Shii News – Academic Items
1.The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University invites applications for two Postdoctoral Fellowships in Disaster Studies. The fellowships extend for 12 months, from September 1, 2023, to August 31, 2024. These fellowships and the activities organized by and with the fellows are intended to launch a long-term project, triggered by present concerns arising from the recent devastation in Turkey and Syria as well as the urgent need to develop our understanding of the history of seismicity in the region.
Closing date: 31 May, 2023
More information at:
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=65397
2. Three items of interest regarding Omar Ibn Said, the African Muslim scholar enslaved in North Carolina during the early nineteenth century.
The Pulitzer Prize in music has been awarded to Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels for the opera “Omar”. This is a remarkable treatment of a previously marginalized figure, presented in a central American cultural arena. Numerous reviews, including in the current edition of the New York Review of Books make it clear that this opera is having a major impact. ‘Tell Your Story, Omar’ | Edward Ball | The New York Review of Books (nybooks.com);
For those who are interested in the book on Omar written by Mbaye Lo and myself, I cannot write my life: Islam, Arabic, and slavery in Omar Ibn Said’s America (University of North Carolina press, https://uncpress.org/book/9781469674674/i-cannot-write-my-life/), printed copies will be available in August, and instructors interested in getting an e-exam copy can do so now at Request an Electronic Exam Copy – University of North Carolina Press (uncpress.org);
Mbaye Lo and I have set up a website at the Digital Repository at UNC Library, “Enslaved Scholars: A Website Repository for Editions of Arabic Texts and English Translations of writings by Enslaved Muslims in the Americas, including works they quote.” This contains open-source pdf copies of our critical editions of 18 Arabic texts with English translations of Omar’s writing, and links to URLs with images of the original manuscripts. We plan to add some other figures in the near future, beginning with Abdurrahman ibn Ibrahima (d. 1829) and Shaykh Sana See (Panama, 1860s). Anyone interested in participating in this project, please let us know.
Carl W. Ernst
William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
3. We now are thrilled to invite you to a supplementary session of the Harb al-Basus Seminar on May 23rd at 8 a.m. ET/ 2p.m. Central European Time, and 8 p.m. in Perth Australia, whence Dr. Said al-Ghanimi will deliver his presentation on the diachronic cultural and literary connections between the story of Harb al-Basus and major heroic tales across the eras of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. We are thrilled that he has agreed to offer his presentation to us on Zoom, and we hope to engage him in fruitful discussion of his ideas concerning the core narrative of Harb al-Basus and its relation to other heroic tales. Please join us if you can.
We will record this session, and post it to the al-Zir Salim@ Harb al-Basus channel on Youtube, where the rest of our sessions are archived, here: https://www.youtube.com/@HarbalBasus
And here is the webpage of the seminar:
https://www.usna.edu/Harb-al-Basus-Seminar/index.php
If you can join us, we would be thrilled to see you there and to have you join the discussion.
Here is the Zoom link to the May 23rd session:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81553406270?pwd=bFpZdnQwMUpXdE5yYlBZemFEMEVtUT09
Meeting ID: 815 5340 6270
Passcode: 031802
Sincerely,
Clarissa Burt Johan Weststeijn
burt@usna.edu j.k.weststeijn@gmail.com
4. Afghanistan,Volume 6, Issue 1
Find out more:
https://ddlnk.net/CEQ-89W2D-MWI2D5-559S7V-0/c.aspx
5. Call for Applications: The Iraj Khademi Residency in Persian Literature at the UW
The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Washington enthusiastically invites poets and other creative writers, scholars (including doctoral students), and translators of Persian literature to apply for a two-week residency in Seattle during spring 2024. For more information, please see here.
6. ’Processes of the circulation of Chinese wares in the Middle East during the Abbasid-Chinese ceramic exchange, eighth–tenth centuries ce’
Wen Wen,
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2023
7. Finding Ways: Stakes and Strategies in South Asian Cartography, hybrid workshop at Vanderbilt University, 18-20 May, 2023
You are welcome to a hybrid workshop on South Asian maps, digital mapping projects, conceptions of space, and map epistemologies, to be held in person and over Zoom next week. Please use the form linked below to receive a Zoom link.
Samira Sheikh, Vanderbilt University.
Finding Ways: Stakes and Strategies in South Asian Cartography
Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University, and online via Zoom
May 18th – May 20th
Registration link: https://forms.gle/95eeYrsffY3R1J2S6
The workshop will run from 8 AM – 12 AM US Central Time in Nashville
6 AM-10 AM US Pacific Time 9 AM – 1PM US Eastern Time
6:30 PM – 10:30 PM Indian Time 2 PM – 6 PM UK Time
3 PM – 7 PM Central European Time
All times below are in local Nashville time (CT)
Thursday, 18th May
8-8:30 Introduction and welcome, Samira Sheikh
8:30-9:30 Maps and margins
Debjani Bhattacharyya (University of Zurich) “Drawing Margins: Inscriptions, Sketches and Marginalia in Pattahs and Titles”
Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University) “Cosmograms, Centers of Calculation, and the Creation of the Many-Headed Knower: Maps in the Historiography of Science”
Karen Pinto (University of Colorado, Boulder) “South Asian Connections with Islamicate Cartography”
9:45-10:45 Access and heritage
Afifa Khan, Rebecca Roberts, Cameron Petrie (University of Cambridge) “Introducing MAHSA: the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia project”
Rahul Chopra (FLAME University) “Towards an open access platform of maps of India”
11-12 Digital experiments
Sumathi Ramaswamy (Duke University) “Going Global in Mughal India”
Deborah Sutton (Lancaster University) “(M)apping Strategies for Digital Heritage: The Safarnama App Framework”
Friday, 19th May
8-9 Fluid boundaries
Bhavani Raman (University of Toronto) “Drawing the Language of the Sea: How Fisher Science Unsettles Weather Maps”
Ian Barrow (Middlebury College) “Finding Time in Colonial-Era Maps of South Asia: Possibilities for Teaching and Research”
Eduardo Acosta (University of Chicago) “Fluvial Temporalities: Thinking Time through Early Colonial Maps”
9:15-10:15 Envisioning the land
Mark Hauser (Northwestern University) “A Tale of Two Maps: Colonial Cartography, the Archaeological Record, and Agrarian Transition”
Ashish Koul (Northwestern University) “Reimagining a geography of conflict”
David Ludden (New York University)”Mapping South Asia as Mobile Historical Space”
10:30-11:30 Representing Delhi
Yuthika Sharma (Northwestern University) “Manuscripts to Maps: Cartography as a model of artistic change in eighteenth-century Mughal South Asia”
Iqtedar Alam (University of Cambridge) “GIS-based Modelling of Shahjahanabad’s Hydrological Landscape: Challenges in Interpretation of Pre-Colonial Maps of Delhi (1750-1850)”
Abhishek Kaicker (University of California, Berkeley) “A first look at the Delhi Canal map”
11:30-12 Discussion
Saturday, 20th May
8-9 Space and place
Dipti Khera (New York University) “Drawing Together Maps and Moods: Localizations of Knowledge, Power, and Emotions, Udaipur, c. 1700”
Sumit Guha (University of Texas, Austin) “Symbolic Geography, Pragmatic Geography and Visual Representation”
Caleb Simmons (University of Arizona) “Territorial Dominion/Cartographic Dominance: Colonial Mapping and the Work of Creating Space and Making Place”
9:15-10:15 Coloniality and beyond
Shailka Mishra (Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum, Hyderabad) “Maps and Mapping in the Courts of Rajasthan: Production, Collection and Consumption”
Charlotte Evans (Lancaster University) “Using the digital humanities to map water histories in the Kaveri catchment: methodologies and considerations”
Kapil Raj (EHESS, Paris) ” Epistemic Divides and the Faculty of Translation: Rendering Space Intelligible in 19th-Century South Asia”
10:30-11:30 Himalayan ways
Diana Lange (Humboldt University) “Tibetan Mapping and the Mapping of Tibet”
Abeer Gupta (Achi Association) “Global-digital cultural construction, agency, and the formal-informal archives of knowledge”
Aniket Alam (IIIT, Hyderabad) “Mapping the Himalayas through Historical Texts: An NLP and GIS Approach”
11:30-12 Closing Discussion
8. Online Lecture – “Potters’ workshops and their productions in the Arabian Peninsula between 10th and 15th AD”
Fabien Lesguer (Phd student University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne; CNRS Dadan Archaeological Project)
May, 17th (4 PM Paris; 5 PM Riyad)
For further information:
https://www.ifporient.org/archaeology-mena-2/
9. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers over 400 unique awards for U.S. citizens to teach, research, and conduct professional projects in more than 130 countries.
In the 2024-25 competition, many awards around the world welcome applications in Islamic Art and Architecture, such as opportunities in Kuwait, Tunisia, Jordan and Pakistan. Explore awards available in the 2024-25 competition on our site, where you can search by country, discipline and other criteria. You can join the more than 400,000 Fulbrighters who have come away with enhanced skills, new connections and greater mutual understanding.
We encourage you to visit our website for application resources:
- Getting Started (new to Fulbright? Start here!)
- Application Guidance
- Open Awards in the 2024-25 Competition, searchable by discipline, country/region, etc.
- Webinar Schedule and Archive
- Office Hours, a great way to get your questions answered live by Fulbright staff
We look forward to receiving your application by our deadline of September 15, 2023. To receive program updates and application resources, connect with Fulbright. Know someone who could benefit from a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award? Refer a colleague!
Here’s to another year of global action, opportunity, connections — and creating a brighter future.
Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program
Contact: scholars@iie.org
10. The editors of Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists are looking for submissions that will help diversify the journal’s contents as well as the authors and audiences it attracts. We are currently interested in submissions from disciplines other than history and/or that engage non-Arabic sources, the post-Umayyad period, or non-Muslim peoples. We particularly encourage women and scholars of color to submit.
A peer-reviewed, open access journal since 2015, UW defines the medieval Middle East expansively to include all geographies with prominent Muslim political, religious, or social presences between the rough parameters of 500-1500 CE. We seek previously unpublished articles featuring original research and analysis, including those that push the boundaries of the medieval Middle East as defined above.
UW publishes research articles on a rolling basis, and we pride ourselves on a friendly, efficient, and substantive editorial process. For more reasons to publish with UW and additional information about submissions, please visit the journal’s website or contact the editors directly.
Zayde Antrim: Zayde.Antrim@trincoll.edu
Alison Vacca: av3096@columbia.edu
11. Please join us for the next Maps & Society lecture on May 18, 5 – 7pm (GMT). Leonardo Ariel Carrió Cataldi (CNRS Researcher, LARHRA, Lyon) will be talking on ‘Magnetism Matters: Early Modern Commerce, Practices and Frameworks in the Iberian Empires’.
The meeting will be held online on Zoom. To receive a link, please register via the Warburg Institute: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/maps-and-society-magnetism-matters-early-modern-commerce-practices-and-frameworks-iberian
Everyone is warmly welcomed.
Catherine Delano-Smith and Philip Jagessar
Posted in: Academic items
- May 13, 2023
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