Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University
Critical Media Lab McGill University
Hors champ, Laboratoire CinéMédias (Université de Montréal)
Present
خیال شاهین
Visions of Shahin
A Polyphonic Conversation
Tuesday March 24, 2026, 4 p.m.
Room ARTS W-215
Film screenings on 16 mm and digital
Friday March 27, 2026, 6 p.m.
Critical Media Lab –Peterson Hall 108
Open to the public
Visions of Shahin celebrates with two events the work and life of Iranian Canadian, Montreal based filmmaker Shahin Parhami (1967-2021), a friend of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill.
A Polyphonic Conversation
March 24th, 4 p.m.
Assembling a polyphonic set of voices each offering a short presentation on a concrete aspect of Shahin’s artistic and existential vision, the event aims at delineating Shahin’s unique approach to art. Shahin Parhami lived nurtured by an original vision in which a variety of elements combined into a unique cosmopolitan aesthetic sensibility. Drawing inspiration from the New Wave Iranian cinema, horror movies, Indian food, Arabic music, Filmfarsi, Persian poetry, cats, Stockhausen, les ruelles de Montréal and much more, Shahin Parhami assembled these elements with his own signature style. Faculty members of the Institute of Islamic Studies and other friends will discuss several aspects of Shahin’s work and scholar of Iranian cinema Farbod Honarpisheh (Yale University) will give a talk on his cinematic works.
Film Screenings
March 27th, 6 p.m.
This program will feature a selection of early rarely seen films and fragments by Shahin Parhami (on 16mm and digital format), as well as his very last completed short film, Stem Cell II. Friends and collaborators will be present to introduce the works. The program is presented in collaboration with the journal Hors champ, the Laboratoire CinéMédias (Université de Montréal) and the Critical Media Lab. It was curated by André Habib (Université de Montréal).
IIS Poetry Night and Potluck İftar: 12 March
Join us on Thursday, March 12, 2026, for an evening of poetry and food!
We will begin with a poetry gathering in the Octagon Room (Islamic Studies Library) from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., followed by a potluck iftar from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Common Room (3rd floor). There will be food from Anatolia. Any additional contributions are very welcome!
Morrice Hall, 3485 Rue McTavish → All languages welcome → Five to ten-minute poetry time slots
Congratulations to Professor Michelle Hartman!
Congratulations to Michelle Hartman on the publication of her translation of Iman Humaydan’s latest novel, Songs for Darkness (Interlink, 2026), a long novel set over almost a century, telling the stories of four generations of women, set in a village in Mount Lebanon.
An Arab Lit Quarterly post celebrates the publication day. Michelle speaks about the translation of the novel on the New Books Network Podcast.
An Arab Lit Quarterly interview with Iman Humaydan and Michelle Hartman on the novel, "Songs as Memory, as Solidarity, as Resistance”, has also appeared this week.
You can order the book on the Interlink Publishing website.
Only songs are able to comfort the soul in its darkness—but can anyone hear them?
Iman Humaydan’s saga recalls the voices of four generations of women from one family in the imaginary village of Kasura, in Mount Lebanon. Its narrator, Asmahan, named after the beloved Syrian singer, has devoted her adult life to recovering the stories of her ancestors, who persisted in the shadows of male supremacy, war, military occupation, and impoverishment.
Her mother, Layla, disappeared when Asmahan was still a teenager. Her grandmother, Yasmine, died giving birth. And her great-grandmother, Shahira, struggled through two world wars, famine, and suffocating gender norms to win an education for her children and eke out a better life for her family. Asmahan is determined to protect her daughter and break out of the cycle of intergenerational violence and wounds that the women who came before her suffered. She packs up her daughter to emigrate after a divorce, when her husband takes their son away from her on his seventh birthday, during the darkest days of the 1982 Israeli invasion.
These women’s legacies span and echo the scarred history of an abused homeland, from the eve of the first World War to the 1982 Lebanon War. In honoring their unfulfilled lives, Iman Humaydan insistently preserves intimate stories of abundant tenacity, generosity, sacrifice—and songs, provisions sorely needed for dark times.
The Institute of Islamic Studies
Invites you to
The US-Iran Conflict and Its Regional Implications
with
Prof. Khalid Madani (Director Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill)
Prof. Setrag Manoukian (Institute of Islamic Studies and Department of Anthropology, McGill)
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
5:30pm, ARTS W-120
Dr. Razak Khan's Talk on March 18, 2026
Syed Abid Husain, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Islamic Studies in Postcolonial India
5pm, Morrice Hall, Room 328
Dr. Razak Khan is a Research Fellow in Global History at the Department of History, Free University, Berlin. He is part of ERC consolidator grant project “Democratising the Family? Gender Equality, Parental Rights, and Child Welfare in Contemporary Global History” (DEMFAM). His project is entitled Unfamiliar: Family, Law, and Democracy in South Asia. He is finishing his second book project, Minor Cosmopolitanism: Islam, Democracy, and Emotional Integration in the Life and Writings of Syed Abid Husain (1896-1978).
This examines Jawaharlal Nehru's vision of secular Indian Islam and his policies towards creating one and explores the response and agency of Indian Muslims as exemplified in the life and writings of Syed Abid Husain (1896-1978). It analyzes his book The Destiny of Indian Muslims (1965) as an elaboration of this understanding and vision. It also looks at his efforts to create secular Islamic Studies through Islam and the Modern Age Society (1975) and Journal at the Jamia Millia Islamia. In doing so, it situates the nationalist histories of "Muslim Universities" in India within larger global histories of knowledge production about Islam in North America. The emergence of Secular Islamic Studies and Comparative Religious Studies connects Aligarh University and Jamia Millia Islamia with the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University through the life and works of Wilfred Cantwell Smith.
Professor Francesca Chubb-Confer - Nightingales and Falcons - February 26, 2026
Nightingales and Falcons: Iqbal, Metaphor, and the Poetic Imagination of Islamic Modernity
February 26, 2026 6:00 PM following iftari and maghrib
Morrice Hall room 328, 3485 McTavish Street, Institute of Islamic Studies
This talk examines how literary metaphor mediates the relationship between Islam and modernity in the poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938). Focusing on the figures of the nightingale and the falcon in Iqbal’s Persian and Urdu ghazals, it argues that resources drawn from pre-modern Sufi poetry—especially ambiguity and paradox—were important tools for articulating modern Muslim selfhood.
These metaphors register the tensions between inherited traditions and the demands of colonial modernity in South Asia, while foregrounding the entanglements of religion, literature, and politics. The talk also highlights the importance of vernacular languages and literary genres often considered marginal to Islamic Studies.
Note: The talk will be in-person only, and will not be recorded.
The Montreal British History Seminar presents:
Gaza 1917
Professor Laila Parsons, Department of History and Classical Studies & Institute of Islamic Studies
Thursday, February 19
4pm - 5:30pm, Rm. 404, Thomson House (3650 McTavish)
Based on the second chapter of Laila Parsons' book manuscript, The British Occupation of Palestine 1917-1948, and drawing on British and Palestinian sources, this talk narrates the British invasion and conquest of Gaza in 1917. It frames the battles for Gaza not as a sideshow of the First World War but as the foundational moment in the colonization of Palestine, pointing to the ways in which the invasion and conquest were structurally linked to British colonial violence in Palestine after the war.
Congratulations to Andrew Sandock!
Congratulations to former IIS undergraduate student Andrew Sandock on the publication of his article "In Search of a Liberatory Appraisal for Palestinian Archives”, which was awarded the 2024 Dodds Prize by the Association of Canadian Archivists. After graduating from McGill, Andrew joined the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information where he received his Master of Information in the Spring of 2024. See the full Dodds Prize announcement.
Book Roundtable: Buddhism and Islam - Tuesday, February 10
The author Kieko Obuse (School of Religious Studies, McGill and Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Japan)
will discuss the book Buddhism and Islam : mutual engagements in Southeast Asia and Japan (Brill 2025) with
Mikaël Bauer (Director, School of Religious Studies, McGill University)
Prashant Keshavmurthy (Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
Chaired by: Setrag Manoukian (Institute of Islamic Studies and Anthropology, McGill University)
Buddhist-Muslim relations are usually seen as inherently confrontational. This book challenges the view of Buddhism and Islam as fundamentally irreconcilable by exploring the diverse ways representatives of the two traditions have engaged each other in Southeast Asia-the global frontstage of contemporary Buddhist-Muslim relations-and Japan-a Buddhist-majority country whose 'Islam policy' played a significant role in its surge to global power status. It investigates the processes through which mutual perceptions and discourses have developed in response to shifting socio-political circumstances and via the intellectual interventions of leading personalities
Congratulations to PhD Student Jaleh Ebrahimi!
IIS Doctoral Student Jaleh Ebrahimi has been awarded the BLUE Fellowship at Building 21 for Winter 2026.
Her project is titled: Beings beyond Human Time
Building 21 at McGill University is a space in which unique, daring, beautiful, and rigorous ideas and scholarship are welcomed and nurtured. It is an innovative educational experiment that allows intrinsically motivated scholars to join an innovative, rigorous, and experimental culture of peers and mentors. This culture actively facilitates the development of both original scholars and original scholarship, inclusive of all ages, disciplines, and levels of expertise.
In collaboration with a global network of adjacent communities, Building 21 maintains a commitment to challenge, refine, and encourage a diversity of approaches, processes, and thinkers across the spectrum of human competencies.