Shii News – Academic Items
1.Hybrid Lecture: Fabrizio Speziale, “Noah’s Grandsons and the Elephant: Functions of Persian Pseudonymous Texts in South Asia”, 2 June 2025
The Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo, and the Japan Office of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies are pleased to announce a lecture by Professor Fabrizio Speziale (EHESS). The talk will explore pseudonymous Persian texts as a strategy to domesticate non-Muslim technical knowledge and to legitimize the status of Muslim professional groups in Persianate South Asia. The event will be held in a hybrid format, with online participation available via Zoom.
Lecture Title:
Noah’s Grandsons and the Elephant: Functions of Persian Pseudonymous Texts in South Asia
(Abstract below)
Speaker:
Professor Fabrizio Speziale (École des hautes études en sciences sociales)
Profile: https://www.ehess.fr/fr/personne/fabrizio-speziale)
Date:
Monday, 2 June 2025, 18:00–19:30 (JST)
Venue:
Room 305, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia (Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo), University of Tokyo
and online via Zoom
How to Participate:
(1) In-person attendance: No prior registration is required.
Please note: The institute’s entrance doors will no longer be accessible from outside after 18:00. We recommend arriving before that time. A contact telephone number for those arriving late will be posted at the entrance.
(2) Online attendance: Please register at https://forms.gle/hMtJDBoAJ8ujpGaL9 .
A Zoom link will be sent by noon (JST) on the day of the event.
This lecture is co-organized by the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo (Regular Research Project W–1, “Approaches to the ‘Persianate World'”) and the Japan Office of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies.
Contact Info:
Kazuo Morimoto
Email: morikazu[at]ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
2. CALL FOR PAPERS
International Conference on GLOBALISATION IN LANGUAGES, EDUCATION, CULTURE, AND COMMUNICATION (GLECC2025)
https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fglecc.org%2F2025%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C4e3aedbf0dbb4fb4a60e08dd8d0d8753%7C2e9f06b016694589878910a06934dc61%7C0%7C0%7C638821811444508841%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=QBJiW%2B%2FTEVEMMVTPZuJyLSnCxyIa4MbyYgBYiGVGvss%3D&reserved=0
Dates: 30-31 July 2025 (main conference)
Venue: Manchester, U.K.
Submission deadline extended to: 18 May 2025
Keynote speakers confirmed:
1.“Beyond borders: The interplay of international mobility, culture, and commerce” by Professor Zheng Wang, University of Dundee, UK.
2.“Rethinking language and culture education for a reglobalising world” by Dr Derek Hird, Lancaster University, UK.
The past two decades have witnessed remarkable advancements in the studies into Education, Second and Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting, Cultural Studies & Communication. This growth can be largely attributed to the forces of globalisation. Consequently, adopting the globalisation perspective is timely and provides a natural framework for connecting these diverse yet interlinked disciplines.
This conference aims to bring together researchers, educators, practitioners, and policymakers to disseminate research outcomes, share insights, discuss findings, exchange visions, and identify challenges and trends in an interactive and immersive multidisciplinary environment. The submissions take the forms of abstract, full paper, panel discussion, and workshop proposals.
There is a “conference first” policy in place. Selected papers will be invited to further develop into full journal articles free of APCs. Conference proceedings will be published open access with an ISBN.
There will be optional pre-conference workshops on 29 July and post conference events on 1 August.
Looking forward to the possibility of working together, and we eagerly await your response.
Warm regards,
GLECC2025 Organising Committee
3. Call for Papers
‘Faithful’ Mothers and the Politics of Nurturing Future Secular Citizens
19th June 2025
A Knowledge Exchange Symposium (funded by British Academy VF grant)
Deadline for Abstracts: 26th May 2025
Mothering in relation to religion remains highly understudied, particularly in relation to non-mainstream models of mothering. In a world ridden with inter-communal conflict, this symposium will explore the significant but unrecognised roles that mothers play in the formation of citizens and state-building beyond times of conflict. By exploring how mothers navigate everyday faith and the pushes and pulls of the largely secular contemporary state, it will forefront their socio-political agency, reinstating them as influential actors and not just victims of conflict. It will bring together mothering practices across communities from the global south, to reflect on their analytical, social and political relevance for diasporic communities in the global north. Further, it is hoped the symposium will enable the laying of the ground in thinking around faith and fathering and non-normative parenting. The symposium will break new scholarly ground in religious studies, feminism and sociology and anthropology and revitalize mothering and religion as a field of study. In particular, among other related issues we hope to explore the following research questions:
- When different religious communities live side by side, what impact does this have on practices and ideas of mothering?
- How might a mother’s religious identity shape her lived experience of mothering in the context of the secular state?
- How do state ideologies and policies concerning development, dislocation, or the modern schooling system intersect or clash with practices of mothering, fathering and non-traditional forms of parenting?
- How can learnings from mothering practices from the global south be used to understand diasporic mothering in the global north?
This knowledge exchange symposium is part of the British Academy Visiting Professorship grant funded project. Hosted by Coventry University, it will bring together scholars to critically engage with mothering, fathering, non-normative parenting in the context of the study of religion and everyday faith. The event’s discussions are intended to inform the creation of a network of scholars, facilitate future research and grant applications and possibly plan a proposal for a panel for upcoming conferences and even a special issue for a relevant journal.
For accepted papers, we will be pay for travel costs (for one person per paper) up to 100 pounds per person and contribute towards accommodation costs up to 105 pounds per person for one night only. We will be able to fund a maximum of 20 presenters accordingly.
Submission Guidelines: Please submit proposals that explore one or more of the questions raised above. Feel free to come up with and explore new questions or propose reflective thought papers, formative ‘laying the groundwork’ papers and the like. Proposals to include an abstract of no more than 300 words accompanied by the paper title, presenter’s name and short bio (100 words), institutional affiliation and contact information. Please submit via this form: https://forms.office.com/e/6mrKik4fUV
Enquires: Professor Rowena Robinson (rowena@iitb.ac.in) Professor Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor (ac0967@coventry.ac.uk)
Key Dates:
- Abstract Submission Deadline: 26th May 2025
- Notification of Acceptance: 30th May 2025
Registration
Further details about the registration process will be circulated and posted on the website
We look forward to your contributions and to advancing the discussion on religion, faith and mothering, fathering and non-normative parenting in the global south and north.
Symposium Organisers
Professor Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor, Professor Rowena Robinson
4. N Ferreira, ‘What Is the Value of the Persianate to Afghan Studies? or, What Can Afghan History Tell Us about the Persianate? Lessons from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’
PMLA, 2024 139/2, 307-13
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, 15 mai 2025, 17h-19h, en salle 4.15 à l’INaLCO(65 rue des Grands Moulins, Paris XIII, 4eétage).
Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir M. Austin O’Malley (University of Chicago), pour une conférence intitulée: “Mixtapes and Local Jams: Selection and Regionality in the Nozhat al-majāles, an Early Collection of Persian Quatrains“.
Résumé:
Among the Persian metrical forms, the quatrain (robāʿi) stands out for its brevity, popularity, and wide use in an array of social situations and performance contexts, from humble “folk” recitations to sermons and samāʿ sessions to courtly symposia. In this talk, I will investigate the 13th-century Nozhat al-majāles, one of the earliest extant collections of quatrains organized by theme, to better understand the role quatrains played within courtly settings and the larger literary ecosystem. Although centered on the Nozhat, the discussion will also make use of early “genre codes” that discuss the social contexts of quatrains’ production and circulation (i.e., Shams-e Qays’ Moʿjam, the Qābus-nāma) as well as the biographical anthology of ʿOwfi and discourses of Neẓāmi-ye ʿArużi.
Taken together, these investigations show how 13th-century, northwest Iranian potentates engaged in literary culture not only by receiving the “prestige verse” of polished panegyric, but also by presiding over and participating in a more ephemeral process of selection, exchange, and appreciation of quatrains, which were attributed to a wide variety of individuals who were not necessarily professional poets, and many of which were not ultimately preserved in divāns.
Orientations bibliographiques:
– Davidson, Olga M. “Genre and Occasion in the Rubāʿiyyāt of ʿUmar Khayyām: The Rubāʿi, Literary History, and Courtly Literature.” In Writers and Rulers: Perspectives of Their Relations from Abbasid to Safavid Times, edited by Beatrice Gruendler and Louise Marlow, 133–44. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2004.
– Meier, Fritz. Die schöne Mahsati. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1963
– Mir-afżali, Sayyed ʿAli. “Bar-rasi-ye Nozhat al-majāles (bakhsh-e avval).” Maʿāref 4, no. 1 (1376 [1997]): 90–147.
– Mir-afżali, Sayyed ʿAli. “Bar-rasi-ye Nozhat al-majāles (bakhsh-e dovvom).” Maʿāref 14, no. 2 (1376 [1997]): 135–327.
– Seyed-Gohrab, Ali Asghar. “The Flourishing of Persian Quatrains.” In Persian Lyric Poetry in the Classical Era: Ghazals, Panegyrics, Quatrains, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 488–568. Vol. 2 of A History of Persian Literature, edited by Ehsan Yarshater. London: I.B. Tauris, 2019.
– Shamisā, Sirus. Sayr-e robāʿi dar sheʿr-e fārsi. Tehran: Āshtiāni, 1363 [1984].
– Sharvāni, Jamāl Khalil. Nozhat al-majāles. Edited by Moḥammad Amin-Riyāḥi. 2nd ed. Tehran: ʿElmi, 1375 [1996–97].
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. DEADLINE 16 May 2025 – Annual Arabic Pasts Workshop
Arabic Pasts is co-convened by Anna Chrysostomides (Queen Mary), Yossi Rapoport (Queen Mary), Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), Lorenz Nigst (AKU-ISMC), and Sarah Bowen Savant (AKU-ISMC).
The annual Arabic Pasts workshop brings together scholars at all career stages to reflect on methodologies, research agendas, and case studies for investigating history writing in Arabic in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond in any period from the seventh century to the present.
This year the Arabic Pasts workshop welcomes Queen Mary University of London as a partner. We will host the workshop in person at the Aga Khan Centre and welcome proposals that deal with the practical and conceptual challenges of working on history writing in Arabic. We encourage scholars working at all career stages to join us.
By way of example, papers might elucidate the following sorts of questions – or others:
- How do nations today tell their stories with respect to their pasts? In what ways do educational institutions, museums, media organisations and proponents of heritage use history writing to shape loyalties and senses of belonging in society?
- When and how did pre-modern and modern historians writing in Arabic conceptualize the history of Palestine as a distinct geographical and political unit? What are the Arabic historiographical traditions regarding the city of Gaza and its hinterland, and how have they developed in the last two centuries?
- How is the past used in creative arts, re-enactment, games, and augmented reality?
- What do we consider works of fiction and how do they differ in authorial intent from historical chronicles? Does this authorial intent make a difference in how we treat these sources? What can we learn from combinations of fiction and non-fiction sources, if anything?
- What is the relationship between Arabic and other languages and scripts in bi/multi-lingual and bi/multi-alphabetic texts (tarikh, documents, other genres) across time?
- How can marginalised communities and their varieties of Arabic be given due attention?
- How can all genders (including non-binary) be given due attention when our sources are often composed by male political, intellectual and religious elites?
- How can we explore the past algorithmically? Can digital methods enhance our understanding of the past? Can they also limit or even alter it? Which new digital tools are being developed? What seem to be particularly promising approaches? What is lacking?
Prior to the workshop, we will also run a hands-on workshop on digital methods for Arabic texts – no experience necessary. Please get in touch early if you are interested in joining as we will have to cap participation.
Please submit an abstract of 300 words or less in word document by Friday, 16 May 2025 to ArabicPastsConf@aku.edu. Also please be in touch if you would like to join the digital methods workshop.
7. Anna Contadini’s masterclass at Harvard-I Tatti on two illustrated pages from al-Jazari’s automata of 755/1354 is now published and can be viewed here:
URL
https://vimeo.com/1054171670?turnstile=0.QxjHDSDHh8E0FkKdd5nu3iV9jRRUG6SqvYHlAg…
8. Marcus Milwright’s seminar on ‘Messages from the Past: Temporal Relationships in the Study of Early Islamic Visual Culture’ can now be found on the dedicated ReSIA YouTube channel here:
ReSIA – SOAS Research Seminar in Islamic Art – YouTube
URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNIibY2LlRY&list=PL1z_PGhPjwcqXOrrMPQeQS_OJ0Bd4…
9. The Islamic College:
Zoom Monthly Talk: The Quran and its English Translations
A Talk by Professor Muhammad Abdel Haleem
Wednesday 14 May 2025
6 pm – 7:30 pm (London time)
On Zoom
https://islamic-college.ac.uk/event-register/
10. Zahra Institute – Two talks:
“Language Ideologies and the Discursive Construction of the Persian Language Hegemony in Iran”
Wednesday, 21 May: 12pm Central / 1pm Eastern
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/97305224624?pwd=TY35GbblrFDvcIizxaadWcqJHexeis.1
Jaffer Sheyholislami (Ph.D., Carleton University) is a Professor at the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of Kurdish Identity, Discourse and New Media (Palgrave 2011) and has co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language devoted to Kurdish sociolinguistics (2012). He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming volume Oxford Handbook of Kurdish Linguistics. Sheyholislami’s research centers on general linguistics, critical discourse studies, sociolinguistics, and language policy and planning.
“Breakthroughs in Kurdish Lexicography”
Wednesday, 28 May: 12pm Central / 1pm Eastern
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/95130568250?pwd=Dok0HCmMDhvIhdaNw6yyiKbdiyYauu.1
Michael Chyet (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) retired in June 2024 from his position as Cataloger of Middle Eastern languages at the Library of Congress. Formerly he was Senior Broadcast Editor of the Kurdish Service of the Voice of America, and professor of Kurdish at the University of Paris and at the Washington Kurdish Institute. Chyet is working on a third, expanded edition of his Kurdish-English dictionary, Ferhenga Birûskî.
11. WZO’s Annual Seminar
Sunday 01st June 2025 at 10:30
World Zoroastrian House, 1 Freddie Mercury Close, Feltham. TW 5DF London
Please email Shahin Bekhradnia, shahinbekhradnia@hotmail.com , to reserve your seat.
10:30 Opening Remarks
10:45 Alexandra Buhler: Political, economic and social implications of the relations between Zoroastrians in India and Iran during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
12:00 Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani: The Heart of the Empire: Ctesiphon and DilĒrānšahr in the Sasanian World
13:00 Light Refreshments will be available with a vegetarian option.
14:00 Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis: Royal Splendour: the art of the Sasanian kings
15:00 Questions to the Panel of Speakers.
15:30 Close
12. Online lecture. Collecting Islamic and Turkish Art at the Harvard Art Museums with Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım.
May 16. 6pm (Turkey). Presented by the Ankara Friends of ARIT.
This talk focuses on the history of art collecting at Harvard by introducing the museum’s history, beginning with the establishment of the Fogg Museum in 1895 and continuing to the present day. It will feature major supporters and donors, the evolving museum culture, provenance studies, and highlights from the Turkish-Islamic collection of the museum. Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım is the Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art, at the Harvard Art Museums.
For Zoom Registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/XNBdDQ5ATpOmsu7nAEEEDQ. Contact email: ankfarit@gmail.com.
For more information, visit https://aritweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Aysin-Yoltar_.pdf
URL
https://aritweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Aysin-Yoltar_.pdf
13. ONLINE Lecture “Debate and Dialogue: Polemics, Kalam, and the Artistic Inscription in Islamic Spaces” by Hamidreza Azarinia (University of Tehran), Leiden University, 11 May 2025, 15:30 CET
This event is part of the lecture series “Material Culture, Art, and Archictecture of Pre-Safavid Shīʿism” connected with the ERC-funded project “Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shīʿī Community”.
Information and registration:
14. ONLINE Book Talk “Sensory Engagements in the Study of Muslim Piety” by Simon Stjernholm (University of Copenhagen), “Islam, Ethics and Diversity (IED) Network”, Universities of Gent & Zürich & Brussel, 26 May 2025, 15.00 – 16.30 CET
How have practices and imaginaries of sensing been religiously engaged and contested by Muslims? How do contemporary Muslim practices and debates concerning religious sensing relate to historical precedents? This book analyses examples dealing with contemporary Sufism and Muslim religious oratory in order to explore practices and imaginaries of sensing.
Information and registration: https://iednetwork.ugent.be/sensory-engagements-in-the-study-of-muslim-piety/
15. 23rd Annual Conference of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID): “Defending Democracy in the Muslim World: Why Democracy is Crucial in the Age of Global Authoritarianism”, Georgetown Capitol Campus, Washington, DC, 29 May 2025
Information, program, and registration: https://tinyurl.com/yck6awyh
16. HYBRID “Young Researchers 3rd Indo-Persian Conference”, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 31 May – 1 June 2025
Information, program, and registration:
https://iismm.hypotheses.org/files/2025/05/YRIPW3-ProgrammeSchedule.pdf
17. Workshop: “Forms of Urbanity in the Persianate World”, EHESS, Paris, 4 June 2025
The workshop explores the processes of urbanization and the forms of lived urbanity in the eastern Islamicate world in the medieval and the early modern period. It interrogates the religious, social, economic and cultural dimensions of the urban spaces of Persianate societies in Iran, southern Asia and the Indian Ocean by offering a granular analysis of urban experiences, filtered through a variety of archival, textual, literary and material sources.
Information and program: https://crh.ehess.fr/index.php?10278
18. ONLINE Lecture on “Making Islam Work: Islamic Authority Among Muslims in Western Europe” by Thijl Sunier (VU University Amsterdam), “Islam, Ethics and Diversity (IED) Network”, Universities of Gent & Zürich & Brussel, 23 June 2025, 15.00 – 16.30 CET
In this talk, Sunier will explore the diverse ways in which Islamic authority is constituted, with a specific emphasis on the role of ‘ordinary’ Muslims. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among Muslims in Western Europe from the mid-1980s to 2020, he aims to shed light on the multifaceted dynamics of Islamic authority in this context.
Information and registration:
https://iednetwork.ugent.be/making-islam-work-islamic-authority-among-muslims-in-western-europe/
19. 4th Manuscript Culture Symposium: “Mecmuas in the Ottoman World: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Current Research”, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg University, 28-30 May 2026
Mecmuas are composite manuscripts as well as multiple-text manuscripts. We invite papers with codicological, literary, cultural, historical or other perspectives on mecmuas and seek to bring together scholars at various stages of the research process.
Deadline for abstracts: 15 May 2025. Information: https://tinyurl.com/ymvxwe27
Posted in: Academic items- May 10, 2025
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