Congratulations to our PhD student Sabeena Shaikh for winning a 2019 Graduate Student Teaching award! An excerpt from her citation from the Faculty of Arts:
Sabeena Shaikh has taught and is currently teaching two full-year levels of the Urdu-Hindi language course at the Institute of Islamic Studies. She has breathed life into the Urdu-Hindi language program through her learned, effective, and passionate teaching. The innovations she has introduced into these courses have made the learning of the language a cultural experience. She communicates her infectious enthusiasm for South Asian culture through her teaching methods.
Sabeena Shaikh
For information about the award:
https://www.mcgill.ca/arts/article/recognizing-excellence-within-arts-community
Annual International Workers Day Lecture
The Institute of Islamic Studies is pleased to announce the 2019 Annual International Workers Day Lecture, hosted by Le Centre Culturel Lebanais, given by our Professor Khalid Medani and introduced by Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab.
This lecture was held on May 4, 2019. For more details on the lecture, please see poster here.
It is with regret that the Institute of Islamic Studies informs you of the passing of Professor Emeritus of Arabic Literature, Issa J Boullata Mark, on Wednesday May 1 2019, at the age of 90.
Professor Issa J Boullata was a quiet, hardworking professor whose dedication has educated generations of students in Arabic language and literature at McGill University. His prolific research and literary output has helped to put McGill on the map in the field of Islamic Studies. Throughout his career, Professor Boullata remained an inspiration to students and colleagues in the classroom and in his published work. We have lost a colleague who greatly enriched the life of our institution for many years.
The Institute of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Arts extends its condolences to his family, including his daughter Barbara, his three sons, Joseph, David, and Peter, his brother Kamal, sister Souad and sisters-in-law Therèse and Annette.
Article in Independant Arabia please click here.
Michelle Hartman - Book Launch
Thank you all to those who attended Michelle Hartman's book launch of Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language on Friday April 26, 2019 at Librarairie Eugélionne, it was a great success! For those of you who were unable to attend and would like to purchase the book, please click here.
Please join IIS Professor Michelle Hartman in a conversation about her new book, Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Solidarities and the Politics of Language at its Montreal Launch. It is on Friday, April 26 from 18h00-20h00 at the Librarairie Eugélionne (across from Beaudry Metro station). Click here for more information.
Katherine Lemons - Book Launch
Please join IIS Associate Member, Professor Katherine Lemons at the launch of her new book:
Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism
on April 30, 2019 at Paragraphe Bookstore, 16h30. For more details click here
Congratulations to Ms.Fateme Savadi
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Fateme Savadi on her successful PhD oral defense on April 9, 2019, entitled “The historical and cosmographical context of Hay'at al-ard with a focus on Qutb al-Din Shirazi's Nihayat al-Idrak". Photo of Dr. Savadi and Professor Rula Abisaab.
Congratulations Professor Michelle Hartman
Congratulations Professor Michelle Hartman, whose edited book Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation, has been nominated for the 2019 Teaching Literature Book Award, a prize for outstanding scholarship on teaching literature at the undergraduate or graduate level. This nationally juried award, the only one of its kind, is overseen and conferred every other year by the faculty in the graduate programs in English and the Teaching of English at Idaho State University. Congratulations also to Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab who has a chapter in the book.
For information about the award, please click here.
Congratulations to Mr. Brian Wright
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Brian Wright on his successful PhD oral defense on April 2, 2019, entitled “Homicide and Islamic criminal law in 19th century Muslim jurisdictions”. His academic supervisor was Professor Pasha M. Khan.
Australianama: Narrating South Asian and Muslim Presence in Australasia in the Wake of the Christchurch Attacks
Please join us for an event comprising two talks by Dr. Samia Khatun, Associate Professor at the University Liberal Arts Bangladesh and author of the new book Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia; and Dr. Uzma Jamil, Visiting Scholar at the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, and Fellow in Muslim Studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Drs Khatun and Jamil will speak about the long history of South Asians and Muslims in Australia and their relations with Aboriginal people, and about whiteness and violence in the nation.
These talks come in the aftermath of the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a white supremacist gunman from Australia murdered 50 Muslims and injured as many others. The Institute of Islamic Studies condemns these murderous attacks. We would like to express our sadness and offer our sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims, and all others affected by it. We continue to stand in solidarity with Muslim communities worldwide and reaffirm our ongoing condemnation of Islamophobia in all of its forms.
Tuesday April 16, 2019
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
2:45pm
Angelical Conjunctions: Crossroads of Medicine and Religion, 1200-1800
Angelical Conjunctions: The Intersection of Religion and Medicine 1200-1800 brings together twenty-five scholars who focus on the late medieval and early modern periods. The conference invites us to see the connection between religion and medicine not as an inconvenient deviance of past societies, let alone as a necessarily adversarial relationship, but as a key phenomenon that enlightens a given society’s conceptions of the mind and the body, and how the society negotiates these competing conceptions. The connection between medical and spiritual practices took many forms over the centuries, from the pious provision of health care (in person or through endowed charity), to the archetypal figure of the healing prophet. Yet despite decades of specialized research, a coherent and analytical history of the "angelical conjunction" itself remains elusive.
Taking an inter-cultural and long-term perspective, Angelical Conjunctions investigates how Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions interpreted, produced, and shaped medical knowledge. We aim to develop methodological and theoretical perspectives on the "angelical conjunction(s)" of these two spheres.
Keynote Event April 12th, 2019 - Prof. Lauren Kassell
‘Universal Medicine’: Lessons from Seventeenth Century England
McGill Department of Rare Books & Special Collections
McLennan Library Building 4th Floor - 3459 McTavish Street
Event Time: 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Congratulations to Professor Katherine Lemons
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates associate member Professor Katherine Lemons on her new book Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism.
Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understand of Indian secularism.
"Katherine Lemons has written a powerful and compelling book that reshapes our understanding of secularism, Muslim law, and divorce in contemporary India." - RACHEL STUMAN, Bowdoin College
For more information from Cornell University Press and to purchase please click here.
Congratulations to Ms.Salua Fawzi
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Salua Fawzi on her successful PhD oral defense on March 13, 2019, entitled “Experiencing Islam in America: Muslim Students Associations". Her academic supervisor was Professor Setrag Manoukian.
History in the Syrian Drama:
A Dialogue with Hatim Ali
The Institute of Islamic Studies is proud to present: History in the Syrian Drama: A Dialogue with Hatim Ali .
This lecture attempts to shed light on the making of the Syrian Drama and how Arab Islamic history has been objectified in TV series and films made by the prominent filmmaker Mr. Hatim Ali. You will be able to meet with the maker of the most watched TV series in the Arab world and raise questions on the interplay between history, culture, politics and media.
Hatem Ali is a renowned Syrian actor, television and cinema director. He has been at the forefront of Syrian television and film-making, and is widely celebrated and recognized in the Arab region. He began his profession as an acting instructor and later pursued a career in directing. He has since produced and directed numerous TV series and films that are recognized both regionally and internationally.
This event is co-sponsored by La Société Gilgamesh, Canadian Druze Society in Quebec, Le Centre Culturel Libanais and La Fondation Canado Palestinian du Quebec; Child Sponsorship Program
Friday March 29, 2019
Leacock 219
855 Sherbrooke West
18h00
Congratulations to Professor Aslihan Gürbüzel - SSHRC Award
Congratulations to Professors Aslihan Gürbüzel and Co-Investigator Faith Wallis, History and Classical Studies and Political Science, McGill University. They were successful in securing a 2019 SSHRC Individual Connection Grants award in the amount of $25K. Grant collaborators are Amanda Rosini and Naznin Idris Patel, graduate students in the School of Religious Studies, McGill University.
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - March 19, 2019
April 1st - New extended deadline for the 2019 McGill Arabic Summer Program
Announcing a new extended deadline for the 2019 McGill Arabic Summer Program. Applications are available now for a unique eight-week immersive Arabic experience in the heart of Montreal.
Discover more about the Arabic side of Montreal:
Learn about the McGill Arabic program first-hand from our students:
For more information and to apply now:
https://www.mcgill.ca/arabic-summer/
Congratulations to Dr. Rula Abisaab
The Institute of Islamic Studies warmly congratulates Dr. Rula Abisaab on her promotion to Full Professor.
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - March 14, 2019
Congratulations to PhD student Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan and Professor F. Jamil Ragep
The Institute of Islamic Studies is pleased to announce the following article that explores the Islamic background to the Copernican revolution. Thanks to a recent policy of Cambridge University Press, it is online in an open-access, read-only version: Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan and F. Jamil Ragep, “The Mercury Models of Ibn al-Šāṭir and Copernicus,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 29 (2019): 1-59.
There are animations that go with the article that can be accessed here. This webpage also contains clearer figures than those in the online version of the article.
Congratulations to both Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan and Professor F. Jamil Ragep on the article.
Arabic Summer Program - Price REDUCED!
Congratulations to Professor Michelle Hartman
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Hartman on her upcoming new book Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language to be released in Spring 2019.
“Michelle Hartman plumbs the polysemy of ‘breaking’ with rich analytical acuity, compelling us to read solidarity across a wide range of literary and linguistic practices.”—Keith Feldman, University of California, Berkeley
“Hartman’s thought-provoking analysis of a variety of work from poetry to short fiction to novels to memoir offers an understanding of how language and racial politics have impacted the way Arab Americans position themselves in American society.”—Pauline Kaldas, Hollins University
For more information from Syracuse University Press and to order, please click here.
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - February 11, 2019
Dr. Khalid Medani 's talk on Sudan's Popular Protests: Prospects of A Peaceful Transition To Democracy
A big thank you to everyone who attended Dr. Khalid Medani's talk on Monday January 28, 2019 - Sudan's Popular Protests: Prospects of A Peaceful Transition To Democracy
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - January 22, 2019
Congratulations to Ms. Nazak Birjandifar
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Nazak Birjandifar on her successful PhD oral defense on January 18, 2019, entitled “Negotiating Power: Gilan and Its Gradual Incorporation into the Safavid Polity". Her academic supervisor was Professor Rula Abisaab.
McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies, in collaboration with McGill Centre for Science and Islam, MIISSC, and Harf - Journal of South Asian Studies presents:
"SALAM "
Film screening and panel discussion
Salam (2018) is an award-winning documentary about Pakistani physicist Dr. Abdus Salam, the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize for Science. The film captures in vivid detail his life's journey—from a small village in Pakistan to worldwide scientific acclaim—and his fraught relationship with his homeland, where he faced rejection for being a member of the “heretical” Ahmadiyya movement.
Language: English
Length: 75 min
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/201371247
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on science in Islam, science and religion, and the life and career of Abdus Salam, featuring Ehab Abouheif, F. Jamil Ragep, and Martin Grant.
Dr. Ehab Abouheif is a James McGill Professor in the Department of Biology, a Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Developmental Biology and a co-founder of the McGill Centre for Islam and Science. In 2012, his lab discovered that genetic “supersoldier” potential can lay dormant in ants for millions of years, but can be unlocked by applying high doses of hormone at a critical stage in the larvae’s development. The discovery is changing traditional thinking about dormant genetic potential in other animals (such as bird’s teeth and snake’s fingers) and how, once triggered, they can act as raw materials for adaptive evolution. The implications for harnessing dormant genetic potentials include medical advances, biodiversity conservation, and animal or plant breeding.
Dr. F. Jamil Ragep is a Canada Research Chair in the History of Science in Islamic Societies at McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies and a co-founder of the McGill Centre for Islam and Science. He has written extensively on the history of astronomy, on science in Islam, on science and religion, and on the intercultural transmission of science. He is currently leading an international effort to catalogue all Islamic manuscripts in the exact sciences and is co-directing a project to study the fifteenth-century background to the Copernican revolution.
Dr. Martin Grant is a James McGill Professor in the Department of Physics, and Steward of McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies. His research is in nonequilibrium statistical physics and he is interested in problems at the boundary between condensed matter physics, materials science, biophysics, and the social sciences. These include first-order phase transitions, crystal growth, cell movement, interactions between species, the math of musical melodies, and other things.
The panel discussion will be moderated by Dr. Pasha M. Khan who is Chair in Urdu Language and Culture at McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies.
Tuesday Jan 15, 2019
Venue: Leacock 26
18:00-21:00
McGill Arabic Summer Program
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - January 8, 2019
Congratulations to Michelle Hartman
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Michelle Hartman on her new translation A Sky So Close to Us.
A Sky So Close to Us by Shahla Ujayli; translated by Michelle Hartman:
As children sleeping on the rooftop of their ancestral family home in Raqqa on warm summer nights, Joumane and her sisters imagine the sky is so close they can almost touch it. Years later, Joumane lives as an expatriate in Jordan, working for a humanitarian agency, while her sisters remain trapped in war-torn Syria. Living alone as she fights her own battle with cancer, she contemplates the closeness of the same sky, despite the sharply delineated borders that now separate her from her family.
For more information by Interlink Publishing please click here or Amazon click here.
Congratulations to Shokry Gohar
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Arabic Language Program Director Shokry Gohar on Discover the Arabic side of Montreal a Faculty of Arts newsletter article, in which Prof. Gohar discusses the launch of our new 8 week immersive Arabic Summer Program.
Open to undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals, this program takes students of various levels and offers a comprehensive Arabic language experience that, in addition to the language, introduces them to the rich culture, economy, history, and politics of the Arabic speaking world. For more information on the Arabic Summer Program, please click here.
Registration opens on December 12, 2018
Congratulations to Dr. Sally Ragep and Prof. Jamil Ragep
The Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative (ISMI) is pleased to announce the launch of its public website at https://ismi.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de . The ISMI database provides a means to access Islamicate authors, their works, and extant manuscript witnesses in the various fields of the mathematical sciences. These fields include the “pure” mathematical sciences (such as geometry, arithmetic, algebra, and trigonometry) as well as the “mixed” mathematical sciences (such as astronomy, optics, music, and mechanics). In addition to its bio-bibliographical function, the database is designed to facilitate research by, among other things, allowing for “transitive queries” that return chains of teachers/students, original texts (matn)/commentaries, ownership chains, and so forth. A Query Builder allows the researcher to query the data in numerous ways; one could, for example, search for all works on astronomical instruments copied between 1250-1350. Visualization tools are also being developed as aids for this research. You can find a preliminary set of tools in the "ISMI Lab" section of the website.
ISMI is a collaborative project that is directed jointly by Dr. Sally Ragep and Prof. Jamil Ragep at McGill University, Montreal, and by Prof. Lorraine Daston at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG Berlin). The senior technical researcher is Dr. Robert Casties (MPIWG Berlin).
On behalf of the The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulations to all!
Congratulations to Ms. Yasmine Badr
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Yasmine Badr on her successful PhD oral defense on November 20, 2018, entitled “Defining and Categorizing “Rape”: A Study of Some Pre-Modern and Early Modern Islamic Legal Sources". Her academic supervisor was Professor Rula Abisaab.
The Institute of Islamic Studies is pleased to announce the launch of our Arabic Summer Program, a new and immersive Arabic summer program.
Open to undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals, this program takes students of various levels and offers a comprehensive Arabic language experience that, in addition to the language, introduces them to the rich culture, economy, history, and politics of the Arabic speaking world.
The program at a glance:
• 237 total program hours (170 hours in-class, 67 extra-curricular activities)
• Various levels available (beginner through high intermediate)
• Extra-curricular activities included (field trips, calligraphy, cooking, lectures, and more)
• Small Class Sizes (max. 15 students with 2 instructors)
Applications for summer 2019 open December 7th.
Please visit www.mcgill.ca/arabic-summer for more information.
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - November 28, 2018
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - November 27, 2018
Congratulations to Mr. Pascal Abidor
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Pascal Abidor on his successful PhD oral defense on October 30, 2018, entitled “Jabal Āmil: The Production of Space in an Islamicate Context from the Birth of Islam to the Nineteenth Century". His academic supervisor was Professor Rula Abisaab.
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - November 6, 2018
McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development and The Institute of Islamic Studies present:
Former Detainees and the Politics of Recognition in Postwar Lebanon
Lecture by: Roschanack Shaery-Yazdi
The Syrian military security, often in collaboration with local militias and state functionaries, was involved in the abduction and illegal transfer to Syria of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians during its three decades of de facto occupation of Lebanon. Lebanese released from Syrian detention centers help shed some light on the mystery that surrounds the fate of the missing and demystify some war episodes in Lebanon. This talk discusses the ex-detainees’ struggle for state recognition and monetary compensation and allows for yet another way to analyze the interplay between state and citizenship in postwar Lebanon. While I spare the audience the graphic details of torture methods, I look at how the victims hope their suffering, in particular their physical torture, may become a vehicle for attaining state recognition. Through a series of testimony practices such as writing autobiographies, public lectures, visits to rehabilitation centers, and public reenactment of their torture experiences they desire to create public sympathy and capture the attention of those in power. With the help of a particular NGO these detainees portray their ordeal in theater performances under the banner of keeping the memory of the war in the public sphere. I discuss how the memory boom in post 2000 Lebanon plays into this politics of recognition and conclude that paradoxically the memory discourse allows for airbrushing the very details of the war and allows for its presentation as a time of total chaos and random acts of violence.
Roschanack Shaery-Yazdi is assistant professor in the history department at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. She received her MA in Anthropology and Education from the University of Heidelberg in 1998. In 2005 she graduated with honors from the University of Chicago, where she had studied the history of the modern Middle East. Her research interests are transnationalism, Islamism, violence, and memory politics in the Arab East and Iran. Her book Shiite Lebanon was published with Columbia University Press in 2008. Shaery’s new monograph Missing Recognition. Syrian Military Security and Enforced Disappearances in Lebanon is forthcoming. Her new project is tentatively called Middle Eastern Lives. Dreams Against all Odds. Based on a series of biographies she will write a comparative social history of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran from the early 1970s.
Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts
Thursday, October 25
12:30 – 2pm
PETH 116
Congratulations to Mr. Christopher Anzalone
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Christopher Anzalone on his successful PhD oral defense on October 2, 2018, entitled “Localizing "Global" Jihad: The Organization and Narration of Violence and Community in Islamist Insurgencies". His academic supervisor was Professor Khalid Medani.
Film screening of A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani
The Institute of Islamic Studies cordially invites you to the film screening of A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani (2017)
Gautam Pemmaraju is a Mumbai based writer, independent filmmaker who works in the areas of history, literature and art.
With publications for several print and digital magazines, he retains a special interest in the cultural history of Hyderabad and the Deccan province of India. He has also published extensively on sound/music production and art.
A Tongue Untied: The Story of Dakhani (2017) on the vernacular satire & humour poetry of the Deccan and its language history is his first independent feature documentary film, which is currently screening at venues across the world.
October 15, 2018
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
17:00
McGill University’s School of Religious Studies, Institute of Islamic Studies and Department of Anthropology present:
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - October 16, 2018
Islamic Encounters Lecture Series - October 9, 2018
Commemorating the Sabra and Shatila Massacres - NARRATIONS OF WOMEN AND WAR
This two-day symposium coincides with and commemorates the thirty-sixth year anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees and displaced Lebanese in the aftermath of the 198 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It aims to remember and honour its victims and works to build knowledge about women and war. The symposium was developed out of a collaboration between a SSHRC-funded project based at McGill University “Women’s War Stories: Building an Archive of Women and the Lebanese Civil War” and the Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice an international, multi-year, multi-site project initiated by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program at San Francisco State University Interventions at this symposium will center on the way in which we tell the stories of Palestinian women, and other women in war, through their own narrations and the ways these are narrated by others. This event will be aimed at attracting both community and university participants.
All events are free and open to the public and the university community. In addition to these interventions, we will prepare resources for distribution at the event, including bibliographies and zine for further reading, research, and popular education in the tradition of pedagogical praxis.
This project was initiated by Professors Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman at the Institute of Islamic Studies and Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University in collaboration with Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director and senior scholar at the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program at San Francisco State University. Abdulhadi and Hartman co-organized a number of previous interventions related to the symposium and leading to it including: a panel on Teaching Palestine at the Left Forum (3 June 2017) to mark the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of 1967 and a thematic conversation (2017 MESA meeting) on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
WOMEN’s WAR STORIES
EVENT PROGRAM:
Monday September 17:
6:00pm Screening of film: Frontiers of Dreams and Fears: A discussion with filmmaker Mai Masri (by Skype) and Professor Diana Allan -- Morrice Hall 017
for more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/261426827816076/
Tuesday September 18:
9:00 am Gathering and Coffee -- ARTS 160
9:30 am Welcome and Opening Remarks
10:00 am Whose Stories * Whose Narratives * Whose Knowledge?: The Politics and Ethics of Scholarship and Solidarity on Colonialism and Resistance : Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi -- ARTS 160
for more information: TBA
11:30 am Israeli Crime, Jewish Witness: Responses to and Responsibility for the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla Camps Pogrom : Ariel Salzmann -- ARTS 160
for more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/323294701825541/?ti=cl
12:30 pm LUNCH BREAK -- Morrice 017
2:00 pm Truth, Fiction, and Leaving the page Blank: Women, Children and the Sabra and Shatila Massacre : Michelle Hartman -- Morrice 017
for more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/256499135072930/
3:00 pm Women and Massacres in Modern Lebanon: Sabra and Shatila : Malek Abisaab -- Morrice 017
for more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/529048860867465/
5:00 pm Roundtable Discussion: Black and Puerto-Rican Solidarity with
Palestine solidarity activism -- ISLA Library (Octagon Room)
for more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/957080501159120/?ti=cl
Some of our sponsors include:
The Islamic Institute of McGill; The History of Department of McGill; the Institute of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; The Quebec Palestinian Association; The Druze Association; The Lebanese Cultural Association; Gilgamesh; QPIRG McGill; QPIRG Concordia; ISID; Canada Research Chair In Social Movement Learning and Knowledge Production
For more information please click on link for Facebook event page:https://www.facebook.com/events/223361751857841/
Congratulations to Mr. Naser Dumairieh
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Naser Dumairieh on his successful PhD oral defense on September 4, 2018, entitled “Intellectual Life in the Hijaz in the 17th Century: The Works and Thought of Ibrahim al-Kurani (1025-1101/1616-1690)”. His academic supervisor was Professor Robert Wisnovsky.
Islamic Paleography & Codicology Workshop
The Institute of Islamic Studies, along with McGill Institute of Islamic Studies Students Council and the Islamic Studies Library presents: Islamic Paleography & Codicology Workshop - September 10-14, 2018 – 5pm to 7pm
Sep 10 | Islamic Studies Library, Octagon Room | Open to the public
An Introduction to the arts of bookmaking by Anaïs Salamon, McGill University
Editing Islamic Scientific Manuscripts: Challenges and Specificities by Professor Jamil Ragep & Dr. Sally Ragep, McGill University
Sep 11 | Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Morrice Hall Room 017| Registration required
One manuscript may hide another. An episode of Umayyad-Abbasid rivalry by Professor François Déroche, Collège de France
Sep 12 | Islamic Studies Library, Octagon Room | Open to the public
Exploring South Asian Manuscripts and Rare Print Books by Professor Pasha Khan, McGill University
Persian and Turkish manuscripts traditions by Dr. Eliza Tasbihi, McGill University
Sep 13 | Tuesday Night Café (TNC) Morrice Hall Room 017 | Registration required
The Decorated Page: Illumination and Illustration in Islamic Manuscripts by András Riedlmayer, Harvard University
Sep 14 | Islamic Studies Library, Octagon Room | Open to the public
Describing and cataloguing Islamic manuscripts by Dr. Eliza Tasbihi, McGill University
Proving the Authenticity of a Handwriting, the Case of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī by Sajjad Nikfahm Khubravan, McGill University
For more information please visit the following Facebook pages:
Full week of events: https://www.facebook.com/events/422693788138176/
Professor Deroche’s lecture: https://www.facebook.com/events/2017694274947470/
Professor Riedlemayer’s lecture: https://www.facebook.com/events/254627501800987/
The Octagon Room is located at 3485 McTavish Street in the Islamic Studies Library
New Book edited by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Professor Anousha Sedighi of Portland State University on the publication of their new book The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics.
The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics, edited by Anousha Sedighi and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, offers a comprehensive overview of the field of Persian linguistics, discusses its development, and captures critical accounts of cutting edge research within its major subfields, as well as outlining current debates and suggesting productive lines of future research. Leading scholars in the major subfields of Persian linguistics examine a range of topics split into six thematic parts. Following a detailed introduction from the editors, the volume begins by placing Persian in its historical and typological context in Part I. Chapters in Part II examine topics relating to phonetics and phonology, while Part III looks at approaches to and features of Persian syntax. The fourth part of the volume explores morphology and lexicography, as well as the work of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature. Part V, language and people, covers topics such as language contact and teaching Persian as a foreign language, while the final part examines psycho- neuro-, and computational linguistics. The volume will be an essential resource for all scholars with an interest in Persian language and linguistics.
For more information and to purchase the book, please click here.
Congratulations to Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim on the publication of his new book Child Custody in Islamic Law - Theory and Practice in Egypt since the Sixteenth Century.
Pre-modern Muslim jurists drew a clear distinction between the nurturing and upkeep of children, or 'custody', and caring for the child's education, discipline, and property, known as 'guardianship'. Here, Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim analyzes how these two concepts relate to the welfare of the child, and traces the development of an Islamic child welfare jurisprudence akin to the Euro-American concept of the best interests of the child, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Challenging Euro-American exceptionalism, he argues that child welfare played an essential role in agreements designed by early modern Egyptian judges and families, and that Egyptian child custody laws underwent radical transformations in the modern period. Focusing on a variety of themes, including matters of age and gender, the mother's marital status, and the custodian's lifestyle and religious affiliation, Ibrahim shows that there is an exaggerated gap between the modern concept of the best interests of the child and pre-modern Egyptian approaches to child welfare.
For more information and to purchase the book, please click here.
Congratulations to Michelle Hartman
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Michelle Hartman on her translation of Radwa Ashour, The Journey.
The Journey narrates the years which Ashour spent in the US and captures so vividly the spirit and ethos of the time it chronicles—the early 1970s. Anti-colonial movements, a commitment to popular struggles and people’s liberation, as well as linking scholarship and work on the ground, are all alive and real in her memoir.
Radwa Ashour’s work—through the unique lens of this incisively observant visitor—reminds us of what the issues and debates in the US of this period were like and how deeply connected they are to struggles today such as Black Lives Mater and Ferguson-Palestine.
For more information and to purchase the book, please click here.
With Prof. Ulrich Rudolph of the University of Zurich, Prof. Robert Wisnovsky is co-organizing and co-hosting an international workshop on philosophy and translation in the Islamic world on June 21-22. See the flyer here for more information.
McGill Honours the Victims of the Massacre at the Centre culturel islamique de Québec
Pictured: (r-l) Pasha Khan, Michelle Hartman, Principal Suzanne Fortier, Imam Hassan Guillet
On Monday June 18, 2018 the Institute of Islamic Studies co-hosted a tree planting ceremony to commemorate the men murdered in the mosque in Quebec City on January 29, 2017 and honour their families. Faculty, staff and students of the IIS attended, as well as people from all around the university, to welcome the guests from the Quebec City community who joined us: Mr Larbi Yahia, Mr Hakim Chambaz, and Mr Amir and Ms Amanda Belkacemi. Provost Christopher Manfredi and Principal Suzanne Fortier spoke as did Professor Pasha Khan and Professor Michelle Hartman, the director of the IIS.
For more information, please see the McGill Reporter article.
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Ha Dong, BA and Takatomo Inoue, MA, two of our recent alumni; they received their degrees at the Spring 2018 convocation.
Appointment of New Director
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Michelle Hartman on her appointment as Director of the Institute for the period of June 1, 2018 to May 31, 2021.
Congratulations to Ms. Kathryn Kalemkerian
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Kathryn Kalemkerian on her successful PhD oral defense on May 25, 2018, entitled “Being an Otto-Man: Entangling Identities in Beirut and Beyond – 1860-1914”. Her academic Supervisor was Prof. Michelle Hartman.
Congratulations to Dr. Laila Parsons
The Institute of Islamic Studies warmly congratulates Dr. Laila Parsons on her promotion to Full Professor.
Congratulations to PhD student Hasan Umut
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates our PhD student Hasan Umut and his research team at the Canada Science and Technology Museum for being granted the Award of Outstanding Achievement in Research by the Canadian Museums Association.
For more details, please click here
Congratulations to Dr. Fadia Bahgat
The staff and students of the Institute warmly congratulate Dr. Fadia Bahgat (PhD 2017) on being awarded McGill’s 2018 Arts Insight Dissertation Award in the Humanities. Dr. Bahgat’s dissertation, entitled “Gender, labour, and the modern nation-state in Egypt: lower-class working women and the law from 1919-1952”, was supervised by Prof. Malek Abisaab.
Lecture in memory of Donald P. Little (1932-2017) on April 13, 2018
Fred Donner: New Directions in the Study of Islam's Origins
The Institute of Islamic Studies invites you to a lecture in memory of Professor Emeritus Donald P. Little (1932-2017)
Don Little taught for many years as Professor of Islamic History at McGill, and also served as Director of McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies.
New Directions in the Study of Islam's Origins
by Fred M. Donner
Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History
The Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, The University of Chicago
Abstract
A quick review of the traditional view of how Islam began; the wave of revisionist studies and their foundations in the sources; the emergence of several unresolved questions that constitute the focus of ongoing research at present; and new sources of evidence that have contributed to transforming our views on early Islam.
Friday April 13, 2018
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
16h00 – 17h00 reception to follow
New book edited by Professor Michelle Hartman
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Michelle Hartman on the publication of her new book Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation.
Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation
Edited by Michelle Hartman
Understanding the complexities of Arab politics, history, and culture has never been more important for North American readers. Yet even as Arabic literature is increasingly being translated into English, the modern Arabic literary tradition is still often treated as other—controversial, dangerous, difficult, esoteric, or exotic. This volume examines modern Arabic literature in context and introduces creative teaching methods that reveal the literature’s richness, relevance, and power to anglophone students.
Addressing the complications of translation head on, the volume interweaves such important issues such as gender, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the status of Arabic literature in world literature. Essays cover writers from the recent past, like Emile Habiby and Tayeb Salih; contemporary Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian literatures; and the literature of the nineteenth-century Nahda.
Not only is the Institute of Islamic Studies pleased to announce Professor Hartman's book but also congratulations are in order for her article Teaching Scandals: Gender and Translation in the Arabic Literature Classroom and Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab's article Arabic Poetics through a Canonical Translation: Teaching Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. List of contributors also include:
Allen Hibbard
Rebecca C. Johnson
Maya Kesrouany
Anne-Marie McManus
Philip Metres
Mara Naaman
M. Lynx Qualey
Ken Seigneurie
Caroline Seymour-Jorn
Stephen Sheehi
Heartfelt dedications to Islamic Studies PhD students Katy Kalemkerian, Shirin Radjavi and Islamic Studies alumni, Dima Ayoub.
For more information and to purchase the book, please click here.
Congratulations to Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Professor Emeritus Patricia J. Higgins on their translation of The Thousand Families coming out early April 2018.
The Thousand Families by Ali Shabani, former court journalist and writer under Mohammad Reza Shah, is a lively and entertaining anecdotal history of the Qajar family, who ruled Iran from 1796 to 1925, as well as a number of their associates. Using memoirs, diaries, government documents, and nineteenth century histories, the author paints a vivid picture of the strengths and weaknesses, character and habits, and family backgrounds and familial legacies of the leading figures of the day.
For more information and to purchase the book, please click here.
PAST EVENTS
Lecture: The poetry of anomie: Reading Forugh Farrukhzad and Qaysar Amin’pur’s world-vision
A lecture in Persian by Farshid Sadatsharifi
This talk employs the methodology and concepts of sociology and existentialism to propose a novel approach to the study of contemporary Persian poetry. It explores the formation and transformations of “individualism” and its relation to the experience of loneliness by taking into account how world-visions changed in Iran in the wake of the constitutional period at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Through an interdisciplinary analysis of pre-modern world-visions and codes of existential introspection, I argue for the importance of considering the notion of anomie to have a deeper insight into contemporary Persian poetry. Such endogenous patterns of modernity, along with their shifting psycho-socio-political balances, can be contrasted with the model of the European anomic experiences that Durkheim analyzed in his study Suicide.
Farshid Sadatsharifi received his Ph.D. in the field of Persian Language and Literature from Shiraz University. He worked on the existential dimensions of contemporary Persian poetry in his Ph.D. dissertation. He has taught in eight universities and higher education institutions at his home city Shiraz and altogether, he had spent ten years celebrating literary theories, the meaning of life, existentialism, and other subjects related to studying and teaching Persian Language and Literature in a multidisciplinary and applied approach. All of these attempts were in tandem with studying medieval part of Persian Language and literature as the nature of official programs/credits in departments of Persian Language and literature in Iran.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Morrice Hall - Room 328
3485 McTavish Street
18h00
Congratulations to Professors Michelle Hartman and Setrag Manoukian
Manifestos for World Thought
Edited by Lucian Stone and Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professors Michelle Hartman and Setrag Manoukian for essays published in Manifestos for World Thought. This book brings together prominent scholars from varying disciplines to speculate on this obscure question and the many crossroads that face intellectuals in our contemporary era and its aftermath. The result is a collection of “manifestos” that contemplate a potential global future for thinking itself, venturing across some of the most marginalized sectors of East and West (with particular emphasis on the Middle Eastern and Islamicate) in order to dissect crucial issues of culture, society, philosophy, literature, art, religion, and politics. The book explores themes such as as universality, translation, modernity, language, history, identity, resistance, ecology, catastrophe, memory, and the body, offering a groundbreaking alignment of texts and ideas with far-reaching implications for our time and beyond.
For more information click here.
Lecture: The Historical Record of the Civil War in Lebanon: The Perspective of Marie Kosseifi
Students, colleagues, and members of the Montreal community were delighted to attend Dr. Omar Nashabe's lecture: The Historical Record of the Civil War in Lebanon: The Perspective of Marie Kosseifi on Thursday March 1, 2018. This event was sponsored by the Women's War Stories Project, Institute of Islamic Studies as well as the Canadian Druze Society in Quebec and Le Centre Culturel Libanais.
Lecture: Writing the Anthology and the Search for Canadian-Arab Poets and Literary Figures
A Lecture in Arabic by Latifa Halim
Professor Halim from University of Muhammad al-Kharnis Rihat, Morocco will discuss her Anthology on Canadian Arab Poets
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Morrice Hall - Room 328
3485 McTavish Street
18h00
Lecture:Fathieh Saudi: A Journey to Finding Her Voice
A lecture by Alia’ Afif Kawalit
London is a city known as a cold alienating place. John Clement Ball writes in his book Imagining London (2004) that “many who travel to London perceive it as a place for struggle against overwhelming obstacles: marginalization, segregation, and solitude; an alien climate and built environment, racism, poverty and cultural conflict” (Ball 6). However, this does not define London for the poet I will be discussing. For the Jordanian poet Fathieh Saudi who moved to England in 2001, the multi-faceted character of London mirrors life in its diverse meaning. It is also a place to rise above the limits previous places and experiences instilled in her. In my talk, I will be looking at Saudi’s literary experience in England and how writing in a second language, i.e. English, provided her with a better understanding of herself and her surroundings.
Alia’ Afif Kawalit completed her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Kent where she also taught poetry and languages. She has her work published in different anthologies such as Beached Here At Random By Mysterious Forces, 2015. Currently, she is teaching at the University of Ottawa. Also, she is a co-editor in the multi-lingual magazine Mïtra.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Morrice Hall - Room 328
3485 McTavish Street
16h30
Film Screening: ENGLAND TIMES PALESTINE
by Director Caroline Rooney
England Times Palestine is a film that engages with Palestinian exiles living in England. Completed in 2017, the film marks the centenary of the 1917 UK Balfour Declaration, which granted permission for ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’, as led to the creation of the state of Israel and the consequent displacement of millions of Palestinians.
Camera: Ximena Alvarez Maschio, Bahriye Kemal and William Parry
Musical Director: Yara Salahiddeen
Associate Producer: Loubna Turjuman
Director: Caroline Rooney
Executive Producer: Global Uncertainties (RCUK)
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Arts - W215
853 Sherbrooke Street West
18h00
Lecture: Embodiment and the Representation of Time in Islamic Materials
A lecture by Shahzad Bashir
In narratives that report about past events, the human body is a crucial locus for thematizing time. This can occur through treating human life, bookended by the birth and death of the body, as a unit for constructing sequences of time such as genealogies. Similarly, reports on the past that invoke emotive aspects of human experience, such as pain and pleasure, contain appeals to presumed common understandings of bodily reactions and sensations to create discursive meaning. This talk will thematize such deployments of the body in Islamic materials for the purposes of understanding the conjunction between corporeality and temporality.
Shahzad Bashir is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities at Brown University. He specializes in Islamic Studies with interest in the intellectual and social histories of the societies of Iran and Central and South Asia circa fourteenth century CE to the present.
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Morrice Hall - Room 328
3485 McTavish Street
16h30
Laila Parsons wins 2017 Palestine Book Award
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Laila Parsons, whose book The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Liberation, 1914-1948, has won the 2017 Palestine Book Award (Academic category).
For more information on the award, please go to: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171127-palestine-book-awards-2017-celebrates-another-year-of-literary-excellence/
Lecture: Rabindranath Tagore in Iran and Iraq (1932):‘Dialogue among (Asian) Cultures’ on Modernity, Nationalism, Religion, and Tolerance
A lecture by Nahid Mozaffari
Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian poet and philosopher embarked on a trip to Iran and Iraq in April 1932 as a guest of the Iranian and Iraqi states. The Pahlavi regime in Iran attempted to use this trip to strengthen its new discourse of nationalism through situating Iran in the realm of an Indo-Iranian civilization rather than an Islamicate one. However, Tagore met with many members of the educated elite who were dissatisfied with the dominant political narratives. What were the exchanges between Tagore and his Iranian interlocutors regarding the meaning(s) of modernity, and nationalism and the role of religion and tolerance in the construction of new Asian (national) identities? What do these discussions tell us about the emerging discourses in early 20th century Asia regarding visions of modernities which sought to limit or remove colonial manipulations and hegemony?
Nahid Mozaffari is currently a Senior Research Fellow (Kolleg-Forschergruppe “Multiple Secularities”) at the Humanities Center for Advanced Studies at Leipzig University. She has taught at the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, New York University Paris, and at the New School for Social Research. She received her PhD in history and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Morrice Hall - Room 328
3485 McTavish Street
16h30
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Laila Parsons
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Laila Parsons, whose book The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Liberation, 1914-1948, has been shortlisted for the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, sponsored by the Quebec Writers Federation.
For more information, please go to http://www.qwf.org/images/awards/19th-annual-qwf-awards-gala-2017_hi-res.jpg
McGill Medievalists and the Institute of Islamic Studies present:
Lecture: Arabic Praises for the Norman Kings: Between Chaos and Seduction
On Wednesday 1 November at 5:30 p.m. in Arts 160, McGill Medievalists and the Institute of Islamic Studies will host a guest lecture by Prof. William Granara of the Dept. of Near eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, entitled “Arabic Praises for the Norman Kings: Between Chaos and Seduction”. All are invited to attend, and as is the “custom of the castle”, refreshments will follow!
Lecture: Embodied Forbearance: Mercy and Mediation in Iranian Criminal Law
A lecture by Arzoo Osanloo
Iran's criminal justice system affords families of victims a right of retribution, but the laws also encourage them to forgo that right and to reconcile with perpetrators. However, the state does not provide guidance on how parties should arrive at reconciliation. Focusing on murder cases, this talk will explore the work of mediators, individuals and groups, that work towards cultivating “a feeling of forgiveness” in victims’ families by touching upon the aesthetic and emotional sources of their faith.
Arzoo Osanloo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law, Societies, and Justice and the Director of the University of Washington's Middle East Center
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
16h30
Laila Parsons winner of the Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Prof. Laila Parsons, who is this year’s winner of the Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Associate Professor category). The prize will be formally presented at the Fall Convocation on 31 October in Place des Arts. Laila was also the 2014 winner of the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Teaching in the Faculty of Arts.
Laila Parsons: The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Liberation, 1914-1948
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Laila Parsons whose book The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Liberation, 1914-1948, has been shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award.
For more information, please go to https://www.palestinebookawards.com/news/item/palestine-book-awards-2017-shortlist-announced
F. Jamil Ragep's: Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professors F. Jamil Ragep and Rivka Feldhay on their publication of Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017.
In this edited volume comprising an introductory essay and 8 papers, contributors explore the multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual context of learning on the eve of the Copernican revolution, shedding light on the relationship between Copernicus and his predecessors. Highlighting the often-neglected intercultural exchange between Islam and early modern Europe, Before Copernicus reimagines the scientific revolution in a global context.
For more information, please go to https://www.rasi.mcgill.ca/Before_Copernicus.pdf
Celebration in honour of Emeritus Professor Issa Boullata
A beautiful reception was held on April 11, 2017 with guest of honour Issa Boullata and guest lecturer Roger Allen. Please enjoy some photos of the event with Professors Michelle Hartman, Jamil Ragep and Institute of Islamic Studies Alumna student Nadia Wardeh who was the last student of Prof. Boullata.
Pasha Khan winner of AUS Teaching Award 2017
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Prof. Pasha M. Khan for winning the AUS (Arts Undergraduate Society of McGill) Teaching Award for 2017. Prof. Khan is an Assistant Professor and Chair in Urdu Language and Culture. He thanks the AUS and his students for this humbling recognition.
The Institute of Islamic Studies warmly congratulates Dr. Michelle Hartman on her promotion to Full Professor
The Happy Traitor: Tales of Translation
Please join us in celebrating the career of Professor Emeritus Issa Boullata with guest lecturer Roger M.A. Allen.
Roger M.A. Allen Sascha Jane Patterson Harvie Professor Emeritus of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics, School of Arts & Sciences;
Professor Emeritus of Arabic & Comparative Literature. University of Pennsylvania.
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Lecture followed by reception on:
Tuesday April 11, 2017
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
15h00
Lecture: The Possible State: Charisma and Civility Within Islamicate Proto-Modernity
lecture by: Armando Salvatore
This talk employs methodologies of historical sociology, while it also aims to critique and reconstruct categories of Western social theory. It explores developments spanning the Later Middle Periods and early modernity, particularly through the formation and transformations of Timurid and Ottoman rule and court cultures. In the process, combinations of saintly charisma and codes of civility were appropriated by religious scholars and state administrators for supporting the political legitimacy of ever more centralizing states. Such endogenous patterns of precolonial modernity, along with their shifting religio-political balances, can be contrasted with the model of the European Leviathan.
Armando Salvatore is a sociologist who has taught and held professorial positions at Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Naples “L’Orientale,” McGill University, and Australian National University. He is the author of The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016) and the chief editor of The Wiley-Blackwell History of Islam (forthcoming). He is presently working on a manuscript tentatively titled The Impossible Leviathan, the Possible State: Narrativity, Normativity and Sovereignty Within Islamicate Modernity.
Wednesday April 12, 2017
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
16h30
Fadia Bahgat's PhD Oral Defense (March 2017)
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Fadia Bahgat on her successful PhD oral defense on March 28, 2017, entitled Gender, labour, and the modem nation-state in Egypt: lower-class working women and the law from 1919-1952.
Screening of Shahrzaad's Tale (March 2017)
Followed by discussion with film-maker Shahin Parhami,
In conversation with Diana Allan (McGill, Anthropology), Farbod Honarpisheh (Columbia U. Film Studies) and Setrag Manoukian (McGill, Islamic Studies and Anthropology)
Shahrzaad’s Tale is a story of a lost era and a forgotten star of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, a tale of a working class woman who against all the odds struggled and succeeded to become an icon in the mainstream popular culture of the 1960s-70s Iran. Trailer https://vimeo.com/147125019
Shahin Parhami
Born in Shiraz, Iran, accomplished author Shahin Parhami has directed award-winning short and feature films which have been screened in major international festivals and won numerous awards. Besides the trilogy: Nasoot (1997), Lahoot (1998), and Jabaroot (2003), his 2007 film Faces, an experimental documentary premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival and won the best feature film award at the flEXiff 2007 (Sydney, Australia). The creative documentary, Amin, won awards at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival(Japan), Taiwan International Documentary Festival and Dubai International Film Festival and was also nominated for best feature documentary at Asian Pacific Screen Awards 2011. His latest film Shahrzaad’s Tale, premiered at Montreal’s World Film Festival in 2016, and was officially selected at Busan, Freiburg, Jihlava, and Eurasia Film Festivals and for the Asian Pacific Screen Awards in 2016.
Tuesday March 28, 2017
Arts Building W-215
16h00- 19h30
Screening of Tell Your Tale, Little Bird (March 2017)
Film screening and discussion with filmmaker Arab Lutfy.
Seven women who took part in the military fight of the Palestine people back in the sixties and seventies. Through their tales, we understand what made these women the symbols of their people’s fight.
Wednesday March 22, 2017
Otto Maass 10
801 Sherbrooke Street West
18h00
Screening of IN THIS LAND LAY GRAVES OF MINE (March 2017)
Film screening and discussion with filmmaker Reine Mitri
Reine Mitri (born Lebanon) worked as a cine-club programmer and the organizer of the Docudays film festival in Beirut for over five years. Since 2001, she has written and directed five films, including VULNERABLE (2009), which was broadcast in the "Lucarne" slot on ARTE. She has also worked as projects coordinator at the Fondation Liban Cinéma.
THURSDAY March 16, 2017
LEACOCK BUILDING – Room 219
855 Sherbrooke Street
18h00
Dr. Sally P. Ragep's Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ: An Islamic Introduction to Ptolemaic Astronomy
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 2016).
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Sally P. Ragep on the publication of her book Jaghmīnī’s Mulakhkhaṣ: An Islamic Introduction to Ptolemaic Astronomy (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2016).
This book provides the only critical edition and English translation of Maḥmūd al-Jaghmīnī’s al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʾa al-basīṭa, the most widely circulated Arabic treatise on Ptolemaic astronomy ever written. Composed in the early 13th century, this introductory textbook played a crucial role in the teaching, dissemination, and institutional instruction of Islamic astronomy well into the 19th century (and beyond). Establishing the base text is a fundamental prerequisite for gaining insights into what was considered an elementary astronomical textbook in Islam and also for understanding the extensive commentary tradition that built upon it.
Within this volume, the Mulakhkhaṣ is situated within the broader context of the genre of literature termed ʿilm al-hayʾa, which has become the subject of intensive research over the past 25 years. In so doing, it provides a survey of summary accounts of theoretical astronomy of Jaghmīnī’s predecessors, both Ancient and Islamic, which could have served as potential sources for the Mulakhkhaṣ. Jaghmīnī’s dates (which until now remained unsettled) are established, and it is definitively shown that he composed not only the Mulakhkhaṣ but also other scientific treatises, including the popular medical treatise al-Qānūnča, during a period that has been deemed one of scientific decline and stagnation in Islamic lands. The book will be of particular interest to scholars engaged in the study of Islamic theoretical astronomy, but is accessible to a general readership interested in learning what constituted an introduction to Ptolemaic astronomy in Islamic lands.
For more information, it can be accessed at SpringerLink or Springer.com
Lecture: The Worldview of the Astrologer Abu Ma‘shar of Balkh (Albumasar) (March 2017)
lecture by Charles Burnett, Warburg Institute, University of London
Abu Ma‘shar Ja‘far ibn Muhammad al-Balkhi (787-886 AD), known as Albumasar in the West, was the eminent Arabic astrologer of the Middle Ages. Throughout his Great Introduction to Astrology, which was translated twice into Latin in the twelfth century, is an integrated worldview, embracing not only prognostication, but also cosmology, astronomy, physics, geography, medicine and ethics. This lecture addresses Abu Ma‘shar’s ideas of the position of man within his world and how they were subtly changed in the process of transmission from Arabic into Latin.
Charles Burnett, MA, PhD, LGSM is Professor of the History of Arabic/Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and Co-Director of the Centre for the History of Arabic Studies in Europe.
Tuesday March 7, 2017
Morrice Hall – Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
17h00
Professor Michelle Hartman's translation: The Ninety-Ninth floor
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Michelle Hartman on the publication of her translation: The Ninety-Ninth Floor.
At times as cold and hard-edged as the skyscrapers in its backdrop, The Ninety-Ninth Floor follows the struggles and triumphs of Majed as he manages to make it in Manhattan at the turn of the century, after surviving the devastating 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp. A Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, Majed has never seen Palestine but is told by his father that his mother and never-born baby, both slaughtered in the massacre, are waiting for him there. Injured and scarred by the war, he makes a new life for himself in the glittery world of New York City’s computer games industry. He never feels more satisfied with himself than when he is staring out of the window of his sleek, modern office on the ninety-ninth floor
For more information and to purchase the book, please click here
The Institute of Islamic Studies co-sponsors McGill African Students’ Society: Africa in the 4th Dimension :
Professor Khalid Medani along with the McGill African Students' Society members (left to right) Selome Gizaw,Michelle Rugamba, Trixie Birikundavyi, Shona Musimbe and Keynote speaker, Nnedi Okorafor.
The Institute of Islamic Studies hosts a Conversation about Islamophobia and Racism, in the aftermath of the murders in the mosque in Quebec City (February 2017):
Lecture:"Between Literature and History: Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age" (January 2017)
A lecture by Jens Hanssen, Associate Professor of Arab Civilization, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean History at the University of Toronto.
The Nahda has served as the bedrock of discourses of Arab modernity ever since it first acquired programmatic status in the 1890s. If the study of this 19th- and early 20th century reform-and-revival movement has traditionally been the domain of historians in search for the roots of Arab nationalism, recently new literary approaches have widened the scope of inquiry and challenged the way the Nahda has been celebrated and criticized in the Arab world and beyond. Drawing on Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss’s recently published book Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge University Press, 2016), this talk will explore the temporal structures of the movement, its many beginnings, ends and ruptures.
Jens Hanssen is Associate Professor of Arab Civilization, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean History at the University of Toronto. His past book publications include Fin de Siècle Beirut (2005) and a co-edited volume on Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire (2002).