Shii News – Academic Items
1.The Qur’an Between Judaism and Christianity
A series of public lectures funded by the British Academy, hosted at the University of Nottingham and co-sponsored by the Karimia Institute, seeking to enhance the public understanding of the Qurʾān by focusing on the ways in which the Scripture of Islam relates to Judaism and to Christianity.
On three days in autumn 2016, prominent and emerging academics from the UK, from mainland Europe, and from overseas will address how the Qurʾān relates to aspects of the two other “Abrahamic” traditions, ranging from Biblical narrative to theology and law. The talks will be followed by a response and a discussion.
Attendance is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
For further information, see: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/html-emails/arts/theology/the-quran-between-judaism-and-christianity.aspx
2. University of Edinburgh
W M Watt lecture – Prof. Maribel Fierro, Charisma and Anti-Charisma in al-Andalus: Friday 4 November
Relations between scholars and rulers were of fundamental importance in competing claims to religious and political authority in Islamic premodern societies. Sunni Islam as against Shii Islam has historically been suspicious of charisma—that is, the belief that God has appointed one particular person who is protected by God and given right belief. Islamic Spain (al-Andalus) is a territory usually identified with Sunni (Maliki) Islam and characterized by a strong network of Sunni (Maliki) scholars. However, charisma was used to support political and religious claims, while one of the region’s most productive and original thinkers, Ibn Hazm (d. 1064), was very outspoken in his rejection of charismatic authority and also of Malikism.
Professor Maribel Fierro is Research Professor at the Centre of Human and Social Sciences at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), in Spain. She is a leading authority on the religious and intellectual history of Islamic Spain and the Islamic West, and on Islamic law. She is the editor of volume 2 of The New Cambridge History of Islam, The Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford, 2010) and recently led an ERC project on Knowledge, Heresy and Political Culture in the Islamic West, during which she published The Almohad Revolution: Religion and Politics in the Islamic West (Ashgate, 2012)
The event is free but booking a place is essential.
For further details and booking information, see:
3. Call for Proposals
“Books as Agents of Contact”
Session Organizers: Hansun Hsiung (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), András Kiséry (The City College of New York), Yael Rice (Amherst College)
Saturday, 14 October 2017, 8:30–10:00am
Bibliography Among the Disciplines Conference
12–15 October 2017, Philadelphia, PA
The book territorializes and deterritorializes. It binds together materials, technologies, and labor from far and abroad–a letter from Goa, an editor in Rome, Chinese paper, German engravers, Italian leather, English capital–only to be dispersed and reconstituted, from hand to hand, collection to collection, dismembered, reassembled, and reinvented for new audiences in new locations.
This panel seeks to understand how books as physical artifacts are agents of contact, summoning diverse persons and places into unanticipated relationships. Of particular interest are proposals that address the following: What formal or material features of books facilitate or generate promiscuity? How does the physical object of the book create audiences that exceed or trouble established political and territorial maps? Can the logic of book circulation challenge narratives of globalization as the rise of commerce and empire?
We welcome proposals for any time period, from antiquity to the present, and interpret “books” broadly as surfaces of semiotic inscription, from stone, papyri, and parchment, to paper, and even digital media. Papers will be circulated in advance of the conference. Presenters will deliver short summary provocations (8-10 minutes), followed by a moderator-led discussion.
Please submit a proposal of no more than 200 words, along with a brief CV, by 25 October 2016 at:
rarebookschool.org/bibliography-conference-papers
Bibliography Among the Disciplines, a four-day international conference, will bring together scholarly professionals poised to address current problems pertaining to the study of textual artifacts that cross scholarly, pedagogical, professional, and curatorial domains. The conference will explore theories and methods common to the object-oriented disciplines, such as anthropology and archaeology, but new to bibliography. The program aims to promote focused cross-disciplinary exchange and future scholarly collaborations. Bibliography Among the Disciplines is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and organized by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School. For more information, please visit: rarebookschool.org/bibliography-conference-2017
4. International Congress: “Islam in Plural. Thought, Faith and Society.” Université Catholique, Lyon, 6-9 September 2016
Three main topics provide the structure of the congress: current developments in geopolitics and economics, theological questions underlying interreligious encounters, and sociological dimensions of intra-islamic pluralism particularly with respect to the diverse challenges rising from modernity.
Information: http://evenement.pluriel.fuce.eu/en-/; Contact: contact.pluriel@fuce.eu
5. Postdoctoral Scholarships: Academy Scholars Program 2017-2018 of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
The program supports outstanding scholars at the start of their careers whose work combines disciplinary excellence in the social sciences (including history and law) with a command of the language, history, or culture of non-Western countries or regions. Their scholarship may elucidate domestic, comparative, or transnational issues, past or present.
Deadline for application: 1 October 2016. Information: http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=53348
6. University of Edinburgh
Syria: From Severus to Saladin
The School of History, Classics and Archaeology, in association with Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, is holding a day conference, open to students, staff and members of the public alike, organised by Dr Lucy Grig (Classics) and Dr Andrew Marsham (IMES).
The conference will include papers from a range of international, focusing on diverse aspects of the history, material and visual culture of Roman, Byzantine and Islamic Syria, as well as the current challenges to the preservation of Syria’s archaeological heritage.
Syria: From Severus to Saladin
School of History, Classics and Archaeology (Doorway 4, Old Medical School) Saturday 17th September
9-9.30 am Registration (McMillan Room)
9.30 Introduction Lucy Grig and Andrew Marsham (Meadows Lecture Theatre)
9.45-10.30 Ted Kaizer (Durham) ‘Questions of Identity at Tadmor/Palmyra’
10.30-1115 Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh/St Andrews): ‘Umayyad and Abbasid Palaces Compared’
11.15-11.45 Coffee break
11.45-12.30 Koray Durak (Bogazici, Istanbul): ‘Islamic Syria through Byzantine Eyes’
12.30-2 Lunch break
2-2.45 Simon Gundelfinger (Hamburg): ‘9th and 10th Century Concepts of al-Sham: a Geographical Survey’
2.45- 3.30 Carole Hillenbrand (Edinburgh/St Andrews): ‘Damascus: Saladin’s favourite city’
3.30-4 Coffee break
4-4.45 Mike Bishop (EAMENA, Oxford) ‘When the Present Threatens the Past: Endangered Archaeology in Syria’
4.45-5.15 Final panel discussion: ‘Syria: Continuity, Change and Challenges’
Cost: £20/£10 students.
For full and information and to register see:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classics-archaeology/news-events/events/conference-syria
7. on-line journal
MIDÉO. Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales
La revue MIDÉO est un périodique scientifique qui s’intéresse à l’aspect religieux et philosophique des domaines d’investigation des chercheurs de l’IDÉO et de ses collaborateurs. Une attention particulière est portée à l’histoire des idées et des doctrines du monde arabe, dans son passé et jusque dans son présent en l’envisageant en lui-même aussi bien que dans ses relations avec l’Occident. Produit en Égypte, le MIDÉO manifeste un intérêt particulier aux problèmes historiques, culturels et doctrinaux de l’Égypte ancienne et moderne, poursuivant avec les savants égyptiens une étroite et constante collaboration.
Posted in: Academic items- August 30, 2016
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