Shii News – Academic Items
1.We are pleased to announce the launch of “The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine.”
An online exhibition, exhibition catalog, and academic edited volume in one, this website offers an alternative museological space for exploring the Emamzadeh Yahya’s many looks, functions, resonances, and stories over the last 700 years. The mirrored website in English and Persian includes six thematic galleries with over 70 contributions, including essays, films, digital interactives, and catalog entries. Through its holistic exploration of the shrine’s complex and layered histories, this website seeks to nuance and improve how the site is understood across many audiences and contexts.
The primary aim of this project is to increase awareness and understanding of the Emamzadeh Yahya and its dispersed collections and archives worldwide, without pursuing commercial, political, or institutional objectives. The project has been created and governed by individuals beyond institutions and is committed to the open and equitable dissemination of knowledge.
The website is an independent production of 33 Arches and is hosted by Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online.
https://khamseen-emamzadeh-yahya-varamin.hart.lsa.umich.edu
For questions about the project or website, please contact: Dr. Keelan Overton, Director, keelanoahu@yahoo.com
YouTube channel (for our films): www.youtube.com/@EmamzadehYahyaExhibition2024
Instagram: eyvexpo2024 (for basic posts, news)
2. Zahra Institute: 2025 Spring Speaker Series Begins on February 5
We are excited to bring together a great lineup of lectures for our 2025 Spring Speaker Series. Please join us to learn more about Kurdish women’s histories, Alevi Kurdish music, Yezidi shrines, and more! The series kicks off on February 5 with Ahmet Kuru speaking on “Populism, Islamism, and Nationalism: A New Partnership Worldwide.”
For more information on Zahra Institute’s upcoming events, please see the program and event flyers attached and visit our website: https://www.zahrainstitute.org/
Critical Muslim Studies Program: Featured Lecture
Populism, Islamism, and Nationalism: A New Partnership Worldwide
Wednesday, 5 February: 12pm Central / 1pm Eastern
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/94922534268?pwd=pZySRzwpE33a9AvPeVZ2AcAjTTaAVU.1
Ahmet T. Kuru (Ph.D., University of Washington) is the director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies at San Diego State University. His recent book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019), co-won the American Political Science Association’s International History and Politics Section and was included in the Times Literary Supplement’s Books of the Year.
Vegetarian Diet at the Intersection of Kurdish Identity, Religion, and Class
Wednesday, 19 February: 12pm Central / 1pm Eastern
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/96379673159?pwd=myi0KdQtMdeSRkKynz9Iipao0VtsSl.1
Jihan Mohammed (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is a sociologist whose research focuses on investigating how ethnic and sectarian identities are constructed and deconstructed in the contemporary Middle East. She has published work on Kurdish identity and ethno-religious dynamics.
3. Submissions are now open for the 2025 BRISMES Early Career Development Scholarship. The aim of this award is to support activities geared towards strengthening the academic profile and CV of an early career scholar. This year, two awards of £3,000 each are available.
In order to be eligible for this award, applicants must be members of BRISMES, must have submitted a PhD dissertation in the last 2 years in any disciplinary field, on a topic related to the study of the Middle East and North Africa and must not have a permanent academic position when they receive the grant.
Priority will be given to applicants with limited or no access to institutional support (whether time or funding) for research-focused activities.
Eligible activities include (but are not necessarily limited to):
- Developing an article for a peer-reviewed journal
- Developing a book chapter
- Transforming a PhD thesis into a book manuscript
- Developing pilot research for a new project
- Preparing a grant proposal for their own postdoctoral work
- Developing an exhibition, a film, multi-series podcast, a workshop or some other creative practice that helps share your research with academic and/or non-academic audiences
- But also, please feel free to be more creative than we are!
The deadline for submissions is 5 PM (UK time) on 24 March 2025.
More information: https://www.brismes.ac.uk/awards/ecds
4. 2025 Winter School: Ghand-e Parsi Persian School:
Persian Language and Literature Courses & Persianate Studies Coaching Program
After some 1000 hours of instruction and coaching to a large number of faculty members, researchers and students from many different universities (see Testimonial section), Ghand-e Parsi starts its 2025 Persian Winter School
More information and registration: https://tinyurl.com/persiancourses
5. Le CeRMI a le plaisir de vous convier à la prochaine séance du séminaire “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du Monde iranien”, qui se tiendra jeudi prochain, 30 janvier 2025, 17h-19h, en salle 4.15 à l’INaLCO (65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 4eétage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir M. Jeffrey Kotyk (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), pour une conférence intitulée: “Alternative Views on Sasanian History: Contemporary Chinese Accounts of Persia“.
Résumé:
Over the last century in Western scholarship, the history of late Sasanian history has been built up using the accounts recorded in the works of al-Ṭabarī, Theophanes, and others. The narrative created is one of court intrigue, with many conversations and details included, which historians today generally read as objective. Encyclopædia Iranica and other resources digest these sources, providing a detailed history of the late kings and their interactions. We read of a palace coup d’état and Khosrow being condemned by his son.
The Chinese records of the early seventh century—preserved in an array of different court records and histories—however, present a different picture of what happened. They record that it was the Western Turks who killed Khosrow. They also name his successors, with names that align with the numismatic evidence. The Chinese records are brief by comparison, but they represent largely unmodified court records that were simply copied. Modern historians have rarely considered these, or otherwise the Chinese accounts have been simply dismissed. Still, Iranology accepts the Chinese account of Pērōz and his exile to China, while ignoring the other record of Khosrow that does not align with the Greek and Arabic histories.
This talk will introduce the contemporary Chinese records of Persia, highlighting their value while discussing the possibility of revisiting late Sasanian history.
Orientations bibliographiques:
– János HARMATTA. “La Médaille de J̌eb Šāhānšāh.” Studia Iranica 1982/2, p. 167–180.
– Samuel N. C. LIEU. “Byzantium, Persia, and China: Interstate Relations on the Eve of the Islamic Conquest.” In David Christian and Craig Benjamin (eds.). Silk Road Studies IV: Realms of the Silk Road, Ancient and Modern. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000, p. 47–65.
– Jeffrey KOTYK. Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium. (Crossroads – History of Interactions across the Silk Routes, Volume: 8). Leiden: Brill, 2024.
– Katarzyna MAKSYMIUK. “The Two Eyes of the Earth: The Problem of Respect in Sasanid-Roman Relations.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 2018/58, p. 591–606.
Pour rappel, vous retrouverez le programme 2024-2025 du séminaire mensuel de recherche “Sociétés, politiques et cultures du Monde iranien” sur le site du CeRMI :
6. CALL FOR PAPERS
International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA)
Special Issue: Environment in Architecture’s History and Architecture in Environment’s History
Guest editor: Esra Akcan
Thematic volume planned for: 2027
Abstract submission deadline: June 1, 2025
One may misleadingly infer from the data on the built environment’s responsibility in causing climate change that architects have not paid attention to climate. To the contrary, however, there is hardly any other criterion as ordinary and as omnipresent as climate in architectural design. A forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture will address the intersection of geopolitical and ecological concerns in architecture and explore the multidirectional and multilateral relations between the three words in its title—architecture, history, environment. Articles will evaluate architecture’s role in climate change by writing not only the history of architecture with respect to climate but also the history of climate due to architecture.
From the writings of Vitruvius to guidebooks on corporate environmentalism, references to environmental regulation and considerations of the sun and the wind, the heat and the cold, rain and snow, have been regular inputs for designers of buildings around the world. Established historians have provided a large spectrum of definitions for climate, ranging from a criterion to be controlled to one that inspires difference: Johann Winckelmann’s climate determinism has long shaped the Euro-American notions of beauty and artistic superiority; Bruno Taut has critiqued climate imperialism in Japan and Turkey; Reyner Banham has offered a history of western modern architecture as a chain of technological inventions that move towards a seamless closed interior; Ken Frampton has critiqued this chain as a trivialization of cultural heritage; and Daniel Barber has endorsed midcentury climatic modernism by foregrounding the façade as the mediator between the interior of a building and the climate of its exterior. This issue of IJIA will build on this discourse, but pay particular attention to architecture’s accountability for climate change over time. It particularly calls for contributions that critically analyze historical examples when concerns over climate were complicit with colonialism, nationalism, ethnocentrism, or religious fundamentalism. Given that climate has served as a proxy for nation and race for much of the modern and colonial periods, this special issue calls for a layered understanding of the intertwinement between social, global and environmental issues in architectural history.
The issue hopes to provide a layered global and planetary history that extends the narrative beyond the recent ones on the colonization and decolonization of the world due to the British, French, and Spanish empires. Though helping to right earlier accounts and expose the entanglement of modernity, capitalism, and coloniality, these studies still exclude large portions of the world. Their accumulated outcome ignores differences between lands before and after they were colonized by either of the European imperial powers, and modernity’s other dark sides, including environmental degradation caused by national partitions, religious divides, or ethno-centrism.
Contributors are encouraged to submit rigorously researched articles that acknowledge the unity of the earth’s ecosystem while engaging the unique challenges of places traditionally associated with the ‘Islamic world’. Authors might submit or analyze architectural projects that come to the realization that the division of the global ecosystem into nation-states produces environmental damages, and those that envision ways of multispecies co-living. The special issue hopes that place-based – but not place-bound – historical analyses will contribute to the writing of global and planetary histories of modern architecture in a way that responds to call for understanding geopolitical and ecological issues together.
Welcome are theoretically engaged articles that demonstrate the important role of history writing in the intersectional matters of global peace and environmental sustainability, and in bringing societies to a confrontation with the relation between political and ecological harms of the past. Questions addressed by contributors might include:
- How can historians evaluate architecture’s role in planetary crises by writing about climate in the history of architecture in such a way that architecture’s role in the history of climate (climate change) is also revealed?
2. What are the buildings and large-scale projects that expose the intersections between political and ecological harms?
3. (When) is climatic modernism complicit with colonialism, fascism, ethnocentrism or religious fundamentalism?
4. (How) does the division of the global ecosystem into nation states accelerate ecocide?
5. What has been the relation between climate, race and nation as social constructs?
6. (How) is global warming and global war related?
7. What have been the consequences of the dismissal of local wisdom and conscious production of ignorance in climatization during colonization and nation-state formation?
8. A lot has been written about the role of architects and planners in damaging or improving the environment and biodiversity. What is the role of nonhuman actors in damaging or improving the cites that humans built?
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. Architecture, urban, landscape or art historians, architects, urbanists, landscape architects, climate scientists, wildlife biologists, botanists, anthropologists, and geographers 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. Contributions are welcomed from individuals at any stage of their careers, and advanced graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals. Please send a title and a 400-word abstract to IJIA Assistant Editor Dana Katz at IJIAclimate@gmail.com by June 1, 2025. Authors of proposals will be contacted by July 1, 2025, and may be requested to submit full article drafts for consideration by January 30, 2026. All submissions will undergo blind peer review, editing, and revision. For detailed author instructions, please consulthttps://www.intellectbooks.com/international-journal-of-islamic-architecture.
Contact Information
IJIA Editorial Assistant, Dana Katz at IJIAclimate@gmail.com
Contact Email
URL
https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/91083/1/IJIA_CFP_16.2.pdf
7. The Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) awards a number of fellowships-in-residence normally lasting 7-11 months beginning on 15 September 2025 or shortly thereafter, specifically designed for doctoral and postdoctoral candidates engaged in outstanding research projects in the humanities and social sciences.
We invite applications across disciplines, time periods, and geographic coverage outlined in our mission statement. Proposals are encouraged to articulate the contemporary stakes of the research project, encompassing historiographical, cultural, religious and/or political dimensions.
Please see https://www.orient-institut.org/support/fellowships.html
Contact Email
bewerbungen@orient-institut.org
URL
https://www.orient-institut.org/
8. Friederike Weis (editor), Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs: Audiences – Artists – Patrons and Collectors (Islamic Manuscripts and Books, vol. 23), Leiden: Brill, 2025
This book is available in print and as an open access publication, for full access please click on this link: https://brill.com/display/title/71240
9. CFP – “Rethinking Middle Eastern and Islamicate Studies”, New Generations Annual Graduate Student Conference at the University of Texas at Austin
Dates: April 1–2, 2025 || Abstract Deadline: February 10, 2025
Topic: Rethinking Middle Eastern and Islamicate Studies
Contact: jiljadidconf@gmail.com
Description:
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin are delighted to announce the patr Annual Graduate Student Conference, New Generations (Jil Jadid). We invite applicants from all disciplines researching various topics relating to the study of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Islamicate world, broadly defined. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome. New Generations aims to provide an accessible forum for young scholars, spread across a variety of disciplines and fields to come together, share ideas and research, and discuss the future of research on the Middle East. Against the background of changing modes of knowledge production, this year’s theme encourages researchers to rethink consolidated methods within Middle Eastern Studies disciplines.
This year, the conference will feature a keynote address on Tuesday, April 1st, delivered by Dr. Alexander Key (Stanford University).
Topics:
Applicants are welcome to present papers treating topics in the languages, histories, politics, religions, and literatures of the region, from any period. In addition to original research, we will also consider state-of-the-field papers that provide a focused overview of a specific sub-field and propose new research prospects in the chosen area. Papers to be presented at other conferences are likewise accepted, as New Generations is an ideal venue for students to further develop and refine their research.
Abstracts:
Current graduate students and recent graduates of master’s and doctoral programs may submit abstracts not exceeding 250 words to jiljadidconf@gmail.com no later than February 10, 2025. Abstracts should not include identifying information on the abstract itself (i.e. no first or last name in the header). You must, however, indicate the highest degree you have obtained and your current position (e.g. M.A., Graduate Student, etc.) in your email. Only submissions from current or recent graduate students will be considered. Limited funds are available to defray the cost of in-person attendance. Please indicate in your email if you would like to apply for travel funds (to be reimbursed following the conference in April). Questions may be directed to jiljadidconf@gmail.com.
Contact Information
Contacts: Saghar Bozorgi, Jens Inden, Pouya Nekouei
Contact Email
URL
https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mes/graduate-studies/current-student-resources/n…
10. Amir Khosrow Afshar Visiting Fellowship, 2025-26
The Iranian History Initiative (IHI) at the London School of Economics and Political Science invites applications for the Amir Khosrow Afshar Visiting Fellowship for the 2025-26 academic year.
This fellowship was established with the generous support of Mr Allahyar Afshar and honours the memory of Amir Khosrow Afshar, a distinguished Iranian stateman who served as Iranian Ambassador to France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and as Foreign Minister of Iran from 1978 to 1979.
The Amir Khosrow Afshar Visiting Fellowship provides an opportunity for an external post-doctoral scholar of modern Iranian history, including both early-career researchers and established scholars, to travel to London and be affiliated with LSE while conducting research on any aspect of the modern history of Iran between 1500 and 1979. This might include research at the UK National Archives, the British Library, the LSE Library and Archives, or other libraries and archives in London and the UK.
The Iranian History Initiative particularly welcomes applications from scholars based outside of the UK; from scholars whose research involves the use of Persian-language primary sources; and from scholars working on any aspect of the history of Pahlavi Iran (1921-1979).
The Afshar Fellowship is tenable for a period of one month during either the Autumn (29 September to 12 December 2025), Winter (19 January to 2 April 2026) or Spring (5 May to 19 June 2026) terms at LSE. Fellowships are not tenable outside of these dates of term. Afshar Fellows will be reimbursed up to £2,000 for the cost of return economy travel to London, up to £125 per night for accommodation for a maximum of 31 days stay in London, and up to £125 for UK visa expenses.
Fellows will be formally affiliated with the Iranian History Initiative and the Department of International History at LSE. Afshar Fellows will receive an LSE ID card, granting them access to campus buildings, including the LSE Library. An IT account, including LSE e-mail and access to the LSE Library’s online resources, will also be provided. Afshar Fellows are expected to attend IHI and departmental events during the period of their residency in London and to present their research in a departmental forum or public event.
Applications, consisting of a research proposal (no more than three pages) and CV, should be made by email to Dr Roham Alvandi (R.Alvandi@lse.ac.uk ) in the first instance by no later than 21 February 2025. Applications will be assessed by a selection committee and the fellowship will be awarded by the Department of International History’s Research Committee.
The Iranian History Initiative (IHI) was established in 2024 to promote the study of modern Iranian history at LSE. The IHI brings together faculty and research students at LSE who teach and research various aspects of the history of modern Iran from the 16th century to the present, including the history of Safavid, Qajar, and Pahlavi Iran. Please consult the IHI website for more information:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-History/IranianHistoryInitiative/Iranian-History-Initiative
11. “The Positionality of Muslims in the Study of Islam”, at the University of Cambridge in May 2025. This event aims to foster critical discussions on the methodological, theoretical, and epistemological challenges surrounding positionality in the study of Islam.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 February 2025. Information: ae375@cam.ac.uk
12. Intern to Work with a Research Associate at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB)
The task entails filling in information on manuscripts into an already designed online platform. This is is an exciting opportunity to join a project towards its fruitation. If you are interested in Islamic manuscript studies, this internship is for you! Knowledge of Arabic is a plus.
Information: https://www.orient-institut.org/support/internships/oib-internships-2025-english-version.html
Posted in: Academic items- January 25, 2025
- 0 Comment
