Shii News – Academic Items
A decade after Nicole Seymour’s chapter “Trans Ecology and the Transgender Road Narrative” in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism, following Susan Stryker’s foreword to the 2020 book Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature, and after TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly’s November 2024 issue on trans* ecologies, which built on the Queer and Trans* Ecologies (QTE) Interdisciplinary Initiative symposium that drew more than six hundred participants, transecology as a field needs a comprehensive reference handbook. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Transecology will be the first such volume: covering 38 topics, organized across four sections moving outward in scale from the molecular body to the deep-time planet. See the full list of topics with descriptions at the end of this CFP.
Gender-variant nature imagery in medieval material invites direct comparison with the distinct literary and philosophical traditions of the medieval Islamic Middle East. Monstrosity reclaimed as an affirmative rather than stigmatizing category has direct application to the rich tradition of hybrid and composite creatures in medieval Islamic manuscript illustration and cosmography.
All 38 topics with descriptions are listed at the end of the above url.
Trans embodiment reorganizes our sense of time and scale — through hormonal transition time, community time, and geological time — and this clustering is reflected in the Handbook itself. To preview the Handbook’s overarching structure, a short Foundations section comes first, gathering topics that examine transecology’s own genealogy and disciplinary boundaries. Chapters in this section stand outside any single scale — they are about the field’s history and self-definition, not about a body, a community, or a planet. The three-part structure of the rest of the Handbook then begins. Part I opens at the molecular and individual scale: chemistry, sensation, the single body. Part III closes at the planetary and deep-time scale: the atmosphere, the ocean, the epoch. Part II is the connective tissue between them: community, region, law, and culture, the scale at which intimate experience becomes shared knowledge and shared knowledge becomes political. By spanning scales ranging from the body to the planet, with the mediating communal scale between these extremes, the Handbook emphasizes that transecology’s center of gravity is not the isolated body or the abstract planet, but the connecting community.
The senior editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Transecology, Douglas Vakoch, has edited over two dozen books, including Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature (2020), Transgender India: Understanding Third Gender Identities and Experiences (2022), and The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (with Sabine Sharp, 2024). Vakoch also serves as the general editor of four book series in environmental studies and transgender studies for Bloomsbury Academic: Ecocritical Theory and Practice, Environment and Society, Critical Plant Studies, and the recently launched Trans Studies.
Submitting Your Proposal and Timetable
Interested authors should submit a 300-word abstract, a 200-word biography, 5 key scholarly references, and a sample of a previously published chapter or article to https://bit.ly/Handbook_of_Transecology no later than November 15, 2026. Proposals submitted by email will not be accepted. Abstracts, biographies, and scholarly references should be combined into a single Word document, and previously published chapters or articles should be submitted as PDFs. Both Word files and PDFs should contain the author’s name in the file names. Please include your email address in your Word document so we can contact you with our decision about your proposal.
Your abstract should clearly state which of the Handbook’s 38 topics is most relevant to your chapter, listing both topic number and name (see full list below).
All chapters must have specifically transgender and ecological dimensions, and not merely a more broadly queer focus.
In addition to the Handbook, we will also be creating standalone books on topics for which we receive an especially strong response of outstanding proposals. Your proposal will automatically be considered for both the Handbook and standalone volumes.
You are welcome to submit more than one abstract. If you decide to submit multiple abstracts for different chapters, please add a note at the top of each abstract to indicate whether you wish to be considered for writing only a single chapter, or whether you wish to be considered for writing more than one chapter.
The most competitive proposals will detail the author’s argument. It is not enough to describe what you plan to do in your chapter. You should summarize what you will conclude.
Authors will be notified whether their proposals are accepted by December 15, 2026. Partial first drafts are due by March 1, 2027; solid first drafts of full chapters are due by May 1, 2027; and final versions that cross-reference other chapters extensively are due July 15, 2027. All authors must have completed a PhD. In your 200-word biography, please note the year and university where you earned your doctorate. Only previously unpublished works will be considered.
2. CFP/ Global Theory: Premodern, Otherwise
This project begins with one question. What would a global, nonmodern/premodern theory survey look like, if it did not assume that premodern thinking about literature, word, voice, text, sound, and language would necessarily end up pointing toward or arriving at something like the modern Euro-American/North Atlantic theory canon? Greek, Latin, and medieval European texts regularly populate anthologies of premodern literary theory and form the core of most premodern theory survey courses. But how would centering Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, sub-Saharan African, Pacific, and Indigenous American concepts transform our notions around premodern theorization of literature and culture?
To parse these larger questions in more precise ways.
- What is ‘literature’? How have various premodern thinkers understood or sought to describe demarcations between everyday communication and the literary (be it performative, oral, or written)? Or are such demarcations not present in some traditions? Is literature something that only human animals do or is literature embedded in a more diverse cosmology or ecology, resonant with communicative practices of other ontologies? Where does literature ‘sit’ in relation to other disciplines or art forms (is it ‘next to’ rhetoric, dance, law, or music, for instance)?
- How do we engage with ‘literature’? How have various thinkers understood the relations between language, writing, reading, voicing, singing, composing, etc? What metaphors do they employ (for instance, likening reading to visionary flight, to bees gathering honey, or to cooking) and what are the implications of those metaphorical conceptions? What senses and/or forms of bodily comportment does reading entail, or does the body not matter to reading?
- What does engagement with ‘the literary’ do? What powers or effects have various classical thinkers from a range of world traditions ascribed to engagement with the literary? Does such engagement, for instance, heal, purify, corrupt, ensnare, or transform? Does it shape the cosmos? What ramifications are there to these different understandings of engagement with the literary?
Selected participants will receive a $500 USD honorarium to deliver a 30-minute presentation, followed by a 30-minute directed conversation conducted via Zoom. I will use these conversations (either live or pre-recorded) to teach a pilot version of a graduate seminar on global premodern theory in January-May 2027. Ultimately, the goal is to produce a publicly available set of materials for teaching and engaging with literary and cultural theory from a fuller range of the premodern world. (I am in active conversation with the editorial team at postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies where several publications resulting from this collaborative venture have already been published.)
To apply, send the following documents to Charlotte Eubanks at cde13@psu.edu by October 15, 2026.
- A keyword of conceptual interest and elasticity with a 500-word paragraph about it. (Examples might include: darśan (Sanskrit), wen (Sinitic), alef (Arabic), and so forth.)
- The name of one primary text which illuminates or meditates on/around that word, along with bibliographic information for an original language version of that text and for an English translation of that text.
- A short biosketch (200 words).
- Your CV.
Please note: to receive the honorarium, participants need to have clearance to receive pay for work done in the US. Junior scholars, advanced graduate students, and international scholars are heartily encouraged to apply.
Charlotte Eubanks (cde13@psu.edu)
Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature, Japanese, and Asian Studies
Penn State University
3. The Library of Congress Asian Division is now accepting applications for the Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship for the 2027 fellowship cycle. Please note that this is opening earlier than recent years, and it will close at
All important information, including information on eligibility and instructions for the online application, at this link: https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/asian/about-this-research-center/fellowship-information/.
- Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents
- H-1B visa holders are not eligible
- All other visa types will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by emailing visas@loc.gov
For information about visa eligibility, please contact visas@loc.gov.
Please pass along to those who might be interested and feel welcome to reach out to us with questions at ask.loc.gov/asia.
Contact Information
Charlotte Giles
South Asia Specialist, Asian Division
Library of Congress
Contact Email
URL
https://www.loc.gov/research-centers/asian/about-this-research-center/fellowshi…
4. ONLINE Annual Conference of the Institute for Law and Society in Afghanistan (ILSAF): “Cli-mate Change, Resilience, Law, and Policy Cooperation in Fragile States: The Case of Afghani-stan“, Paderborn Institute of Islamic Theology, 4-5 September 2026
The contributions will explore the intersection of climate change with law, governance, human rights, economic development, gender, migration, natural resource management, and regional cooperation.
Information, programme and registration: https://tinyurl.com/4nrf2upd
5. Workshop: “(Re)Crafting Knowledge After the Ottomans: Remembering and Forgetting Scientific Legacies in the Post-Imperial Era”, University of Geneva, 11-12 September 2026
Organized by Caroline Montebello and Aline Schlaepfer, this workshop will address the question of transition between the late and post-Ottoman periods from the perspectives of former provinces of the Empire, and with a particular focus on scientific and scholarly cultures. What has become of scientific authorities and Ottoman scholarly cultures in post-Ottoman contexts? How did scientists from various disciplines (history, geography, medicine, anthropology, legal studies, or others) reevaluate their own canons, methodologies, and analytical frameworks? Etc.
Information and programme: https://tinyurl.com/5at8xu2e
6. 2nd Annual Meeting of the “Belgian Association for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society (BASICS)”, Ghent University, 25 September 2026
The annual meeting of the Belgian Association for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society (BASICS) provides an interdisciplinary platform for discussing the latest evolutions in research in Belgium about Islam, the Middle East and the connected regions ad well as the challenges facing this field of research.
Deadline for registration: 20 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/44knay8n
7. HYBRID Conference “Leaves in the Wind: Fragmentology of Persianate Manuscripts”, Persian Manuscripts Association & Royal Asiatic Society, London, 5-6 December 2026
This conference proposes to explore the reconstruction – material, intellectual, and digital – of dis-persed manuscripts and fragments, in all traditions of the vast geographical region of Greater Iran and eastern Islamic lands, including (but not limited to) Persian, Arabic, Armenian, as well as Avestan and Middle Persian (Pahlavi) codices within Zoroastrian traditions.
Deadline for abstracts: 4 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/msprm9m7
8. Conference “Arabic Publishing Beyond the Arabic-Speaking Areas: Field Reconfigurations, Crisis, and the Politics of Circulation”, MMSH, Aix-en-Provence, 18-19 March 2027
The conference seeks to combine macro-level analysis of the Arabic publishing field with micro-level attention to actors, practices, and material gestures through which books are produced, circulated, and valued. It invites inquiry into the social trajectories of publishers, editors, translators, designers, booksellers, librarians, rights managers, festival organizers, and other cultural intermediaries; their pro-fessional training, cultural capital, networks, and forms of socialization into the craft of publishing; and their relations to writers, critics, funders, book fairs, libraries, and platforms.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 November 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/yp38m766
9. International Workshop “The “Oriental” Book Trade in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twen-tieth Centuries“, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), University of Hamburg, 29-30 April 2027
The expansion of Oriental Studies beyond the Middle East, together with the spread of the printing press within the region, created a growing demand for manuscripts and printed books in Arabic, Per-sian, Ottoman Turkish, and related languages across North Africa, West Asia, Europe, the United States, and Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries This workshop invites case studies of book publishers, traders, and intermediaries, examining their networks, business practices, and/or contributions to the transregional circulation of knowledge.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 October 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/8saz2zne
10. Associate Professor (Permanent) in Middle Eastern Politics, Department of Culture, Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oslo, Norway
Qualification: PhD with a specialisation in politics in the Middle East, whether from a humanities or social sciences background. – A demonstrated ability to use oral and written sources in Arabic, Turk-ish or Persian in research. – Documented pedagogical skills. – Fluent oral and written communication skills in English. – Proficiency in a Scandinavian language will be an advantage. – Ability to contribute to the teaching of courses in Middle Eastern Studies at all levels.
Deadline for applications: 15 September 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/yb8cs4ms
11. ONLINE New Article: “The Politics of Provenance Research: Reassessing the Appropriation of Finds from the Samarra Excavations“ by Vincent Engelhardt and Jakob Wigand, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 36(1): 4, 27 August 2026, 17 Pages
This article re-examines the archaeological excavations in Samarra conducted between 1911 and 1913 under the direction of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. By critically engaging with existing scholarship and drawing on new archival evidence, we argue that a significant number of artefacts were unlawfully exported from the Ottoman Empire to Berlin and no legal division of finds ever took place. Additionally, we interrogate the institution’s exclusion of independent provenance research.
View: https://tinyurl.com/2zduwj93
12. ONLINE New Article: “The State Waqfs of Ottoman Istanbul, 1453–1923” by Mustafa Batman and Timur Kuran, SSRN, 20 July 2026, 46 Pages
Drawing on a quasi-random sample of waqfs, this study defines the state waqf as an analytical category, distinguishes it from the private waqf, and identifies its functions. Unlike private waqfs, state waqfs functioned as instruments of governance and delivered urban services at scale. Prior to reforms of the 19th century, religious services, education, potable water, and lodging for visitors were funded almost entirely by state waqfs. Only one-quarter made explicit provisions for the poor.
View: https://tinyurl.com/3z6wwzu3
13. ONLINE New Articles: “The Religious Cultures of Premodern Islamicate Courts in Transregional Perspective”, Special Issue Edited by Christian Mauder of “Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean”, Vol. 38, Issue 2, August 2026, 166 Pages
Recent years have seen a growing interest in the role of Islamicate courts as centers of political, social, and literary life in the premodern period. However, our knowledge of Islamicate courts of this time is still extremely limited in other areas, including that of religious history. This special issue seeks to fill this gap by studying for the first time the role of Islamicate courts in premodern religious cultures from a deliberately broad transregional and diachronic perspective.
Information: https://tinyurl.com/2e4ktumm
14. ONLINE New Article “Uneven Modernization in the Muslim World” by Timur Kuran and Fasih Zulfiqar, “Annual Review of Economics”, Vol. 18, August 2026, 28 Pages
This article distinguishes among continuous, punctuated, and latent modernization trajectories and or-ganizing the literature around four leading explanations for persistent developmental lags: collectivist attitudes, Islamic religious tenets, Islamic legal institutions, and colonial institutional legacies. The re-sulting framework highlights various sectoral contrasts, such as rapid progress in health and basic education alongside persistent deficits in political and religious liberties.
View: https://tinyurl.com/upcmp7hv
15. International Conference
The Translatability of the Scriptures in Christianity and Islam
April 12th-14th 2027 at CMCS Oxford
Call for Papers
Co-organized by the United Bible Societies’ (UBS) TAZI initiative (Taurat Anbiya Zabur Injil) and the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies Oxford (CMCS)
https://www.cmcsoxford.org.uk/cmcs-news/c8hg6cxa9hdtzfztj1oznqqme8pnla
Submission Guidelines: Proposals (300-400 words) plus a short biography (150 words) should be sent to Dr Martin
Whittingham, m.whittingham@cmcsoxford.org.uk by October 31st 2026.
Posted in: Academic items
- August 29, 2026
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