Shii News – Academic Items
1. “Male, Female, and In-Between Singers in Medieval Iberia and the Broader Islamic World”
Dwight F. Reynolds, Distinguished Professor of Arabic language & literature, University of California, Santa Barbara
16 May, Edinburgh College of Art, Hunter Building, Hunter Lecture Theatre, 4pm, followed by refreshments
This lecture begins by exploring the entirely different understanding of gender that was common in the medieval Islamic world, and then explores the role of gender in the performance of music in the medieval Mediterranean and Iberia. Particular attention is given to the special class of female slaves trained in music and other art forms (Arabic qiyān) who were bought and sold, given as gifts, and occasionally managed to be set free, and the musicians who were mukhannathūn, sometimes translated as “effeminates,” who crossed back and forth between male and female social domains.
2. EUP are pleased to announce the publication of our new edited volume, Hagia Sophia in the Long Nineteenth Century, published in the Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire series by Edinburgh University Press. The book includes 9 essays that examine Hagia Sophia from multiple perspectives during the long nineteenth century, when this monument’s status as an icon of world heritage was beginning to take shape.
Contributing Authors: Ünver Rüstem, Tülay Artan, Emily Neumeier, Benjamin Anderson, Sotirios Dimitriadis, Robert S. Nelson, Asli Menevse, Ayşe Hilâl Uğurlu, and Robert Ousterhout
A table of contents can be found on the press website: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-hagia-sophia-in-the-long-nineteenth-century.html (Use the code NEW30 for 30% off the listed purchase price.)
3. Le CeRMI a le plaisir de vous convier à laprochaine séancedu séminaire “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du monde iranien”, qui se tiendra le jeudi 25 avril 2024, 17h-19h, en salle 3.15 à l’INaLCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 3e étage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir M. Ahmad Sadri, James P. Gorter Professor of Islamic World Studies et Professeur et Professeur de sociologie et d’anthropologie au Lake Forest College (Illinois), auteur d’une nouvelle traduction intégrale du Shahnameh à paraître chez Norton Classics en 2025, pour une conférence intitulée : « The Progressive Arch of Shahnameh’s Tragedies ».
Résumé
In the four tragedies of Shahnameh (Rostam vs. Sohrab, Froud vs. Tous, Siavosh vs. Kay Kavous, and Esfandiar vs. Rostam), human agency gradually takes center stage. The story of Rostam and Sohrab is overdetermined by fate and its instruments: naïveté, inattention, freak accidents, and unintended consequences. In the following two tragedies of Forud and Siavosh, common passions and human frailties of selfishness, greed, and pride stream into the narrative. Yet, it is only in the poem’s last and grandest tragedy that fate, accidents, and supernatural events play no role. Prince Esfandiar’s obsession with becoming king is the prime mover of the tragedy. Thus, ascribed qualities (being of the seed of kings and divine charisma) wane in favor of those achieved by daring courage and practical reason. The epic period lasts a millennium and it ends as a consequence of the battle of Rostam and Esfandiar. In the historical period, we witness the hyper-real tragedy of Bahram-e Chubine vs. King Khosrow Parviz.
Orientations bibliographiques
- Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Jalal Khaleghi-Motlagh(ed.), Tehran, Center of the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia, 2011.
- Ferdowsi, Al-Shahnama, Fath b. ‘Ali al-Bundari al-Isfahani (trans.), ‘Abd al-Wahhab ‘Azzam (ed.), Cairo, Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyah, 1932, 2 vols.
- Ferdowsi, Shahnameh, Ahmad Sadri (trans.), London, Norton Classics, (forthcoming in 2025).
- Hamid Dabashi, The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic and World Literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 2019.
- Dick Davis, Epic and Sedition: The Case of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Fayetteville, University of Arkansas Press, 1992.
Pour rappel, vous retrouverez le programme 2023-2024 du séminaire mensuel de recherche “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du monde iranien” sur le site du CeRMI :
Contact: justine.landau@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr
4. Ghand-e Parsi: Gateway to Academic Persian Language and Literature
https://sites.google.com/view/ghandeparsi
5. CFP: Brill’s Journal of Religious Minorities under Muslim Rule
The Journal of Religious Minorities under Muslim Rule provides a primary venue for scholarly studies that examine religious minorities (such as Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and other minoritarian Muslim groups) under majoritarian Muslim rule. The journal covers a large temporal period, spanning from 7th century Arabia to 1922 (the end of Ottoman rule), in addition to a large geographic area from North Africa and al-Andalus in the West to Iran, some Central Asian lands, well into Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia in the East. The focus includes minority-minority, minority-majority, and minority-state relations. In addition to its broad temporal and geographic reach, this is an interdisciplinary journal that will appeal to those working in specific disciplines, including history, religious studies, literature, legal studies, and archaeology.
JRMMR welcomes original papers and review essays that focus on any temporal and geographic areas. We are particularly interested in, but not limited to, papers that,
- reinterpret the minority-majority interaction/s
- critique the Muslim vs. non-Muslim discourse/s
- problematize dichotomized perceptions on minorities
- re-examine the minority Other in and under Muslim rule
- read primary sources anew using state-of-the-art technologies
- analyze minority relations as dynamic, fluid, and ever-changing
- move beyond cliché concepts and categories that frame minorities
- bring to light both well-known and lesser-known minority traditions
- contextualize minority communities in wider socio-historical contexts
SUBMIT YOUR PAPER
We would like to invite all authors to submit their manuscripts via the journal’s online platform: https://www.editorialmanager.com/rmmr/default.aspx. We receive manuscripts on a rolling basis, and we publish two issues per year.
If you have any questions before submitting or are interested in discussing a special issue, please contact the editors, Abbas Aghdassi (aghdassi@um.ac.ir) and Aaron W. Hughes (aaron.hughes@rochester.edu). For more information, please visit: https://brill.com/rmmr/.
6. British Institute of Persian Studies – Junior Assistant Role
Position Junior Assistant
Salary £25,000 per annum, pro rata
Contract Fixed term
Working pattern Part-time, 3 days per week (0.6 FTE)
Workplace Hybrid
Employer The British Institute of Persian Studies, London (www.bips.ac.uk)
Closing date 22 May 2024, 5PM
The British Institute of Persian Studies is currently seeking a part-time, 3 days per week, Junior Assistant to support its work in promoting scholarship and research excellence on all aspects of Iran and the wider Persianate world. The role suits a well organised and methodical person, with an interest in the development of processes. The ideal candidate will be able to work both under supervision and semi-independently when required, will be proactive and enthusiastic and ideally interested in the promotion of the Persianate world, its history and culture.
BIPS is a UK charity and company limited by guarantee. It is also a self-governing membership organisation, in which members are elected to serve on its Governing Council as trustees of the charity and directors of the company. Most Council members are academics in the field of Persianate studies.
_______________________________________________________________
Duties of the Junior Assistant
The Junior Assistant will work under the supervision of the BIPS General Manager who will act as their line manager. They will provide support in the following areas: Communication, Outreach, and Administration. It is expected that from time to time the Junior Assistant will be asked to undertake tasks other than those specified above, under the supervision of their line manager.
Communicaition
Under the supervision of the General Manager and in line with BIPS policies, the Junior
Assistant will be responsible for the management of the BIPS social media pages and profiles, for the creation of social media contents and graphics, BIPS newsletters, BIPS Student Newsletter and BIRI newsletters.
The Junior Assistant will occasionally interact with the members of BIPS in order to provide assistance with basic queries about membership renewals and subscription to the IRAN journal.
Outreach
In this area, the Junior Assistant will work under the supervision of the General Manager and of the BIPS Outreach Director. The General Manager will be the Assistant’s first point of contact.
The Junior Assistant will be responsible for keeping the BIPS website updated. Content for the website will normally be provided, however, on occasion the Junior Assistant will be required to produce content for the webpages.
The Junior Assistant will also provide technical support for the organisation and delivery of the BIPS online events and the subsequent editing and circulation of video and audio
recordings and other outputs to the public. Some degree of interaction with speakers invited by BIPS will be required.
The Junior Assistant will be responsible for the promotion of online and in person events
mainly through social media and the BIPS website.
Administration and projects
The Junior Assistant will be requested to collect statistical data on event attendance, social media and website reach and impact. They will keep the data updated and will assist with the data collection for reporting to the British Academy.
The Junior Assistant may be required to provide support with the Archive Digitisation projects undertaken by BIPS. This can include data cleaning and preparation for uploading to the BIPS Digitisation Platform.
Required Skills
Essential:
Proficiency with MS Office 365, specifically Excel and PowerPoint;
Previous experience of running and streaming webinars;
Familiarity with Adobe software, in particular Premier Pro, InDesign and Photoshop;
Ability to work independently with email marketing platforms (such as Mailchimp) and social media management platforms;
Desirable:
Previous experience of working at the backend of WordPress websites;
Interest in archives
Familiarity with Xero or similar accounting software
An understanding of the charity and the UK higher education sectors;
Knowledge of the Persianate world.
_______________________________________________________________
How to apply
Please send your CV and covering letter to bips@thebritishacademy.ac.uk .
7. Hybrid: UCLA’s Pourdavoud Lecture Series with Wu Xin
‘Regal Metamorphosis: A Transcultural Journey of the Achaemenid Royal Women to the East’
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 4:00pm Pacific
Royce Hall 306
Hybrid Zoom Option Available
8. Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation, edited by Lilia Makhloufi
This book offers a rich collection of perspectives on the complex interplay between tangible and intangible heritage.
Offering a close and critical examination of heritage preservation in countries including Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Morocco, Oman, Syria and Tunisia, these essays illustrate the need to redefine heritage as an interdisciplinary and intercultural concept. They interrogate heritage paradigms while also providing concrete recommendations to promote the preservation of physical heritage spaces, and the cultural practices and social relationships that depend on them.
Rich in detail and broad in relevance, this book emphasises specific cultural realities while also reflecting on the impact of global historical, social, economic and political trends to heritage conservation, scrutinising the conditions of the past to adapt them to the needs of the present and future. It will be of great relevance to all those interested in the preservation and management of heritage sites, including architects, urban planners, landscape architects, historians, sociologists and archaeologists, as well as heritage marketing, museum and cultural tourism professionals.
Access this Title
Read and Download for Free: We are pleased to inform you that Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation is freely available to read and download in both PDF and HTML formats. Access the full text here and explore the wealth of knowledge this publication has to offer.
Secure Your Copy: For those who prefer a tangible edition or who are interested in acquiring the book in ePub format, you can do so at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0388
Benefits for Library Members: Members of our library program enjoy discounts on physical copies and can access all digital editions for free. This is your opportunity to enrich your institutional library with cutting-edge insights!
9. CFP – ‘Iran and China: Common heritage and contemporary relations’, University of Groningen
Date: 27-28 September 2024
Location: University of Groningen
Deadline: 15 May 2024
Convenors: William Figueroa (University of Groningen) & Peyman Eshaghi (Free University of Berlin)
Since ancient times, connections between Iran and China have flourished through trade and literature. This has resulted in significant mutual influence on the artistic, cultural, and political development and histories of various peoples residing in the Iranian plateau, China, and Central Asia. Today a large amount of extant tangible and intangible cultural heritage exists in both Iran and China attesting to this shared history. Both forms of heritage are often referenced, put on display, and mobilized in support of a range of political and personal projects. Given its historical significance and contemporary relevance, the goal of this conference is to bring together scholars considering these common ties of cultural heritage, as well as how they are situated in contemporary academic, political, or cultural debates.
We invite papers on any aspect of the common heritage of Iran and China, including but not limited to the following issues:
- Books, manuscripts, art works and first hand materials about Iran and China produced in either countries.
- Literary products of any kind that consider the relationship between the two.
- The presence or influence of Iranian or Chinese culture in the literature, folklore, and artistic traditions of the other.
- Travelogues, diaries, and cultures of travel.
- Accounts of historical political relations between Iran and China, including delegates and envoys.
- The historical position of Iran on the Silk Road and its connection to China.
- Material life, imported objects, and the objectification of imagination between the two countries.
- Religious life, missionary groups, and promotion of Islam, Nestorianism and Manichaeism in Iran and China.
- Emigration and immigration of Iranian and Chinese communities across Central Asia.
- Contemporary mobilization of these themes in international relations, public discourse, and academic debates.
The workshop will be held in hybrid format, in person at University of Groningen for those who are able to attend, and online for colleagues who are unable to attend in person. The conference will be sponsored by the Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture (Instituut voor Cultuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek Groningen: ICOG) and the Centre for Religion and Heritage (CRH).
Keynote Speakers:
Arang Keshavarzian, NYU
Khodadad Rezakhani, Leiden Institute for Area Studies
We invite interested scholars to send an abstract (300 words max.) and a one-page CV to: w.a.figueroa@rug.nl
SUBMISSION DEADLINE for abstracts: 15 May 2024
Notification of the accepted abstracts: 30 May 2024
Deadline for submission of the first draft of presentations: 30 Aug 2024
Conference Date: Sept 27-28, 2024
Contact Email
URL
https://www.rug.nl/research/icog/news/2024/0408-cfp-iran-and-china
10. CFP – “Historicizing the Muslim Sensorium: Toward a Sensory History of Islam in the Early Modern World”, Utrecht University
Utrecht University, October 17-18, 2024
Convened by the SENSIS research project at Utrecht University, this conference seeks to bring together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to advance the history of the senses in the Islamic world. Inspired by the “sensory turn” (Howes 2003) that has enriched numerous areas of the humanities and social sciences in recent years, we will explore how Muslims across different historical, geographical, social, and intellectual contexts experienced sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
Why write the senses into the history of Islam? While sensory history is a rapidly growing field, to date the majority of works on the history of the senses has been framed around distinct geographies that emphasize Western European and North American contexts (Classen 2014, Smith 2021). Only recently have scholars of Islamic history and culture begun to devote sustained attention to the senses (Elias 2012, Bonnéric 2016, Fahmy 2020, Lange 2022). Similarly, path-breaking work has emerged in the related field of the history of emotions, especially in the context of early modern and modern South Asia, Safavid Iran, and the Ottoman empire (Rizvi 2017, Pernau 2019, Schofield 2021, Tekgül 2022). However, much remains to be done before Islamic sensory history becomes a well-established field of inquiry.
How, then, can we conceive of the Muslim sensorium over the course of history? Is there really such a thing as a Muslim sensorium? What are the ways in which we could write the history of the senses in the Islamic world? What does Islamic sensory history teach us about, say, the Ottomans, the Safavids, or the Mughals that conventional or “sense-less” history does not? How is sensory history connected to or distinct from the history of emotions? And what are the methods, interpretive stakes, and archival challenges in doing Islamic sensory history? These are some of the key questions this conference aims to address.
As historians of the senses, we are interested in understanding how the senses are historically and culturally constructed. This also obliges us to interrogate the historical formation of our own investigative categories, such as Islam, modernity, empire, or the nation-state (Smith 2007). Geographically and temporally, this conference loosely focuses on the three early modern empires of the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals (c. 1500-1900). We are particularly interested in contributions that approach the senses from a transregional and transnational focus. Moreover, we invite scholars to think about ways in which Islamic sensory history relates to questions of class, gender, sexuality, emotions, religious identity, migration, kingship, the state, imperialism, and colonialism.
Papers are welcome on topics such as the following:
• Sensory approaches to Ottoman, Safavid/Qajar, or Mughal history
• Islamic mysticism and the senses
• Islamic law and the senses
• Devotional practices and the senses
• The senses in multilingual, multi-ethnic, and religiously diverse contexts
• Cross-cultural encounters and the senses
• Intersensoriality and synesthesia
• The senses in times of war and conflict
• Courtly culture and the senses
• Identity and the senses
• Colonial modernity, Orientalism, and the senses
• Emotions and the senses
• Material culture and sensory history
• Art, music, poetry, and aesthetics in sensory history
• The senses in economic, intellectual, cultural, and social history
• Sources, archives, and research language
It is our pleasure to announce Professor David Howes (Concordia University) and Professor Nil Tekgül (Bilkent University) as keynote speakers for the conference.
Paper proposals:
Please send your proposals to g.sievers@uu.nl , including paper title, abstract (max 250 words), name, and institution, by June 1, 2024. We welcome scholars regardless of geographical location and particularly encourage graduate students and early-career scholars to submit paper proposals. We have limited funds available to supplement travel costs of presenters. Please indicate in your email if you would like to be considered for a travel grant and/or whether you can secure travel funding from your home institution. No registration fee is required for participation. Confirmed presenters will be asked to submit final draft of their papers to respondents no later than October 10, 2024.
Note that this will be the first of three conferences planned by the SENSIS research group. The other two are scheduled to take place in 2025 and will focus on sensory history approaches to transregional conflict and material culture. For more information, please visit our website: https://sensis.wp.hum.uu.nl.
Contact Information
Gianni Sievers, Utrecht University
Contact Email
URL
https://sensis.wp.hum.uu.nl/2024/04/cfp-sensis-conference-2024/
11. ‘Resurgence of the “Islamic City” in the 20th and 21st Centuries’, NYU (in person and online) – April 30
Organized and Moderated by: Zohreh Soltani
Panelists: Burak Erdim, Berin Golonu, Emily Neumeier, Jennifer Pruitt, Ipek Türeli
Tuesday, April 30, 5:00pm EST (Reception to follow)
In Person & on Zoom: Kevorkian Library, 255 Sullivan Street, NYU
Hosted by: Ottoman and Turkish Studies Initiative at NYU
Co-Sponsored by: Iranian Studies Initiative at NYU and the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
The “Islamic city” as a monolithic concept and formation has been framed as a dead-end historical subject of study invented in the European imagination since the 19th century. Yet, critiques of Orientalism have not quelled an expectation that the resurgence of Islamic beliefs and politics would usher in a new phase of Islamic urbanism, particularly in Muslim theocracies such as Iran, but also Turkey and the Gulf. While urban historians critique and deconstruct the historical notion of the Islamic city as an orientalist creation, emerging Islamic states see the Islamic city in much more concrete terms, and, in fact, long for its recreation within the modern reality of Muslim majority cities. However, while those spatial strategies and architectural references are legible and dissectible to architectural historians, they might not always be as identifiable to the users of such spaces. In this roundtable, architectural and urban historians of the contemporary Middle East will discuss the complexities, challenges, successes or failures of such attempts at a revived and instrumentalized notion of Islamic urbanism over the past fifty years coinciding with the rise of political Islam in the region.
Register here to attend in-person | Register here to attend online
For more information: https://www.otsnyu.com/event/roundtable-resurgence-of-the-islamic-city-in-the-20th-and-21st-centuries/
12. Zoom: The Visual Order of the Promenade: The Chaharbagh of Safavid Isfahan and its Sensory Experiences
Speaker: Farshid Emami
23 Apr 2024 17:00 – 18:30
Free, booking essential
Zoom
This event takes place online, details of the Zoom webinar will be sent out to ticket holders.
Based on his recently published book, Isfahan: Architecture and Urban Experience in Early Modern Iran (Penn State University Press, 2024), Farshid Emami will offer a fresh account of the architecture, sensory landscape, and visual structure of the Chaharbagh, a four-kilometre-long, tree-lined promenade that served as the primary venue of urban leisure and processional ceremonies in Isfahan, the cosmopolitan capital city of the Safavid Empire in early modern Iran. Drawing on historical visual sources, Persian-language poetic descriptions, European travel narratives, and on-site fieldwork, the talk will recreate the experience of the Chaharbagh from the viewpoint of a moving beholder, reconstructing the now-vanished pavilions, landscape elements, coffeehouses, and Sufi convents that engendered a carefully choreographed sequence of aesthetic, social, and sensual pleasures along the promenade. Striking a delicate balance between a grand setting for ceremonial processions and an enticing public arena for leisurely strolls, the Chaharbagh created a novel urban setting for individual and collective social experiences.
Farshid Emami (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2017) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Rice University. He specialises in the history of architecture, urbanism, and the arts in the Islamic lands, with a focus on the early modern period and Safavid Iran. His scholarly interests include global histories of early modernity, social experiences of architecture and urban spaces, interactions of architecture and literature, and patterns of cross-cultural exchange in the Persianate lands and beyond. In addition to his publications on Safavid art and architecture, he has written on topics such as lithography in nineteenth-century Iran and modernist architecture and urbanism in the Middle East.
This event is organised by Professor Sussan Babaie, Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam.
For more information and to register:
13. UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies
The Karlowitz Moment: The Ottoman Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century and the Making of the Modern World
Historiography of the Middle East Series
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
3:00 PM
https://www.international.ucla.edu/cnes/event/16538
Exploring Manuscript Migrations through the Provenance of the Tiflis Collection
Friday, April 19, 2024
12:00 PM
Kaplan Hall, Rm 193
https://international.ucla.edu/cnes/event/16627
Posted in: Academic items- April 13, 2024
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