Shii News – MESA 2016
Papers of potential interest to the list set for delivery at the annual Middle East Studies Association meeting in Boston 17 – 20 November, 2016, include:
4321 Networked Texts: New Ways of
Seeing the Arabic Textual Tradition
(750-1500)
Organizers: Maxim Romanov, Sarah
Bowen Savant
Chair: Matthew S. Gordon, Miami U
Maxim Romanov, U Leipzig-Of a
network and a node: “The History of Islam”
of Al-Dhahabi (d. 1348) and its place in the
premodern Arabic textual tradition
Sarah Bowen Savant, Aga Khan
U-Khurasan and its literary networks in the
late 10th-early 11th centuries: Arabic letters
at the rise of Persian literature
Najam Haider, Barnard Col/Columbia
U-The myth of margins: mapping Shi’i
historiography
Majied Robinson, U Edinburgh-Text
reuse and nasab: outlining by genre
4364 Ismaili Thought Through the
Medieval and Modern Periods:
Gender, Exegesis and Metaphysics
Organizer: Khalil Andani
Khalil Andani, Harvard-The monorealism
of Aga Khan III: echoes of Ismāʿīlī
neoplatonism and Akbarī ontology
Shahrad Shahvand, Harvard-Ismailism
under the influence of Ibn ʿArabī: some
metaphysical views of qā Khān Maḥallātī
(d. 1881)
Paul Anderson, Harvard-Projections:
gendering the spiritual in Ismāʿīlī cosmology
Aaron Viengkhou, Harvard-The true
path (satpanth): narrative hermeneutics
(taʾ wī l) in the Ismāʿ ī lī Ginā ns
4657 Arab-Iranian Intellectual
Exchanges and Political Encounters
Chair: James F. Goode, Grand Valley State
Arash Reisinezhad, Florida
International-Pre-revolutionary Iran and
Shia Lebanese 1958-1979
Gholam R. Vatandoust, American U
Kuwait-Pan-Iranism, pan-Arabism and
pan-Islamism: the dispute between the Shah
of Iran and Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt
Amirhossein Teimouri, Illinois Urbana-
Champaign-Round-the-clock revolution
of 1979: divergent perceptions of the Arab
revolts in Iran
Yusuf Unal, Emory-Sayyid Qutb in Iran:
translating the Islamist ideologue in the
Islamic Republic
4358 “Orthodoxy” and “Heterodoxy”
in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Organizer: Jane Hathaway
Chair/Discussant: Gottfried Hagen,
Michigan Ann Arbor
Vefa Erginbas, Providence Col-
Reappraising religiosity in the reign of
Murad III: Mustafa Darir’s Siretun Nebi and
its unspoken content
Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer,
Binghamton-One word, many implications:
the term “Kızılbaş” in the early modern
Ottoman context
John Curry, UNLV-Formation of a Sunni
orthodoxy or an ongoing negotiation?:
making sense of the works of Cemal El-
Halveti (d. 1499) and Karabaş `Ali Veli (d.
1686)
Jane Hathaway, Ohio State-El-Hajj Beshir
Agha and Ottoman attitudes toward Sufism
and Shi’ism
4545 Ghazali and His Interlocutors
Organizer: John Walbridge
Discussant: Elizabeth R. Alexandrin, U
Manitoba
Seyed Asghari, Indiana U-The
Maktab-i Tafkīk and its opponents in the
contemporary Shī’a seminary in Iran
John Walbridge, Indiana U
Bloomington-Is God really light?
Eiyad Al-kutubi, Indiana U-Al-Fayḍ Al-
Kāshānī and Al-Ghazālī: reclamation of the
“Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm Al-Dīn”
Yasin Basaran, Indiana U-Taking
Avicenna seriously: reevaluation of Al-
Ghazali’s objections on creation
4523 Nasir-i Khusraw and His
Associations: Shifting Biographies
and Affiliations in the Appropriations
of the Persian Poet, Philosopher and
Fatimid Da`i (Summoner)
Organizer: Shiraz Hajiani
Daniel Beben, Nazarbayev U-A tale of two
masters: the uses and reuses of discipleship
narratives in the legendary biographies of
Nasir-i Khusraw
Shiraz Hajiani, U Chicago-Second fiddle:
an examination of the constructions of
master and protégé relationship between
Nāṣir-i Khusraw and Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ and
its later inversions in the legitimations of
authority in Nizari Ismailism
Nourmamadcho Nourmamadchoev,
Inst of Ismaili Studies-The place
and significance of Nasir-i Khusraw in
Badakhshan
4590 Diplomatics, Law and Language
Politics in the Early Modern Turco-
Persianate World
Organizer: Ferenc P. Csirkes
Chair: Sholeh A. Quinn, UC Merced
Zahit Atcil, Istanbul Medeniyet
U-Background of the first Ottoman-Safavid
treaty in 1555
Abdurrahman Atcil, Istanbul Şehir
U-Three Ottoman jurists’ opinions about the
Safavids and the Qizilbash from the first half
of the sixteenth century
Colin Mitchell, Dalhousie U-Mir Husain
Maybudi and the emergence of the Safavids
Ferenc P. Csirkes, Tuebingen U-Sadiqi
Beg and language ideologies in Safavid
Persia
4506 Inventions and Reinventions in
Modern Twelver Shi`i Islam
Organizer: Omid Ghaemmaghami
Discussant: Roy Mottahedeh, Harvard
Mina Yazdani, Eastern Kentucky
U-Clerical cooperation and Islamic
radicalism in 1940s Iran
Omid Ghaemmaghami, Binghamton-
The messianic turn in modern Twelver Shi`i
Islam: notes on Ali-Akbar Nahavandi’s Fine
Wonders of Beauty
Babak Rahimi, UC San Diego-Internet
Mahdism in the (re)shaping of Shi‘i Iran
Reza Masoudi Nejad, SOAS London-The
political geography of Shi’i pilgrimage in the
Middle East
4373 The ‘Alawis and the Origins of
Political Confessionalism in Syria,
1908-1963
Organizer: Stefan Winter
Chair/Discussant: Ussama Makdisi, Rice U
Fabrice Balanche, Lyon 2 U-The Alawites
of Syria: from the mountain refuge to the
city
Stefan Winter, U Quebec Montreal-
Between confessional differentiation and
radical assimilation: the ʿAlawis of Syria and
Southern Anatolia between Abdülhamid and
the Turkish War of Liberation
Max Weiss, Princeton-Imagining the
ʿAlawis between history and literature
4375 The Shi’a of Lebanon: New
Approaches to History, Politics, and
Religion
Organizers: Mara Leichtman, Michigan
State, Rola El-Husseini, Graduate
Center, CUNY
Chair: Nadim Shehadi, Tufts
Discussant: Augustus Richard Norton,
Boston U
Nabil Hage Ali, Georgetown-
Reconceptualizing Islam in 1970s Shī`ī
Lebanon: the “men of mosques”
Moulouk Berry, American U Dubai-
Divorce in Lebanese Muslim Shi`i
jurisprudence: a reform law?
Linda Sayed, Michigan State-Narrating
history: Hizbullah’s efforts to inscribe time
and place for the Shi`a of Lebanon
Bashir Saade, U Edinburgh-Hizbullah’s
Ashura: identity, ethics, and the problem of
the past
Eric Lob, Florida International-The
export of Iran’s development model to
Lebanon: the case of Jihād Al-Bināʾ
4516 E.G. Browne and His Iranian
Interlocutors: Knowledge Production
Beyond Orientalism
Organizer: Assef Ashraf
Chair/Discussant: Sholeh A. Quinn, UC
Merced
Assef Ashraf, Yale-Portrait of a young
scholar: the diaries of E.G. Browne
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Oxford-
In defence of Qajar poets: the personal
dimensions to E.G. Browne’s appreciation of
early nineteenth-century Persian poetry
Farzin Vejdani, Ryerson U-Iran’s “Lord
Byron”: commemorating and contesting E.G.
Browne in early twentieth-century Iran
4687 Texts, Acts, and Interpretations
in Medieval Islam
Chair: Andrew Magnusson, U Central
Oklahoma
Alison Marie Vacca, U Tennessee-
Connectivity and power in Caliphal Armenia
and Albania
Nassima Neggaz, Oxford-The Baghdadi
neighborhoods of Bab Al-Basra and
Al-Karkh: a micro history of Sunni-Shi‘i
episodes of violence in medieval Baghdad
(945-1258 AD)
Christian Mauder, U Göttingen-The
birth and early life of the Mamluk Sultan
Qānṣawh Al-Ghawrī (r. 1501-1516): literary
and historical analysis of an unpublished
late Mamluk manuscript
4517 Liminal Spaces from Sacred to
Urban: The Friday Mosque and the City
Organizer: Suzan Yalman
Discussant: Suzan Yalman, Koç U
Farshid Emami, Harvard-The city and
its dual Friday mosques: the sacred and the
urban in Safavid Isfahan
Fadi Ragheb, U Toronto-The city
as liminal space: holy sites and Islamic
pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Mamlūk
period (648-922/1250-1517)
Abbey Stockstill, Harvard-Directionality
in the ceremony and urban project of
Almohad Marrakesh
Ayse Hilal Ugurlu, İstanbul Technical
U-Changing spatial and political relations
between “the city” and “the mosque” in the
nineteenth century Ottoman Empire
The full programme can be accessed at: http://mesana.org/annual-meeting/program.html
Posted in: Field-specific (academic)- November 17, 2016
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