Shii News – Academic Items

1.ONLINE Second Colloquium “Interreligious Interactions in South Asia”, University of Cambridge, 3-12 April 2024

In this online series of table talks, we seek to bring together scholars from a wide spectrum of perspectives to inquire into the kinds of critical tools that are currently deployed to probe interreligious interactions in South Asia over the last eight hundred years or so.

Information, program, abstracts and registration:

https://www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk/interreligious-interactions-south-asia

 

 

 

 

2. HYBRID Conference “Middle East, Law, and Practice”, NYU Law School’s Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, 9 April 2024, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm EST

The conference is about fostering insightful discussions on legal practice in the MENA region. There will be three panels: Environmental Law in the Middle East. – Islamic Law’s Influence on Legal Practice. –Impact of Terrorism Laws: A Global Perspective.

Information and registration: https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/middle-east-law-practice-tickets-824884199847?aff=ebdsoporgprofile&keep_tld=1

 

 

3. ONLINE Workshop on “Alternative Careers for the Islamic Art History PhD”, Historians of Islamic Art Association, 17 April 2024, 12:00 EST

This workshop offers an introduction to “alt-ac” (alternative-academic) and “alt-cu” (alternative-curatorial) career paths for specialists in the discipline. Topics that will be taken up include: How alt-ac and alt-cu jobs provide meaningful and fulfilling outcomes to a doctoral program; how to develop the connections to work outside of the professoriate and the curatorial sphere; and where to find the material resources to support additional training.

Information and registration: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20028999/hiaa-online-workshop-alternative-careers-islamic-art-history-phd

 

 

 

 

4. Symposium “The Idea of Iran: Qajar Iran on the Cusp of Modernity”, SOAS, University of London, 11-12 May 2024

The nineteenth century saw the consolidation of the Qajar State and changed relations with the European powers that had been transformed by political, industrial and agricultural revolutions, among them the loss of Britain’s American colonies and the rise of an independent power on the global scene. What does the Idea of Iran mean at this period? What did Iran look like? How does modern scholarship define the distinctive aspects of the period? Etc.

Information and registration: https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/idea-iran-qajar-iran-cusp-modernity

 

 

 

 

5. Conference “The “Excluded Third” in the Co-Production of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” (Project: The “European Quran”), Como Lake, Italy, 10-13 June 2024

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are often understood as an ensemble of three (‘Abrahamic,’ ‘monotheistic,’ scriptural, or prophetic) religious communities and traditions. But often when adherents of two of these “sibling” religions interact, the third is treated as a figure to be marginalized, stigmatized, or instrumentally exploited vis-à-vis the others. Our conference proposes to explore this dynamic of the excluded third.

Deadline for abstracts: 1 June 2024. Information: https://euqu.eu/2024/03/12/call-for-papers-the-excluded-third-in-the-co-production-of-judaism-christianity-and-islam/

 

 

 

 

6. HYBRID International Conference of the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies (CMESS): “Middle East after Abolition of Caliphate”, Center for Middle East Strategic Studies, Kharazmi University, Tehran, 14 November 2024

Topics: Abolition of Caliphate and Islamic Movements – Inheritance of Dissolution / Abolition of Caliphate for Middle East Countries – Impacts of Abolition of Caliphate on Türkiye , Iran and Arab World Policy – The Possibility of Revitalizing Caliphate in the Middle East.

Deadline of abstract: 20 June 2024. Information: nasri@khu.ac.ir; research.imess@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

7. Atelier doctoral “Des musées (post)coloniaux en Méditerranée? Muséographies, recon-figurations politiques et fabrique des identités”, par REM, École des hautes études hispa-niques et ibériques (Madrid), Institut Jacques-Berque (Rabat), IRMC (Tunis) et École française de Rome, Madrid, 25-28 novembre 2024

La perspective interdisciplinaire de l’atelier doctoral, convoquant l’histoire, la géographie, l’anthropologie, la museologie, l’archéologie, la science politique, l’art, etc., permettra de décloisonner des langages et des approches sur le monde muséal et ses reconfigurations spatiales, matérielles, symboliques et sociales à différentes échelles temporelles.

Application au plus tard le 22 avril 2024. Information: https://irmcmaghreb.org/aac-atelier-doctoral-des-musees-postcoloniaux-en-mediterranee-museographies-reconfigurations-politiques-et-fabrique-des-identites/?fbclid=IwAR0n8vPGx3lzdWaN5GIhq8bVgzpCOjWnZVeDz1-kmzrYzFPtBYhb2e9s40w_aem_AR792-PvS1Ni13AF97y5wZFCLS2n1dWvdmaH8HfpP2PSz8LQhnqQo7amjyOPI0_rq0Y

 

 

 

 

8. MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Project “[HORIZON EUROPE] Horizon Insights”, Universiteit Gent, Belgium

Deadliner for applications: 11 September 2024.

Information: https://bozi.ugent.be/nl/bozi/c83B4eMbBdJ53L2tNRm3WJ/

 

 

 

 

9. Visiting Assistant Professor of History and International Studies (1 Year, Focus Middle East), Marymount Manhattan College, NewYork

Qualifications: PhD in History, Political Science, International Relations, or related social science field; Regio-nal expertise complimented by a legal sub focus; Demonstrated teaching excellence as well as an active scholarly agenda.

Review of applications will begin on 1 April 2024, and will continue until the position is filled.

Information: https://www.mmm.edu/offices/human-resources/faculty-positions.php

 

 

 

 

10. International MA Program (4 Semesters): “Mediterranean History”, University of Konstanz, Info Session via zoom: 17 April 2024, 10:00 am – 11:30 a.m. CET

This unique MA study program examines trans-Mediterranean dynamics and entanglements over a period of 3,000 years: from antiquity to the 21st century. It provides bachelor graduates in history and cultural studies with a cross-period knowledge of the history, cultures and languages of Mediterranean societies, which is equally important for academic careers and non-academic professions. You will acquire practical skills and regional expertise about a key region of the world,

Deadline for applications: 30 April 2024. Information: https://www.geschichte.uni-konstanz.de/en/study/ma-mediterranean-history/prospective-student/prospective-students/

 

 

 

 

11. ONLINE Seminar “Mediterranean Art History: An Introduction” by the Mediterranean Seminar, 17-20 June 2024, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm MDT

This seminar provides participants with an overview of key concepts and methodologies in the study of Mediterranean art history. The course will address the themes of mobility, connectivity, and encounter in relation to the visual culture of peoples and territories across the sea. Participants will acquire an art historical tool kit to assist them in conducting their own research on the visual culture and artistic production of the medieval Mediterranean

Deadline for applications: 15 April 2024.

Information: https://www.mediterraneanseminar.org/overview-mediterranean-art-2024

 

 

 

 

12. Summer School “Comparative Habsburg-Ottoman Paleography” of the Turkology Department (University of Vienna) and Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Vienna, 1-12 July 2024

Participants will join morning lessons taught by experienced teachers and listen to lectures given by recog-nized experts in the afternoons. Included are also visit to the imperial archives (HHStA), the military museum (HGM), and the Ottomans Museum in Perchtoldsdorf, a guided tour of Vienna’s historical highlights that have direct and subtle references to the history of Ottoman-Habsburg encounters.

Deadline for applications: 30 April 2024. Information: https://orientalistik.univie.ac.at/fachrichtungen/turkologie/veranstaltungen/summer-school-of-comparative-habsburg-ottoman-paleography/

 

 

 

13. International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) Special Issue: 

“Gender and Architecture in the Islamic World: Restrictions, Reactions, and Actions”

Thematic volume planned for June 1, 2026
Proposal submission deadline: June 15, 2024

Guest Editor: Dr. Gül Kale, Carleton University
In-house editor: Dr. Alex Dika Seggerman, Rutgers University

Gender and Architecture in the Islamic World: Restrictions, Reactions, and Actions

Real and imagined spaces are inherently gendered based on widely accepted heteronormative and patriarchal ways of living, thereby affecting how buildings and cities are accessed, used, and experienced. Moreover, spatial practices associated with such heteronormative and gender binary systems impact design ideas that shape the built environment. The imposition of traditional gender roles in architecture from patriarchal and heteronormative views affect urban policy making, architectural education, and decision making in the building and transformation of cities. Even the word ‘architect’ was and still is often gendered both in historical and contemporary perceptions of the society due to the male-dominated professional field despite the involvement and contributions of women in the transformation of the built environment for centuries. Hence, space and gender are intrinsically linked and mutually construct one another. Against these complex yet urgent ongoing questions, this special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture aims to interrogate the relation between gender and architecture focusing on feminist, queer, non-binary, and trans perspectives with an interdisciplinary approach from the past and present. However, in order to have a nuanced understanding of diverse dynamics shaping spaces and spatial practices, contributions will need to have an intersectional approach encompassing race, sexuality, age, disability, class, religion, and ethnicity. Moreover, studies mustderive from specific social, cultural, and political contexts and localities to prevent essentialist approaches to Islamic and diasporic communities.

This special issue raises questions around three themes: restrictions, reactions, and actions. On the one hand, while looking at gender history to see the restrictions imposed on various marginalised groups through socio-political structures and institutions, it is crucial to avoid victimising them by also underscoring their reactions, resistance, and attempts to reclaim their rights. On the other hand, it is equally important to show how marginalised and racialized groups took these rejections of heteronormative and patriarchal power dynamics as a starting point to build alternative communities based on their spatial experiences and embodied creative design ideas and practices. The purpose of this threefold approach is to have a well-rounded and nuanced grasp of the role of gender in architecture beyond passive and top-down narratives.

Regardless of traditional gender binary roles that associated women with domestic space and duties, women have contributed to the shaping and building of cities, communities, and spaces for centuries. But when one considers the restrictions imposed on not only women, but also nonbinary people, and their use, design, and experience of architecture in the past, the lack of historical records comes to the forefront as a serious obstacle. Given the scarcity of the primary sources, scholars look at different places for bits of information or read sources through new lenses to construct a narrative about women and marginalised non-binary people, who were not mentioned or centred in state records because they did not belong to courtly circles or other dominant groups. Hence, contributors will need to introduce an interdisciplinary approach and willingness to engage with diverse socio-political and cultural discourses and realities to reveal their hidden histories. For example, in the last decades, court records have emerged as an important source for understanding women’s lives and engagements with the city. These records show that diverse material, visual, and textual sources have the potential to contribute to writing new architectural histories disclosing the lives and spatial practices of women and non-binary groups from ordinary backgrounds. The lack of histories on women and non-binary people cannot be considered distinct from the restrictions imposed on them during spatial practices. What were the restricted spaces for them in the past? This historical perception of gender binary roles is also important in understanding contemporary architectural practices that privilege heteropatriarchal ways of shaping spaces and cities today, which affects the spatial experiences of queer, non-binary,and trans groups. Architecture can be a tool of suppression and segregation, sometimes in spite of the initial intentions behind it. Governing groups have used cities and buildings to subjugate women, queer, and trans communities, both in the past and today. These restricted spaces can expose various issues related to the intersection of gender and access. Spaces built according to a standard, able-bodied male model ignore other bodies outside of this norm. Contributors can examine real or imagined alternative spaces that challenge this normative patriarchal model. Considering the movement and impact of diverse bodies in space, it is equally important to look at the creation of alternative spaces of resistance and action during migration. Wars, authoritative states, or disasters, such as earthquakes and epidemics, cause displacements and relocations for people. Gender plays a critical role in generating spatial injustices and inequalities, particularly for women, queer, and trans communities, who are often made vulnerable to health and hygiene issues caused by gender normative or male-centred spatial organisations insensitive to their needs. Moreover, when people immigrate and settle in new places forming diasporic communities, they might reproduce traditional patriarchal structures such as the practice of sex segregation in religious or educational spaces. In diaspora, people of colour encounter diverse obstacles during urban experiences and through spatial segregations at the intersection of gender, race, and architecture. The contributors are invited to explore private, public, or in-between spaces where women, queer, non-binary, and trans people reclaim their autonomy, pushing the limits by creating new zones of resistance, action, and interaction.

Every restriction causes a reaction. Whereas traditional gender roles affected the various restrictions imposed on people in cities, for centuries women found creative ways to claim their right to experiencing the city even under strict control and patriarchal hierarchies. Modern city planning intersected with women’s movements and new rights. Modern architects introduced houses and buildings for a new way of living that reimagined gender roles and normative spatial measures. It is however important to question how progressive these modern transformations and designs were in terms of considering women’s changing role as well as promoting gender inclusivity and diversity. Architectural representations, drawings, and models can provide insight into understanding these conceptions. Looking closely at the designers who suggested changes to the private spaces particularly can disclose underlying and ongoing heteronormative and patriarchal structures despite the claim of progress as well as gender equality and inclusivity. At this juncture, it is crucial to hear, for example, how women reacted to traditional as well as modern spatial arrangements that acted as norm makers or gatekeepers. But women’s reactions were not limited to discourses. When and how did women gain full access not only to using but also working in and shaping public buildings such as hospitals, schools, libraries, and universities that empowered them? For example, contributors are encouraged to investigate women leaders in medicine, who developed spatial facilities and hospitals that supported women, queer, and trans people’s mental and physical wellbeing. Women who shaped architectural education and changed heteronormative studio practices will be another important topic to examine. Women in labour history as well as women working in architectural offices in diverse capacities emerge as another area to investigate further to understand the formation of the built environment outside the work of the male architect figure. There has been an ongoing effort to alter structural barriers in architecture to propose innovative design solutions overturning suppressed bodies and ideas and to create safe spaces for women, queer, non-binary, and trans people’s empowerment as well as gender inclusive spaces. Contributors might examine gender-neutral and gender inclusive spaces today, and in the past, tracing the alterations in social perceptions within time along with changing political discourses that target marginalised communities. Architecture can be used by power structures to hinder gender fluidity in spaces. But feminist, queer, and trans groups reclaim architecture to create gender fluid and safe spaces as agents of change for themselves and their communities. Contributors are invited to write on the erased, forgotten, or simply ignored contributions of women, queer, non-binary, and trans people to the spatial, social, and technological development of communities, neighbourhoods, and cities, from small scale workshops to alternative educational settings. Just as the male able-bodied model and its measures became the norm for forming spaces, their experiences also became the standard to imagine new spaces and who occupied these spaces. Papers interrogating this understanding to reimagine and reclaim women, queer, non-binary, and trans people’s emotional and multisensory history and lived experiences in architecture, which go beyond positivist and orientalizing discourses focused on the duality between body and the mind or the senses and the intellect are most welcome.

Equally important to underscore is writing about women, queer, non-binary, and trans people’s spatial experiences from their perspective by giving space to supressed voices. This includes a new assessment of the seeming contradiction between the notions of traditional and modern, both of which were often defined according to the heteropatriarchal gaze imposing how, for example, women should look and act. What do attempts to create safe spaces through gender inclusive washrooms, athletic facilities, women only gym classes, women in mosques movements, and shelters offer in terms of protecting one’s privacy and freedom while supporting spatial justice? What kind of a relationship do they establish with the public sphere that can be exposed to gender-based violence? The dichotomy caused by looking at private and public as two strictly separate zones defined by gender binary roles has already been challenged by scholars. They, for example, showed how working at home didn’t prevent women from participating in social, cultural, and economic activities, hence the link between public and private spaces is fluid. For centuries, knowledge has been produced in diverse spaces. It is thus important to delve into this relationship by looking at contemporary interpretations of private space and the notion of privacy by also incorporating changing lived realities and perceptions of gender beyond heteronormative, gender binary, and patriarchal norms.

Some further questions one might consider within the Islamic context might include:

• What are the legal policies that impact women, queer, non-binary, and trans people’s spatial actions and urban experiences today and/or in the past?
• Where can we locate architectural movements and alternative participatory practices that initiated real change for women, queer, non-binary, and trans people in specific neighbourhoods or cities?
• What is the impact of women, queer, non-binary, and trans people’s liberation movements in opening and forming new safe spaces?
• What are the real and virtual sites of resistance for women, queer, non-binary, and trans communities, ranging from gathering at small community meetings to occupying the squares?
• How can we rewrite the history of women’s participation in architectural education from an intersectional perspective?
• What can intersections of critical race theory and gender studies offer to reconsider travel literature and representations produced to convey urban narratives?

Editors welcome articles dealing with similar issues related to gender and architecture from an intersectional and interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing a wide variety of areas including, but not limited to, legal history, law, critical race theory, labour history, environmental history, history of emotions, and history of science.

Articles offering historical and theoretical analysis (Design in Theory; DiT) should be between 6000 and 8000 words. Those on design and practice (Design in Practice; DiP) should be between 3000 and 4000 words. Practitioners, urbanists, art historians, specialists in literary, religious, and gender studies, curators, archivists, librarians, archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, and historians whose work resonates with the topic of this special issue are welcome to contribute discussions that address the critical themes of the journal. Collaboratively authored articles are also welcome. Please send a title and a 400-word abstract to the guest editor, Gül Kale, Carleton University (IJIAgender@gmail.com), by June 15, 2024. Authors of proposals will be contacted by July 30, 2024, and may be requested to submit full article drafts for consideration by January 30, 2025. All submissions will undergo blind peer review, editing, and revision. For detailed author instructions, please consult: www.intellectbooks.com/ijia.

Contact Information

Dr. Gül Kale, Carleton University

Contact Email

IJIAgender@gmail.com

 

 

14. Hybrid: The Inaugural Catherine B. Asher Lecture in South Asian and Islamic Art on April 19, 4:30pm CDT, Online & Elmer L. Andersen Library 120, at the University of Minnesota.

This event honors the legacy of Cathy’s scholarship and mentorship in both fields. We very much hope that you will join us in honoring and remembering her through the presentation of new scholarship in the domains for which she cared so deeply.
The lecture, “Tactile Histories of the Mughal Album,” will be delivered by Dr. Yael Rice.

As compilations of discrete, fragmentary images and texts in codex format, Mughal albums lend themselves to ocularcentric analysis. How else, if not by sight, would one read a book? Yet the Mughals’ word for album, muraqqa’—Arabic for “patched” or “mended”—, foregrounds other modes of sensory engagement, namely touch. While the term clearly evokes the tactile processes of trimming and pasting together employed in the production of such albums, it also suggests the frequent episodes of repair that any excessively handled book would demand. Following this linguistic cue, this talk situates the Mughal album at the center of a complex matrix of both visual and tactile practices. It examines how physical touch and haptic perception factored in the organization, construction, and use of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century albums both within and beyond the Mughal court. It furthermore places these materials within a broader constellation of stitched textiles and gardens with and in which albums were enjoyed. Thus, this talk also builds on the important work of Catherine Asher, whose scholarship opened up new and vital ways of understanding the Mughal lived environment.
Please join us either in person or online (register here).
This event will be streamed online but it will not be recorded.

 

 

 

 

15. Tradu/izioni d’Eurasia Reloaded

Liquid Frontiers and Entangled Worlds

2,000 Years of Visual and Material Culture From the Mediterranean to East Asia

Curated by Nicoletta Fazio, Veronica Prestini, Elisabetta Raffo and Laura Vigo

12 April – 1 September 2024

MAO Museo d’Arte Orientale, Turin

Download the press kit https://bit.ly/Traduizioni_reloaded

12 April marks the public opening of the refurbishment of Tradu/izioni d’Eurasia, the exhibition organised by MAO for the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death.

The most significant changes include numerous important loans from the Uffizi, the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence, the Musei Civici, Bologna and the Museo della Ceramica Duca di Martina, Naples and site specific works by the French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada.

The exhibition is accompanied by a rich programme of talks, concerts, screenings and performances, offering visitors opportunities for reflection and new readings of the complex, fascinating story that has unfolded along the Silk Road across the centuries.

On 12 April, MAO is unveiling the refurbishment of Tradu/izioni d’Eurasia, an exhibition that tells the fascinating story of the journey of art, culture, traditions and language from East Asia to the Mediterranean basin (and back) through a new, well-chosen selection of pottery, textiles, metalwork and manuscripts.

Like Marco Polo, people travelled along the caravan routes that connected Asia and Europe across thousands of years. Travelling alongside with them were ideas, motifs and knowledge, an entire migrating heritage – material and immaterial – that put down roots everywhere it arrived through a steadfast process of adaptation.

Tradu/izioni d’Eurasia tells this story, a tale made up of connections, influences and betrayals: it is our story, a narrative that unites far-flung corners of the Eurasian continent more than we are inclined to believe and shows that the concept of ‘border’ has always been illusory and arbitrary.

The story unfolds in thematic sections alternating with forays into the contemporary world and united by a new version of Chiara Lee and freddie Murphy’s site-specific sound installation Distilled, which has been developed and added to beyond its October 2023 iteration.

The new display opens with an installation by the Berlin studio Zeitguised and explodes with the theme of blue, often paired with contrasting white: precious vases, plates and bowls of disparate provenance (from China to Delft, passing through Iran), on loan from the Museo delle Civiltà, Rome, the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza and the Museo Nazionale della Ceramica Duca di Martina, Naples, and two masterpieces by Giovanna Garzoni, from the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence.

The paintings, both of which are vibrant still lifes, feature a Chinese vase and cup decorated with typical white and blue motifs, attesting to the fluidity with which objects and iconographic themes have always circulated across Eurasian, whether brought as gifts or sold along the trade routes.

Through painting, Garzoni depicted the ties between Asia and Europe and the powerful fascination with the exotic that began bewitching the European courts, especially that of the Medici in Florence, in the fifteenth century. Art talking about art, in a play of references and decorative motifs that echo – familiar, yet different – at distant latitudes and in remote periods.

The next section is devoted to the theme of grapes and, by extension, wine. Central to Sogdian culture, wine was used not only for libations and during Zoroastrian rituals but also trade. In the exhibition, the decorative motif of the bunch of grapes is represented by pottery from China, Turkey and Iran – attesting to its wide circulation – and an extraordinary Japanese obi by the master artisan Yamaguchi Genbei: a five-metre length of fabric decorated with the well-wishing grape motif.

The heart of the reload is a series of site-specific works by the French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, the exhibition’s guest of honour.

Drawing inspiration from Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel (1842–1939), for Tradu/izioni d’Eurasia Reloaded Barrada made a series of eight medium-sized canvases that take an at once both archival and poetic approach to exploring the subject of colour and its meanings in works in the MAO collection.

The series is of course an homage to Noyes Vanderpoel, a scholar, activist, artist and patron of the arts who was based in New York in the early twentieth century, but it is especially a narration of subterranean and subordinate stories linked to the theme of diaspora and cultural influence. A story that dispenses with words in favour of the silken materiality of velvet.

Yto Barrada’s project was realised in collaboration with the Fondazione Merz, where the artist will hold a solo exhibition in the autumn of 2024. She is the winner of the fourth Mario Merz Prize, a biennial award instituted in 2013 with the aim of identifying and supporting individuals in the fields of international contemporary art and music.

Yto Barrada’s works have been placed in dialogue with textiles and pottery on loan from the Fondazione Bruschettini per l’Arte Islamica e Asiatica. The new selection of works includes refined exemplars of Ottoman art decorated with the cintamani motif, an ancient religious symbol of Buddhist origin that was reformulated and reinterpreted as a symbol of sovereignty, power and well-wishes in Iran and Turkey and, more generally, the Islamic world. These artefacts are paired with a precious sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript of The Shahnameh or Book of Kings, by the Persian poet Ferdowsi, on loan from the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. In some of the volume’s numerous and extremely fine illuminations, the Persian hero Rustam is wearing a mantle embellished with the cintamani motif.

Thanks to support from MAO and the Istituto per l’Oriente Nallino, Rome, The Book of Kingshas been restored and digitalised: it was a complex, difficult project, but indispensable for being able to display the volume in the museum and for future use by the scholarly community. The manuscript will also be the subject of a public study day planned for June.

The next section explores at the scale motif, with metal and ceramic tableware from India, Turkey, Iran, China and Italy on loan from the Musei Civici, Bologna and a few important private collections.

The scale pattern, symbolising good health and riches, was the result of multiple cultural and artistic encounters and can be considered an emblem of the ‘entangled worlds’ at the heart of the exhibition. It returned, translated and readapted, in the symbol of the dragon and in that of the carp, just as the pilgrim’s flask type re-emerged, represented in the exhibition by a splendid majolica exemplar from fifteenth-century Pesaro.

Next to the room of metalwork from the Aron Collection there is a new selection of seventh- and eighth-century samite, silk textiles used in the past for vestments and sumptuous clothing and embellished with animal motifs (lions and bulls in niches and birds in beaded circles). These textiles are echoed in a seventeenth-century Japanese painting of a Buddhist monk wearing a kesa (the traditional Buddhist mantle) that is as richly decorated as the fabric that covers his chair.

The exhibition ends with a poetic, immersive installation, Anila Quayyum Agha’s Shimmering Mirage (Black), 2018, which transports visitors to an imaginary elsewhere, and a reading room by the Milan publisher by the same name, Reading Room (specialised in independent publications and artists’ books), where there is also a video work by the Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, The Watchman (2023). The video follows Sergeant Bulut (a postmodern version of Lieutenant Drogo in The Desert of the Tartars), who is stationed in a watchtower on the southern border between the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus. There, immersed in a world caught between reality and imagination, the soldier passes endless days and equally endless nights waiting for an enemy that never comes, until vague lights appear on the horizon that give the film a ghostly final twist. It is a powerful and needed reflection on the concepts of border and death, the intrinsic violence of the frontier and the absurdity of war rhetoric.

The final component of the exhibition is the light installation MOSADEGH (2023) by the Iranian artist Shadi Harouni, which invites reflection on themes like democracy and hope through the poetic and fierce account of the complex history of modern Iran, in dialogue with one of the 100 fragments of the copy of a Caucasian carpet made for the Pergamon Museum, Berlin as part of ‘CULTURALXCOLLABS – WEAVING THE FUTURE‘, a participatory art project that goes beyond museum walls to engage with the community and create a dialogue between past, present and future, in an exchange between culture, museum and individuals with different stories and sensibilities.

The project begins with the extraordinary story of a seventeenth-century Caucasian carpet decorated with a dragon motif. It entered the collection of the Berlin museums in 1881, but it was partially destroyed by a fire bomb during World War II, which spared only a few fragments. Using these fragments, a complex restoration project was launched in 2004 that gave the carpet the look of an almost graphic puzzle. In 2022, a copy of the carpet was made by hand in India for CulturalxCollabs – Weaving the Future and cut into 100 equal fragments, which began to circulate around the world, creating a tangible link between the museum, which is currently closed for renovations, and people, with the aim of generating a collective, shared narrative at the end of the project, planned for 2027.

The fragment-copy is displayed with two precious Caucasian carpets from the seventeenth century: alarge carpet with a floral pattern and two fragments of a carpet with a dragon motif, both from the Bruschettini Collection. These motifs, tied to traditional Chinese and Persian symbolism, evoke cosmological myths about the opposition of light and darkness, fertility and the origin of life, and symbolise power and spirituality.

 

In keeping with all of MAO’s exhibition projects, this refurbishment is also accompanied by a rich public program of musical events and performances, once again by Chiara Lee and freddie Murphy, and a series oftalks and meetings that offer the public new opportunities for reflection on complex themes intimately tied to current issues.

Finally, a booklet containing texts that take a closer look at and expand upon the themes of the exhibition will be distributed free of charge in the museum.

The reload of the exhibition is accompanied by the rehang of the Islamic Asian Countries gallery, including the display of an extraordinary group of Kerman carpets, a particular type of rug from the Safavid period (1501–1722) called ‘vase carpets’: twelve precious fragments from the collection of the Fondazione Bruschettini per l’Arte Islamica e Asiatica and a rare large exemplar from MITA, the Museo Internazionale del Tappeto Antico, Brescia.

Produced in the Iranian city that gives them their name, Kerman carpets are a type of Persian rug marked by technical refinement and innovative taste and distinctive for their vast variety of patterns, an especially rich colour range and remarkable durability. The quality of these carpets tells us that although Kerman was never the seat of the Safavid court, it was an especially important city and entrusted to princes close to the sovereign. ‘Vase carpets’ have a large, often monumental, vase motif in the middle, filled with stylised flowers, plant motifs and geometric shapes. The borders of this carpet type are generally relatively thin in relation to the middle field.

The display of these carpets is a new instalment of the project Flowers in Wool, which began in Genoa in 2022 with the exhibition I magnifici tappeti Sanguszko, and the next instalment of which is an upcoming major exhibition of Kerman carpets from Italian collections.

 

 

 

 

16. Simon Fraser University – Farley Distinguished Visiting Scholar in History
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=67088

 

 

 

 

 

17. NEW Deadline

The Arabic Language and Literature department at UAE University is currently advertising a full-time professor position in Classical Arabic. They are seeking a scholar who can teach in Arabic and possess a distinguished profile in Scopus in terms of publications and citations. UAEU provides exceptional benefits, including free accommodation, a tax-free salary, a children’s school allowance, return tickets in the summer, and comprehensive health care coverage. Please feel free to reach out if you require further information.

The new deadline is 15/4/2024. Here is the link to apply:

https://jobs.uaeu.ac.ae/Postings/PostingDetails/3996

 

 

 

18.New interdisciplinary journal on Amazigh Studies launched

As part of a wider project aimed at establishing Amazigh Studies Program at UCLA, Professor Aomar Boum of UCLA Anthropology, a CNES Faculty Advisory Committee member, and Professor Brahim El Guabli of Williams College, launched the first issue of the new Tamazgha Studies Journal (TSJ). Drawing on the Amazigh Cultural Movement’s use of Tamazgha to refer to the historical Amazigh homeland extending from the Canary Islands to southwest Egypt, TSJ will use the new developments in Amazigh Studies to create new knowledge in this field of study. A detailed history of Amazigh studies at UCLA and the role of CNES in its establishment is explored in one of the articles featured in the issue.

 

 

 

 

19. Of Language and Identity in Early Islam

The 2024 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award presentation and conference

Thursday, May 16 – Friday, May 17, 2024

10:00 am

Charles E. Young Research Library

UCLA

The award will be jointly presented to Michael Cook, Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, and Hossein Modarressi, Bayard Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, in recognition of their decades-long collaboration and their enormous contributions to the fields of Near Eastern and Islamic Studies.

https://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/event/16624

 

 

Posted in: Academic items