Shii News – Academic Items
1.The International Journal of Islamic Architecture is pleased to announce the
Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan Article Award
In honour of Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan’s contributions to the field of Islamic architecture, the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) offers this award in recognition of ground-breaking scholarship on the subject published in peer-reviewed journals. The criteria on which papers will be judged are: innovation in approach(es) to posed research question(s), originality, written clarity and style, and the overall impact on research in the field. Articles should provide new insights into the field, making a distinct or significant scholarly contribution to the understanding of architecture, architectural heritage, and the built environment in the Islamic world (both historic and contemporary), especially in marginalized geographies. This award will be offered every two years and the jury will include three members of the academic community. The inaugural award will be given in 2022 and we are delighted that Professors Renata Holod, Abidin Kusno, and D. Fairchild Ruggles will serve on the first jury. Papers published in English in a peer reviewed journal in 2020 or 2021 will be eligible for the first award.
Nominations should be submitted by scholars or journal editors to IJIA Associate Editor Mehreen Chida-Razvi at HUKaward@gmail.com by 30 November 2021. Self-nominations are permitted. The nominations should include a PDF of the published paper, full details of publication, and the author’s affiliation and contact information. The winner will be announced in March 2022 on the IJIA website, social media platforms, and in the journal’s July issue. In addition, they will receive a cash prize of $1000 as well as a two-year subscription to IJIA. The winner will be announced in March 2022.
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Academic Editor of IJIA from 2012–21, Hasan-Uddin Khan is an architect trained at the AA in London and a writer who has worked and lived all over the globe. He considers himself a modern nomad who believes in crossing boundaries – both geographic and disciplinary. Professor Khan was founder and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Mimar: Architecture in Development. He helped form the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1977 and was its second Convenor and a Steering Committee member. He coordinated His Highness the Aga Khan’s worldwide architectural activities between 1984 and 1994. After being a Visiting Associate Professor at MIT, he joined Roger Williams University in 1999 as Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Historic Preservation and twice was a Visiting Professor at Berkeley during his sabbaticals. He is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Roger Williams University. Professor Khan has served as on several international architecture juries, lectures widely and is the editor/author of nine books and over sixty published articles.
2. Manuscripts in Arabic Script: Introduction to Codicology
This online course, offered by the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), aims to introduce key concepts in the field of Arabic manuscripts and codicology. It is designed to attract participants who want to learn basic knowledge about Arabic manuscripts. The first day will provide an overview of the field of codicology and its role in the manuscript field in general and in identifying key features of manuscripts in particular. The second session will be dedicated to writing supports, the structure of quires, ruling and page layout, bookbinding, ornamentation, tools and materials used in bookmaking, and the palaeography of book hands. Some practical examples will be given based on the lecturers’ long experiences. The second day will focus on the importance of manuscripts in research. While the first session will cover the paratextual features in the Arabic manuscripts, the second session will demonstrate the different approaches in editing manuscripts.
This introductory course is intended for students, researchers, and librarians who wish to increase their knowledge in the manuscript field.
Learning Outcomes
– Basic understanding of the field of Arabic manuscript studies
– Identify the role of manuscripts in knowledge production in different areas of studies in Muslim cultures.
Download course structure.
Course Convenors
Dr Walid Ghali is the Head of the Aga Khan Library, London, Associate Professor of Islamic and Arabic studies at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and a Chartered Librarian of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). Dr Ghali received his PhD in Islamic Manuscript Studies from the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University (2012). Dr Ghali’s current research projects focus on Islamic manuscript traditions, particularly in Arabic script and book history. He has published on Arabic literature, Sufi traditions and Islamic manuscripts cultures.
Dr Anne Regourd is researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, France. She has published extensively in the fields of history and philology dealing with codicology, paper studies, and papyrology. She is the editor of book, The Trade in Papers Marked with Non-Latin Characters, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 2018, and heads the free access online journal, Nouvelles Chroniques du Manuscrit au Yémen.
Dr Eléonore Cellard is a specialist in Qurʾānic manuscripts. She started her research activities in 2008 under the supervision of Professor François Déroche. In 2015, she submitted her dissertation entitled The Written Transmission of the Qur’an: Study of a Corpus of Manuscripts from the 2nd Century AH/ 8th Century CE (INALCO/EPHE). She has collaborated on several international projects about Qurʾānic manuscripts, and recently carried out a research project on one of the Qurʾān copies attributed to the caliph ʿUthman ibn Affan’. She has also authored several monographs and articles on Qurʾānic manuscripts.
Date and Time
15-16 November 2021, 11:00-15:00 (London Time).
Tickets and Booking
Tickets: £80 professionals | £50 students, AKU alumni and staff. Book as soon as possible.
*The course will be delivered via Zoom. Further details will be provided later upon registration.
3. University of Dayton, Ohio – Assistant Professor Specializing in Middle Eastern or North African History
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=61934
Applicants must complete their application by 11:55 PM EST October 18, 2021.
4. MIT – Tenure-track faculty position in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) in the Department of Architecture
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=61964
Deadline: Oct 30, 2021
5. Webinar – THE BODY OF THE MERCHANT: ART AND EXPERIENCE IN THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
Wednesday, September 29th, 12:30pm ET
Silsila Fall 2021 Lecture Series
From the early thirteenth century traders from Italian mercantile families started travelling eastward, to the European frontiers, to areas such as Crimea in the northern Black Sea region, where commercial outposts served as markets for trading goods with Eurasia and beyond. The lecture centers on the experience of those traders, focusing on metalwork and the way it shaped discourse regarding art, heritage, and the indigenous, both in the European frontiers and “back home” in Italy’s domestic spaces.
Full details of the event and a link to register as an attendee can be found at:
Only registered attendees will be able to access this event
6. Ernst Herzfeld Award
for Master Theses in Islamic Art History and Archaeology
Call for Applications
Deadline November 15, 2021
The Ernst Herzfeld-Gesellschaft für Islamische Kunst und Archäologie | Ernst Herzfeld Society for Studies in Islamic Art and Archaeology is pleased to announce the second edition of the Ernst Herzfeld Award for Master Theses in Islamic Art History and Archaeology. The aim of the award is to encourage and support young scholars in Europe who are working on visual and material culture of Islamic countries in the fields of Art History, Archaeology, and Building Archaeology (Bauforschung). The Ernst Herzfeld Award highlights the diversity and innovation of current research in these growing fields. The successful candidate is honored at the annual colloquium of the Ernst Herzfeld Society, offered a full travel grant to present their master thesis at the colloquium, and is granted publication of the presented paper in the series of the Society, Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie (BIKA).
Eligibility:
- Outstanding master thesis (MA, Master, M.phil., and similar) on a topic situated within the research fields of History of Islamic Art and Architecture, Islamic Archaeology, or Building Archaeology (Bauforschung) on Islamic Architecture.
- The thesis must have been written and supervised at a European university. For this call, theses are eligible that were fully reviewed and marked in the timeframe between January 1, 2019 and October 31, 2021.
- Accepted languages of the thesis are: German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
Application procedure:
- Applicants are proposed by the supervisor of the MA thesis.
- Applications include 1) the complete MA thesis as a PDF document and as it was submitted; 2) a summary in English (3 pages); 3) a letter of recommendation in English by the proposing supervisor; and 4) the original official review/evaluation of the thesis for/by the university, at which it was submitted.
Review Procedure:
- The review procedure is jointly organized by the award and steering committees and the advisory board of the Ernst Herzfeld Society.
- Proposing supervisors are excluded from the review procedure and the peer-review.
- Applications fulfilling the criteria of eligibility will go through a double blind peer-review by the joint committees and by external reviewers.
Submission:
Please send the complete application by November 15, 2021 to award@ernst-herzfeld-gesellschaft.com
Notification:
Applicants will be notified about the outcome of the evaluation process by March 15, 2022.
7. Tolerance and Risk
How U.S. Liberalism Racializes Muslims
Mitra Rastegar
University of Minnesota Press, 2021
https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781517904852/tolerance-and-risk/
8. The Centre for the Study of Islam (at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies here in Exeter) is pleased to announce its new series of online events, the Monday Majlis. The first 4 majalis are linked below – 4 more will be advertised in late October. All members of the Islamic Studies -community are welcome to attend – pre-registration is required – here is the blurb:
The CSI Monday Majlis is a Monday evening, online event, where invited speakers present on aspects of their current research. This may be a book they have recently published, a new project they are working on, or an exciting new potential avenue of Islamic studies research. They take place Mondays, online 1700-1830 UK time.
To register, click on the links below (separate links and separate registration for each Majlis).
4th October: Professor Ahmed El Shamsy (Chicago University) will speak about his recent publication Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How editors and Print culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton, 2020).
To register click here: https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0kce-spjwpGdHnnCzIFCOohI6pPzsojcAi
18th October: Dr Nizamuddin Ahmed (Honorary Research Fellow) studies with us passages from Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam – this is the first of two sessions led by Dr Ahmed. This will be an Arabic texts reading session.
To register click here: https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYtcOqhqjspE9Z01vJCjv0QtfYV6gyFfkPO
25th October: Dr Arezoo Azad (University of Oxford) will speak about the Sacred Landscapes of Medieval Afghanistan, and he project on the Afghan document collection (the so-called Afghan geniza).
To register click here: https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUlcOutqz4qGtCMq1WrrlfBB6OTepUKNnAB
1st November: Dr Bianka Speidl (Budapest) will talk about her new book Islam as Power: Shi‛i Revivalism in the Oeuvre of Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (Routledge 2020).
To register click here: https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtf-qvqT8oHtySTlXHEhcmPRlFPOtmJtTb
In line with University of Exeter online seminar regulations:
1. Registration is open until 1700 UK TIME on the day BEFORE of the seminar.
2. You will receive the link to join the seminar on the morning of the seminar.
3. You will need to use the same email to join the seminar as you did to register.
4. Please add the date to your calendar now, as you will not receive a confirmatory email (and link) that you have registered until the day of the seminar.
9. 30 September 2021 Event – Digitalising Borders
AKU ISMC
Population Surveillance, the Body, and Mobility
Digitalising Borders
30 September 2021
Governance Programme Dialogue Series 2021/2022: Population Surveillance, the Body, and Mobility
The series examines twenty-first century population surveillance (ID cards, passports, checkpoints, and policing) in the Global South and/or spaces of its intersection with the Global North. It examines how population surveillance has been transformed through new technologies, whilst also seeking to uncover continuities with the colonial past/present. It asks how do forms of population surveillance today affect the body, movement, and power?
Lecture 1: Digitalising Borders
Join us for a session on Digitalising Borders that brings together a conversation between two prominent scholars whose work on space, technology, and mobility pushes us to examine the unequal, violent, and racialised nature of borders today.
Speakers
Polly Pallister-Wilkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, University of Amsterdam. As a political geographer, her research focuses primarily on humanitarian responses to border violence and mobility injustice. She is the author of the forthcoming Humanitarian Borders: Unequal Mobility and Saving Lives (Verso) as well as a number of articles looking at what she calls humanitarian borderwork with a specific focus on the Mediterranean and the Greek hotspots. Growing from this, her current research is concerned with what black radical — especially feminist — traditions and indigenous knowledges can offer for decolonialising humanitarianism.
Helga Tawil-Souri is a media scholar whose work focuses on the overlaps between spatiality, technology, and politics with a particular focus on Palestine/Israel. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.
Chair
Sanaa Alimia is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations.
Date and Time
30 September 2021, 17:00 – 18:30 (London).
Registration
Join us online via Zoom by registering here.
10. The Alwaleed Centre, University of Edinburgh, is delighted to be offering a special series of four webinars exploring climate change and climate action across the Muslim world to mark the forthcoming COP26 UN Climate Change Conference.
‘Environmentalism and the Muslim World’ will bring together leading academics, experts, practitioners, and activists in the fields of religion, politics, and social science to highlight diverse climate change issues and climate action across the Muslim world.
This free series will be hosted online via Zoom and further details, including registration, can be found here: www.alwaleed.ed.ac.uk/cop26
11. CfP: Under-Mapped Spaces: New Methods and Tools for Critical Storytelling with Maps (Workshop)
“Under-Mapped Spaces: New Methods and Tools for Critical Storytelling with Maps,” an intensive, student-designed workshop for emerging scholars. The workshop will be held from February 28-March 4, 2022 at Stanford University, and is co-hosted by the David Rumsey Map Center and Stanford Geospatial Center, and Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections.
Cartography continues to reproduce and amplify global inequalities in the production of knowledge. Drawing on Stanford’s rich map collections, this initiative aims to apply cutting-edge digital tools to the creation of compelling, accessible, and ethical narratives about “under-mapped” spaces.
Graduate student applicants may want to consider one or more of the following questions as a point of departure:
- How have racism, sexism, economic exploitation, and imperialism contributed to the privileging of certain cartographies over others? What are the consequences of this for knowledge production?
- How have the cartographic contributions of indigenous populations and the economically marginalized been collected and examined? How do the legacies of this appropriation affect our understanding of the history of places today?
- How have the past half-century of technological innovations and the accessibility of maps affected cartographic production? In an age of surveillance, what is underexplored?
- How have imagined cartographies conditioned the ways that people think about places? How have these fantastical expectations shaped cartographic practices and historical outcomes?
- How can ephemeral lived experience–seasons, migrations, populations—be mapped? Can map design improve our ability to recognize emergence, lifetimes, and loss?
Participants will select a historical map from the Stanford collections linked to their own area of research. The five-day workshop presents an opportunity to use that map to reexamine the politics of cartography, develop new digital skills (ArcGIS, Leaflet, Wax), and explore innovative ways to incorporate critical storytelling with maps for classroom and public audiences. Sessions will include hands-on digital workshops on multiple platforms, public lectures, coworking sessions, and seminar-style discussions that engage the ethical questions underlying our work. Following the workshop, participants’ projects will be made available to the public in a digital exhibit, fostering an ongoing, inclusive dialogue around whose stories we tell with maps and how we tell them.
Please submit your application via this form by November 12, 2021. Your submission will include:
- Name
- Email contact
- Institutional affiliation
- Project title
- A proposal (300-500 words) explaining your current research, its engagement with “under-mapped spaces,” and how it would benefit from the application of digital cartographic tools and methods
- The link to a map of your choice from the Rumsey (https://www.davidrumsey.com/) or Branner collections and a brief description of its relevance to your research area. Note that many maps have not yet been digitized. If you are having difficulty identifying maps in your area of interest, please reach out to Andria Olson (andolson@stanford.edu) at Branner Library or G. Salim Mohammed (gsalim@stanford.edu) at the David Rumsey Map Center.
- A brief description of any prior experience with digital humanities tools and/or skills you would like to build
12. Register Today: The Study of Islam & Muslim Communities in Latin America and the Caribbean in Transdisciplinary Perspective
20-21 October 2021, online via WebEx
This colloquium features scholars addressing gaps in both Islamic studies and the study of Latin America as well as the Caribbean in transdisciplinary perspective. As the study of Latin America and the Caribbean is not at the center of Islamic studies and vice versa, this colloquium offers space for discussing novel, experimental research in both fields, which will further promote their respective incorporation.
You are invited to attend the colloquium and to register HERE (https://fu-berlin.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=218987e5c8b20ce72c5e7da24&id=63075a13d3&e=f70992245e) . Only registrants will receive an invite to attend the panels. Registration is limited to 25 people per panel, while Dr. Aisha Khan’s keynote and The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean book launch are open to the public. The deadline for registration is on October 17, please register before. Looking forward to seeing you!
13. YouTube videos: Pre-modern comparative literary practice in the multilingual Islamic world(s)
Dear colleagues, we hope our message finds you and your beloved ones in the best health.
It is our great pleasure to share the videos of our OCCT conference that we organized last July. The three-day conference is divided into nine videos, and each video bears a description of its content. Here is the link for your consideration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUtwGu5vdPM…
We hope that these efforts would allow anyone who could not attend the virtual conference to access them anytime. Watching many sessions again, we realized how lucky we were to have such brilliant papers and discussions about the role of Islamic Multilingualism in challenging the current Eurocentric frame of Comparative and World Literature. So please feel free to share the videos with anyone interested.
Our Special thanks to the two brilliant keynote speakers Dr Fatemeh Keshavarz and Dr Michael Cooperson. We are also grateful to Dr Matthew Reynolds, the director of Oxford’s OCCT, for hosting the conference. Here is the link to the conference’s programme attached, so you can also check any paper that you would like to watch its video.
https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/pre-modern-comparative-literary-practice-multilingual-islamic-worlds
As organizers, we thank all the contributors again for being part of our movement to generate new knowledge production that challenges the long-established Eurocentric ‘norms’ in various Islamic and Comparative Literature Studies.
14. Course announcement – Discussing Islamic Art, Aesthetics and Visuality – January 2022
The intensive course, ‘Discussing Islamic Art, Aesthetics and Visuality’, hosted by the Islamic Azad University/OICC, Oxford, UK, will be offered in January 2022.This course is a unique opportunity for advanced training in reading and thinking critically about Islamic art. As the term ‘discussing’ in its title indicates, it involves an active participation of the audience that conventional teaching lectures usually do not permit. It particularly places the focus on concepts, aesthetic-philosophical questions and creative processes that history-based conventional courses tend to sideline.
Description:
The course is a ten-session module (2 and a half hours per session) introducing the artistic culture of Islam from the viewpoint of its aesthetics and meaning. It is conceptualized like a forum for both learning and appreciating the rich and beautiful arts of Islam so that the audience will get a sense of what these arts mean and express for the Muslim faithful. The program aims to cover the most important artistic art forms and visual concepts that distinguish this culture in both aspects of its unity and diversity. The Muslim world is indeed vast and encompasses an immense variety of local cultures. It is also spiritually shaped by different interpretations of the Islamic faith. Nevertheless, this world remains united through the shared acknowledgement of the truth of God’s words in the Qur’an and of God’s messenger and representative, Prophet Muhammad. This acknowledgement constitutes the metaphysical core of Islam that informs Islamic art-making.
For further details, please visit this website:
https://www.oicc.uk/k-event/discussion_islamic_art/
Valerie Gonzalez,
Research Associate, SOAS, University of London.
Posted in: Academic items
- September 25, 2021
- 0 Comment
