Shii News – Academic Items

1.International Conference “Environmental History Challenging the Mediterranean(16th to 21^st Centuries)”, University Côte d’Azur, 27-28 March 2025

The aim of this conference is therefore to take a fresh look at the Mediterranean through the lens of environmental history. How does this field of history enable us to reconsider the spectrum of Mediterranean studies, from economic and maritime history to political history, via cultural and social history? How do Mediterranean societies adapt to external models? How are practices specific to certain Mediterranean regions integrated into other areas.

Deadline for abstracts: 30 September 2024.

Information: https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20037157/cfp-environmental-history-challenging-mediterranean-16th-21st

2. The Edward Zakarian Awardof the Austrian Academy of Sciences recognizes outstanding doctoral dissertations in the fields of Armenology and Iranian Studies written and completed at a university in Europe.
Amount of the award: 4,000 euros

Dissertations may be submitted from all fields of Armenology and Iranian Studies, i.e., from areas of the humanities and cultural studies as well as political science, law, and sociology.

Applications are invited from highly qualified scholars who have completed their doctoral studies no more than 2 years prior to the submission date and have done so in a member state of the European Union or at a university in Armenia, the United Kingdom, Iran, Switzerland, or Turkey.

Deadline for applications: 15 July 2024

Information about the award and the application documents can be found here.

3. CFP – “Textile Ecologies”, Online Workshop – February 2025

Among the artifacts crafted by humankind, textiles have always held a uniquely interdependent relationship with the environment. Textiles derive from vegetal (hemp, raffia, ramie, cotton, or bark cloth), animal (wool, silk) and even mineral origins (as in the case of asbestos fibers). The production of textiles has depended upon access to and the processing of raw materials, while cloth manufacturing has reshaped entire landscapes from the transplantation of mulberry trees for sericulture to the mounds of murex shells discarded after the extraction of Tyrian purple dye. Textile patterns abound with imagery of flora and fauna, while fabrics have come to shape myths and metaphors of the natural world. Textiles have connected distant regions, but they have also been responsible for and complicit in the enslavement of human beings and the exploitation of agricultural, artisanal, and industrial labor. Textile production has led to the despoliation of landscapes and water resources, often in unequal ways that resulted from colonialism and environmental racism. Despite the recent concern with historical legacies of environmental harm, the field of ecological humanities has mostly neglected the textile realm. For this online workshop, we welcome contributions that consider the relationship between textiles and the environment from any time period and geographic region and seek scholars, artists, and cultural practitioners who grapple with the aesthetic dimensions, ecological conditions, and the past, present, and potential futures of cloth.

After a session on “Textile Ecologies” that we organized for the College Art Association (CAA) conference in 2019, we are now inviting proposals for an online workshop that is scheduled to take place February 5-7, 2025. We welcome submissions from artists, practitioners, conservators, art historians, historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences, as well as those analyzing textiles and ecology within the natural sciences. Please send a brief bio and an abstract of maximum 350 words for 20 min presentations by July 15, 2024 to Sylvia Houghteling and Vera-Simone Schulz at textile.ecologies@gmail.com

4. Baylor University – 2 Lecturers in History
https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_dis play.php?id=67315

The positions will begin in August 2025.

Complete applications must be submitted by 11pm Central Daylight Time on October 1, 2024.

Posted in: Academic items