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Events

Call for Papers: The 16th Annual International Workshop of the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Socio-legal Perspectives on the Passage to Modernity in and beyond the Middle East

Coordinators: Dr. Iris Agmon & Dr. Avi Rubin

Historians perceive the “long 19t century” as a crucial phase in the transition of Middle East societies to modernity, along with societies in other parts of the globe. The law forms one major field of human activity in which social, political, cultural and economic meanings are constantly constituted, re-defined, and negotiated. As such, it provides a fascinating perspective for the purpose of investigating the onset of modernity in the Middle East.

The proposed workshop is broadly defined so as to stress our understanding of the legal field as a myriad of practices and meanings that are interconnected with other spheres of life. We seek to bring together historians working on various aspects of legal change in and beyond the Middle East during the “long 19th century” and the first half of the 20th century. We hope to advance a discussion on the socio-legal contexts in which modernity was experienced, defined and contested. We invite papers addressing legal change viewed from the perspective of “law in action.” Papers of comparative nature, or which address these issues from the perspective of world history are welcome. We also encourage submission of papers addressing the historiography of law in the Middle East and elsewhere in the context of modernity. The workshop will demonstrate the great potential of socio-legal research for filling gaps in historians’ understanding of the passage of Middle East societies to modernity; it will further allow its participants to identify major scholarly trends and achievements of recent years, and hopefully to formulate the challenges ahead.

The workshop will be held at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev from June 4 through June 6, 2012. All participants will be expected to submit in advance a working paper to be distributed among the other participants.

Those interested in participating in the workshop are welcome to send a one-page proposal in English, along with their C.V. by September 30, 2011. The proposal should briefly state the topic, and outline how the paper contributes to the aims of the workshop. Authors will be notified by October 31, 2011 whether their proposal was accepted for presentation in the workshop. Authors whose proposal is accepted will be expected to submit a full-length version of the paper by April 1, 2012.

Participants from abroad will be offered round trip airfare and lodging.

Proposals should be addressed by email to:

Dr. Iris Agmon: iragmon@bgu.ac.il

Dr. Avi Rubin: avirubin@bgu.ac.il


Call for Papers: The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) and Islamic
and Middle Eastern Studies (IMES) of the University of Edinburgh invite proposals for a Symposium:

Contextualising Community - Diasporas of the Modern Middle East

27-28 October 2011- University of Edinburgh

The Middle East (defined broadly) has historically been a heterogeneous site where distinct communities, differentiated by origin and orientation, have coexisted through many periods of conflict and even longer times of peace. At certain points, some communities rose to positions of prominence and power, while others’ very existence was threatened. From the late nineteenth century, dynamic political changes have meant that many of these groups struggle to claim and negotiate a space for themselves, based on political and social pragmatism.

Although there has been substantial interest in Middle Eastern immigrant communities in the west, diasporic and minority communities in the Middle East have been relatively neglected in recent academic scholarship. Through both theoretical engagement and in depth case studies, this symposium will look at how these groups are organised and sustained, balancing (actual or imagined) ‘homelands’ and the reality of lives lived in ‘host states’, while challenging the terms and validity of this framework.

The symposium will map the entanglement of these communities in the wider Middle Eastern societies of which they are a part. We will investigate how this varies according to the political climate and discourse of the moment. We will also reflect more widely on how communities are built and maintained in a diasporic space, examining issues of identity, citizenship and belonging in the modern Middle East.

We are interested in receiving papers combining both theoretical discussion of diaspora with a specific empirical case or regional study. Papers discussing particular aspects of diasporic cultural, political,
and social life in the Middle East are also welcome. The symposium seeks to challenge the boundaries of what are commonly conceived of as diasporas, and is open to explorations of diasporic identity based on, for example, urban identity (e.g. Levantine, Alexandrian), feminist perspectives or class-based allegiances.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

- how state policy affects diasporic groups
- the dynamics of intercommunal coexistence
- reconceptualising ‘community’
- intra-community struggles for power and representation
- diasporic media
- diasporic institutions and leaders
- the fluidity and hybridity of diasporic identities
- the significance of sites and spaces in defining diasporic identity
- local narratives of conflict and their legacy
- transnational consciousness and visions of ‘home’

Following the symposium participants will be invited to submit their revised paper for inclusion in an edited volume.

With the help of funding from the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (a consortium of Durham, Edinburgh and Manchester Universities) we will be able to cover accommodation costs for all participants. We will also endeavour to cover or contribute to travel expenses for those coming from the Middle East.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a one page CV to: Dr Sossie Kasbarian, sossie.kasbarian@ed.ac.uk and Dr Anthony Gorman, Anthony.Gorman@ed.ac.uk by 18 July 2011.

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.


The University of Copenhagen invites proposals for the two day conference

Covering the Arab Spring the Middle East in the Media The Media in the Middle East

Copenhagen, 1st & 2nd September 2011

This conference seeks to bring together scholars from various disciplines to exchange their descriptions and analyses of different national perspectives in the coverage of events in Arab countries throughout the first half of the year 2011 that have been referred to as the Arab Spring.

Media coverage and international visibility played a big role not only for the sake of being informed about events in another city, nation or region but it was a major catalyst and tool for those demonstrating in different Arab cities. Being visible in national or international media, on facebook and twitter was one of the major means for protestor’s visibility in their struggle for both national and international support.

Perception and media coverage of the developments in Arab countries in early 2011 in Europe and the US have been shaped by national frameworks of Islam perception, especially during the first days and weeks of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. As the unrests gained momentum and affected more and more countries, the frames for presenting and analyzing them in media and politics were challenged and finally changed considerably.

Thus, the main objective of the conference, and subsequent journal proposal, is to shed light on the role of TV, press, and social media in political unrests and the articulation or ignorance of frustrations of Arab populations.

Main aims of the conference:

1. Find a way to structure and analyze the media coverage of the uprisings in the Arab World 2011 in order to enhance academic research on media and Islam.

2. Provide mapping of traditional/new/social media and mediatized space in the Middle East under the revolutions and also to provide grounds for a critical reflection with regard to research strategies and methodologies which are being applied to the analysis of interaction between media, politics and new cultural practices.

3. Publish substantial papers in an special edition of a peer reviewed Journal.

This approach raises questions related to media and opinion formation as well as a number of methodological questions of general interest for media and area studies. It connects research interests on media in the Middle East and on the perception of Islam in Europe.

These topics will be investigated at several panels and a podium discussion in order to share the academic discussion with a broader audience in Denmark.

The following questions will be addressed:

• What were the dominant and shifting issues in the representations and political assessment of current events?
o Islamic extremism, destabilization of the Middle East, rise of the Muslim brotherhood, Islam and democracy, dictatorships, social media, youth culture, demographic pressure, Western loyalties and interests.
o How is the ongoing development of the Arab Spring reflected in choice and change of perspective (within and outside the region)?
o How did traditional media use social media as source of information? (Interaction and dependence of different types of media)

• In what ways have agents of change been using media in order to support their cause?
o How did agents make use of different media simultaneously realizing media’s different potentials?

• What was the role of experts of Islam, terrorism and radicalism, on social media and the Middle East in media coverage?
o In what way were researchers, scholars, and journalists included in the explanation and contextualization of current developments?

• What role did the national situations and environments for media have on the coverage?
o What was the role of foreign correspondents in covering current events?
o In what way did restrictions of the freedom of press hinder reporters?
o How has media changed during the Arab Spring and to which degree have they met the requests for accountability and transparency?

Submission of proposals:
• Abstracts about 300 words should be sent by 30th June 2011 to both:
Riem Spielhaus: rsp@teol.ku.dk & Ehab Galal: ehab@hum.ku.dk

• Abstract, following this order: author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract,
• Short CV (max. 150 words).

For contributions to the special edition a full paper of 6000 words should be submitted no later than 1st October 2011 and will then be subject to peer reviews and possible revisions. The selection of the papers will be based on quality and relevance to the conference themes.
Only accepted papers will get an answer by the date mentioned below. Selected papers will be published in a special volume in English.

Deadlines:
o Submission of abstracts: 30th June 2011.
o Notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15th July 2011.
o Submission of full papers: 1st October 2011

To send proposals and for additional information please contact the organizers:

Riem Spielhaus
Research Fellow at the Centre for European Islamic Thought
Department of Systematic Theology
University of Copenhagen
Koebmagergade 46
DK-1150 Copenhagen K.
Denmark
E-mail: rsp@teol.ku.dk

Ehab Galal
Assistant Professor in Modern Islam and Middle Eastern Studies
Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
University of Copenhagen
Snorresgade 17-19
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
E-mail: ehab@hum.ku.dk


Call for Papers: Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority

March 31, 2012 – Boston University

“The gender jihad is a struggle to establish gender justice in Muslim thought and praxis. At the simplest level, gender justice is gender mainstreaming – the inclusion of women in all aspects of Muslim practice, performance, policy construction, and in both political and religious leadership” Amina Wadud, Inside the Gender Jihad

Scholarship on female religious authority in Islam dates back at least to the 1970s and has gone through several important phases. For two decades, most scholarship focused on demonstrating Muslim women's poor social status and sought to locate the source of women's oppression within religious doctrine. By the 1990s scholarship had turned to locate an egalitarian impulse within Islam that had been thwarted by the pressures of its patriarchal contexts. Over the next decade, female-authored studies of the Qur'an claimed an unimpeachable basis for female rights by holding up the Qur'anic ideal of equality as a standard by which to judge social realities. More recently, scholars have sought to complicate the view of Muslim women's unrelenting oppression. They have worked instead to recover evidence of past and present female resistance and agency, demonstrating that Muslim women are carving out spheres of interpretive autonomy and successfully negotiating their public and private lives within the constraints of broader social structures. This conference builds on the foundation of the foregoing work and aims to bring together considerations of religious, social, and interpretive authority across geographical and temporal boundaries. Amina Wadud will be the keynote speaker for the conference, joined by Mohja Kahf who will give the opening lecture. We invite the submission of papers addressing both Muslim women's authority and others' authority over Muslim women in political, intellectual, ritual, and sexual contexts in the contemporary world as well as in the past.

Core questions for the conference include:
• What authority do Muslim women have to interpret religious texts?
• What authority do traditional interpretations of scripture and law have over Muslim women?
• What ritual, social, public, and political authority do women exercise?
• How do mass education and new media affect women's activities?
• Who has the authority to speak on behalf of or about Muslim women?

To apply, please send the following to female.authority.conference@gmail.com by June 1, 2011
* paper title
* proposal of no more than 500 words
* brief biographical sketch

Organized by Kecia Ali (Boston University), Laury Silvers (University of Toronto), and Juliane Hammer
(George Mason University) and supported by the Boston University Humanities Foundation; the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University; CURA (BU), the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations (BU), the New England/Maritimes Regional American
Academy of Religion (NEMAAR), the Institute for Philosophy and Religion (BU), the Department of
Religion (BU), and the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (BU).


Political Legitimacy in the Islamic West - Workshop by the Department of Middle East Studies, University of Cambridge - 13-14 September 2011. Sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust

Call for papers - deadline for abstracts 4 February 2011

The workshop will investigate the strategies of legitimation used by Muslim rulers in Islamic Spain and the western Maghrib during the medieval and early modern periods to analyse how they justified and presented their rule to their subjects and to visitors from the Islamic east and Christian Europe. It aims to explore issues of religio-political identity and regional unities and divisions of both historical and contemporary relevance to shed light on an understudied period of this crucial Mediterranean regions' history. The chronological focus of the workshop will be on the 13th to 15th centuries CE, but the organisers also welcome contributions that make comparisons with earlier and later periods.

For full details see http://islamicwest.ames.cam.ac.uk


11. International Conference: "Migration and Culture" - University of Klagenfurt/Austria, 16-18 June 2011

Proposals on the following subject areas are welcomed:
- Current theoretical debates (including multiculturalism, interculturality, diversity)
- Mechanisms of exclusion (including neo-racism, neo-assimilationism, intrinsic and extrinsic ethnicization)
- Cultural negotiation processes in border areas
- Forms of resistance (including politics of identity, subculture)
- Cultural phenomena in the everyday world
- Media representations of migration
- Cultures of recollection

Deadline for proposals: 5 January 2011. The call for papers for this conference is available under: http://www.irm-trier.de/irm-home.htm (German version) and http://www.irm-trier.de/irm-home_e.htm (English version). Conference languages are German and English and proposals in both languages are accepted.


The Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University, plans to hold an international workshop on "Central Asia in the World of Islam" on 29-30 May 2011 and to publish subsequently papers presented in it. The intention of the workshop is to illustrate the position of Central Asia as an integral part of the Islamic world and the region's role in the development and history of this world.

Those interested in presenting a paper at the workshop on topics related to this theme on any period in history up to the present should send an abstract of up to 250 words to mgcentralasia@gmail.com no later than December 15, 2010. Please indicate academic affiliation and attach a short CV. The participants will be required to submit a first (full) draft of their papers 3 weeks before the conference. Successful applications will be notified by January 15, 2011.


Christians and the Middle East Conflict
March 24-26, 2011, Langley, British Columbia, Canada more...


Workshop on Language, Literacy, and the Social Construction of Authority in Islamic Societies
March 3-4, 2011, Stanford, CA, USA more...


The Arab-Turkish Congress of Social Sciences (ATCOSS-2010)
December 10-12, 2010, Ankara, Turkey more..


A Workshop at Yale University, December 9–10, 2011

Aspects of al-Ghazali's Influence on Modern and Contemporary Islam

Call for Papers

December 2011 will mark the 900th anniversary of the death of al-Ghazali, one of Islam's most influential theologians and thinkers. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of Islamic mysticism and integrating both these traditions-falsafa and Sufism-into the Sunni mainstream. At the same time he advocated for a virtue theory within the deontological system of Ash'arite ethics, introduced the consideration of "public benefit" into Islamic jurisprudence, and promoted a more morally conscious kind of Islamic scholarship.

While al-Ghazali's influence on the centuries right after his death is evident and tangible in many writers, the ways he influenced Muslim thinkers in the modern and contemporary era is less clear. Yet we know, for instance, that al-Ghazali's "Revival of the Religious Sciences" was among the books favored by Hasan al-Banna' and read in the evening classes of the early Muslim Brotherhood. This call for papers solicits contributions to the study of al-Ghazali's position within Islamic discourses during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, be it in the fields of philosophy, Sufism, education, political theory, ethics, or any other topic. This can be in the form of a positive influence as well as in the form of an adversary that is argued against.

Abstracts of no more than 600 words along with a short bio or CV should be submitted by January 12, 2011 preferably via e-mail to Amaar al-Hayder, Council on Middle East Studies, Yale University, amaar.al-hayder@yale.edu.

See also the link: http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/cmes/al-GhazaliCallForPapers.pdf


Past Events

The VI International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies - Islamic Law and Custom
January 30 - February 01, 2009, Hyderabad, India more..

Third University of Essex Islamic Conference 2009 (UEIC 2009)
February 7, 2009, Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom more..

The Iranian Revolution: Thirty Years - The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University.
February 7-8, 2009, New Brunswick, NJ, USA more...

2009 SECSOR Regional Meeting
March 13-15, 2009, Chapel Hill, NC, USA more...

International Conference on Islamic Economics and Economies of the OIC Countries 2009
April 28 - 29, 2009, Hotel Istana, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia more..

International Conference on Research in Islamic Laws (ICRIL 09) 2009/1430H
July 15 - 16, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia more..

International Conference on Rethinking Jihad: Ideas, Politics and Conflict in the Arab World and Beyond, September 7-9, 2009, Edinburgh, Scotland more..

International Seminar on Islamic Thought (ISoIT)
October 6 - 7, 2009, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia more..

American Academy of Religion - AAR 2009 Annual Meeting
November 7-10 2009, Montreal, Quebec, Canada more...

Middle East Studies Association - MESA 2009 Annual Meeting
November 21-24, 2009, Boston, MA, USA more...

Yemen 2010 an International Conference
May 17 - 19, 2010, Sana'a, Republic of Yemen more...

Food, Power & Meaning In the Middle East and the Mediterranean
June 15 - 16, 2010, Beer Sheva, Israel more...

 

If you know an event, conference, or workshop that should be listed on events page, please send it to us at studyofislam@gmail.com.

   
 

 

 
   
 
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updated on December 5, 2009