabus

4. Association for Iranian Studies 2020 awardees:

AIS Lifetime Achievement Award:

Emerita Professor Erika Friedl, Western Michigan University

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Mehrdad Mashayekhi Dissertation Award

Winner: Dr. Peyman Jafari.
Thesis: “Oil, Labor and Revolution in Iran; A Social History of Labor in the Iranian Oil Industry, 1973-83.” University of Leiden, October 2018

Advisors: Prof. Touraj Atabaki and Prof. Marcel van der Linden

Honorable Mention: Dr. Sheida Dayani.
Thesis: “Juggling Revolutionaries: A Theatrical History of Indigenous Theatre and Early Playwriting in Iran.” New York University, 2018
Advisors: Prof. Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami and Prof. Arnold Aronson

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Parviz Shahriari Book Award:

Keiji Yamamoto (ed) and Charles Burnett (ed), The Great Introduction to Astrology by Abu Ma’sar (2 vols.), Volume 106 Herausgeber: Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019.

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Saidi-Sirjani Book Award:

Dominic Brookshaw (Associate Professor of Persian Literature, and Senior Research
Fellow in Persian at Wadham College, Oxford University), Hafiz and His
Contemporaries – Poetry, Performance and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Iran. London: I.B. Tauris / Bloomsbury, 2019).

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Latifeh Yarshater Book Award:

Nazanin Shahrokni (Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalization at the London School of Economics and Political Science), Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran. University of California Press, 2019.

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Ehsan Yarshater Book Award:

Winner: Rika Gyselen (Directrice de Recherche émérite, CNRS: Histoire ancienne – Iran), La géograghie administrative de l’Émpire Sassanide. Les témoignages épigraphiques en moyen-perse. Res Orientales XXV, Groupe pour l’Étude de la Civilisation du Moyen-Orient, 2019.

Honorable Mention: Matthew Canepa (University of California-Irvine), The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity through Architecture, Landscape, and the Built Environment, 550 BCE-642 CE.University of California Press, 2020.

Normally, we would celebrate them in person at a lovely reception at our conference. And we will certainly do that at the next available opportunity. This year, however, the award committee chairs have agreed to share proper appreciations of their awardees in the 2020 Virtual Workshop on August 22nd . If you are looking for another reason to visit the Virtual Workshop, you now have it! In the interim, I am sure you will join me congratulating these fine scholars who inspire us to do our best, as they have done their best, for the field.

My thanks also to our colleagues serving on the award committees (Please follow the links above to learn more about the awards and the committees). Let me add an additional presidential “thank you” to Dr. Canepa, Dr. Jafari, and Dr. Brookshaw for their service on AIS Council, AIS Nominating Committee and the Iranian Studies Editorial Board, respectively. We need scholarship and service both.

All best,

Camron Michael Amin
AIS President

5. Appended below is the Call for Papers for the next volume (32) of the Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (RSSSR) which I co-edit with Professor Ralph Hood – https://brill.com/view/serial/RSSR . RSSSR 32 will have special section on Cultural Blindness in Psychology and Religion of Belief in HE. It will also have its regular open section for papers on any subject within the socio-scientific study of religion. We welcome your proposals .

Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (RSSSR) is an interdisciplinary, international peer-viewed annual series, which publishes new and innovative research within the social scientific study of religion or belief. Contributions span a range of theoretical orientations, geographic contexts and research methods, though most articles are reports of original quantitative or qualitative research related mainly to the sociology and/or psychology of religion.

RSSR usually includes one or more guest-edited special sections that allows networks of researchers to report studies in areas that are or current interest or which are innovative and expanding the discipline into new areas. For 2021, RSSR will include the following special sections

Special section 1: Cultural Blindness in Psychology. Guest Editor Dr. Louise Sundararajan, has collected several papers documenting cultural blindness in psychology beginning with her own paper, “Cultural blindness in psychology: Implications for studies of religion.”

Special section 2: Religion or Belief in Higher Education. In this section, we will explore religious and non-religious identities on university campuses anywhere in the world. Chapter may interrogate how these identities are ‘lived’ on campus and how these are dealt with in university policy, practice, management and curricula. This section will explore the diversity of ways in which religious and non-religious identities are experienced, encountered and catered for on higher education campuses. We invite proposals for papers that explore any dimension of religion or non-religion on campuses in any geographical context, focussing on a particular tradition, group or movement or on the interactions between different parties, or on broader cultural or political changes impacting upon how religion is expressed within campus contexts. We hope that the special section will attract a range of epistemological positions and disciplinary standpoints.

Submitting Proposals

We invite proposals for the next edition of the RSSSR – RSSSR 32. This will be published by autumn 2021. We welcome proposals from academics at all levels of their career, including early career researchers and final year PhD students.

For Book Chapters

Please submit a title and abstract of no more than 300 words together with names and short biographies (150 words), institutional affiliation/s (if relevant), and contact details.

Deadline for abstracts: 5pm on Friday 30th October 2020
Notification of acceptance of paper: 5pm on Friday 13th November 2020
If accepted full papers will be due by 5pm Friday 12th March 2021

Proposals for both the main and special sections should be send to the editors, Ralph Hood (ralph-hood@utc.edu) and Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (ac0967@coventry.ac.uk).

For Special Section Proposals

We welcome enquiries for guest edited special sections for RSSSR 32 and also for future editions. Special section proposals can emerge from conference proceedings or from other forms of academic collaboration around a specific subject area. To suggest a special proposal please contact the editors Ralph Hood (ralph-hood@utc.edu) and Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (ac0967@coventry.ac.uk) in the first instance, with the following information: