Please be advised that the IQSA Executive Office will be closed in observance of the winter holidays from Thursday, December 23rd to Sunday, January 2nd. Email correspondence at contactus@iqsaweb.org and other services will resume Monday, January 3rd.
On behalf of the IQSA staff, we hope all our members and friends have a safe and pleasant holiday break!
A friendly reminder that in honor of Andrew Rippin, the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) will award a prize to the best paper delivered at the 2021 hybrid Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX by a graduate student or early career scholar (Ph.D. awarded 2016 or later).
The prize winner will receive $250. In addition, the award committee will provide him/her with detailed feedback and guidance enabling him/her to expand the paper into a scholarly article that qualifies for publication in the Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (JIQSA), subject to peer review.
Interested scholars should submit a draft of the paper which they read at the most current Annual Meeting; this draft should be no longer than fifteen double-spaced pages (or 3750 words). Submissions should be sent to contactus@iqsaweb.org by January 5, 2022. The prize winner will be announced by February 1, 2022. The winner should then be prepared to submit a fully revised version of the winning article by April 1, 2022. Publication of the final version is contingent upon review by the award committee and editorial staff of JIQSA.
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2021. All rights reserved.
Despite continued challenges posed by by the global pandemic, it’s been a fruitful year for the International Qur’anic Studies Association. IQSA held its fourth biennial conference from July 4-11, 2021, hosted by the “Giorgio La Pira” Library (Palermo, Italy) for the first time in a completely virtual format. In addition, IQSA saw another first in its 2021 Hybrid Annual Meeting held in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion, bringing together both physical participants in San Antonio, Texas and colleagues signing on virtually for panels, paper presentations, business meetings, and more.
IQSA continued to build upon its publishing portfolio this year, releasing the fifth volume of the Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (Lockwood Press, 2020) edited by Nicolai Sinai (Oxford University). Publishing activity also includes the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), the world’s only exclusive review source on critical Qur’anic Studies. Finally, our multilingual blog and discussion group links a community of scholars and students across the globe.
In addition, IQSA welcomed a new Executive Director, Hythem Sidky, following in the steps of former director Emran El-Badawi. With a new Executive Director comes a new vision for expanded membership and outreach for the organization, including an improved and updated website, membership database, and meeting hosting platforms.
IQSA membership for 2021 is still open! Choose from any of the six categories to best fit your level:
(1) Student, Contingent Faculty, Global South or Income Below $30,000 $35
(2) Assistant Professor, Junior or Retired Faculty $75
(3) Associate Professor or Midrange Faculty $100
(4) Full Professor, Senior Faculty or Professional Income $100,000+ $125
(5) Lifetime Member $2,000 (one time installment)
(6) Institutional Membership $400
Exceptions: Scholars from the global south and lower income countries unable to pay membership dues for that year have the option of contacting the executive director for a courtesy waiver.
We appreciate your membership!
U.S. taxpayers! Are you still looking to make an end-of-year tax deductible charitable donation? Consider supporting Qur’anic scholarship with a donation to IQSA. We are a registered 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions. You can donate to IQSA online by clicking HERE.
You have all made IQSA what it is today—a community of scholars and friends. Please help our community during its time of need. If each of you makes a humble donation it will go a long way to supporting our publishing and programming activity for the coming year(s).
Finally, please do not forget to follow our Blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts, and to join the NEW private IQSA Discussion Group. Thanks for your support!
We wish you a very Happy Holidays! كل عام وأنتم بخير
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2021. All rights reserved.
In honor of Andrew Rippin, the International Qur’anic Studies Association (IQSA) will award a prize to the best paper delivered at the 2021 hybrid Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX by a graduate student or early career scholar (Ph.D. awarded 2016 or later).
The prize winner will receive $250. In addition, the award committee will provide him/her with detailed feedback and guidance enabling him/her to expand the paper into a scholarly article that qualifies for publication in the Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (JIQSA), subject to peer review.
Interested scholars should submit a draft of the paper which they read at the most current Annual Meeting; this draft should be no longer than fifteen double-spaced pages (or 3750 words). Submissions should be sent to contactus@iqsaweb.org by January 5, 2022. The prize winner will be announced by February 1, 2022. The winner should then be prepared to submit a fully revised version of the winning article by April 1, 2022. Publication of the final version is contingent upon review by the award committee and editorial staff of JIQSA.
Questions? Email contactus@iqsaweb.org. We look forward to receiving your submissions!
© International Qur’anic Studies Association, 2021. All rights reserved.
The ERC European Research Project ‘The European Qur’an‘ will organize a Summer School on the theme “The Qur’an in inter-Christian polemic” which will take place in Nantes, France from June 13-17, 2022. There is still time to apply to participate! Submit proposals for a 20-minute paper by December 15, 2021.
Theme:
How have Christian authors in Europe used and appropriated the Qur’an? We are interested in how the Qur’an was used as a historical and linguistic archive, as a mine of heretical ideas and as a tool used in confessional rivalries. Our focus will not be restricted to the main confessional camps, Roman Catholic and Protestant, but will also include the many ways in which groups of the so called radical Reformation (Socianians and other anti-Trinitarian movements), different groups inside the Roman Catholic world, as well as Deist, Muslim and Jewish authors in Europe, used the Qur’an in their polemical writings. We will also study how translations of the Qur’an were deployed as argumentative weapons for preaching the superiority of Christianity to Mudejars and Moriscos in Spain. Additionally, the question of nationalist motivations in the collecting and translating of the Qur’an will also be taken into consideration: beginning in the late 17th century, various European countries vied with one another to produce the best translation of the Qur’an made directly from the Arabic. We will further investigate if and how polemical and historical uses of the Qur’an changed in the late 17th and 18th century and early 19th century. The Qur’an continues to play an important role in polemical writings, in political as well as religious domains.
Format:
A series of roundtables with presentations of research by PhD students and postdocs. Each roundtable will be hosted by two colleagues.
Presentations may be made in English or in French.
Eligibility:
The summer school is open to doctoral students enrolled in any country, in any discipline, as long as their dissertation subject and the proposed talk are related to the theme of the summer school.
Costs:
The summer school will be financed by EuQu and the University of Nantes and will be free of cost to the students accepted. Participants will be lodged in student housing at no cost. Lunch will be provided free to participants. Travel to Nantes will not be paid by EuQu, and participants should seek funding from their home institutions.
Format:
The summer school will take place 13-17 June 2022. Doctoral students will each make a 20-minute presentation; faculty from EuQu and other partner institutions will chair the panels and give their reactions to student presentations. While it is preferable to attend the full summer school in Nantes, in some cases online presentations will be accepted.
Covid protocol during the event :
Due to sanitary protocols and restrictions, you may need to show a “green pass”: a proof of vaccination or negative PCR test before entering the premises.
Submission guidelines:
Proposals for a 20-minute paper may be submitted, by December 15, 2021, to euqu@univ-nantes.fr. Proposals may be in English or in French and should consist of a .doc file containing:
Approval and confirmation:
The program committee will confirm receipt of each proposition and will respond by 31 January 2022. A draft of the paper should be sent by 15 May 2022 to permit pre-circulation among the participants.
Program committee :
Content courtesy of Amanda Rio de Pedro (IAS-Nantes)
An event of the long-term project “Corpus Coranicum“ member of the Research Centre for Primary Sources of the Ancient World at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW).
The writings of Jacob of Serugh (d. 520/1) have been highlighted as one of the most significant corpora for understanding the late antique literary environment in which the Qur’ān emerged. His homilies and letters contain many exegetical and theological traditions common to the Qur’ān and the Syriac tradition. How are we to understand echoes of Jacob’s thought in the Qur’ān? Who had access to these texts and the traditions they transmit? This lecture seeks to shed light on this complex of questions by examining the circulation of Jacob’s writings in the sixth and seventh centuries. We will first investigate Jacob’s correspondence with communities within and beyond the Roman Empire during his lifetime. We will then turn to the physical manuscripts that preserve his writings from late antiquity. This approach will help identify the late antique communities that discussed these shared traditions and thereby grant insight into the question of what it means to investigate Jacob’s works as texts from the environment of the Qur’ān.
Philip Michael Forness is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. He received his Ph.D. in the History of Christianity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2016 and has published widely on the traditions of eastern Christianity. He is the author of „Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East“ (Oxford, 2018) and the co-editor of „The Good Christian Ruler in the First Millennium“ (Berlin, 2021).
A lecture in the series “Languages and Cultures in the Near East and the Silk Road in Late Antiquity“ (organized by the long-term projects „Turfanforschung“ and “Corpus Coranicum“).
PROGRAM
Welcoming Address
Introduction
Lecture
* Important information about the event * Registration is required by December 2, 2021 using this form. Notes for on-site participation: The 2G rule applies to this event. Admission begins half an hour before the event, please come early. Due to the hygiene rules to contain the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, there may be waiting times at the entrance. The following evidence is required to participate (evidence of a complete COVID-19 vaccination and / or your recovery must be digitally verifiable (QR code)): Proof of a complete COVID-19 vaccination (the last vaccination must be at least 14 days ago) or Proof of your recovery (the positive PCR test result is at least 28 days, but no more than six months ago or in the case of a longer past infection in connection with at least one vaccination against Covid-19)and identity card or passport. Please have the relevant notices ready at the entrance and observe additional safety and hygiene information on site. Notes for digital participation: The event will be broadcast via zoom. You will receive a corresponding access link on the day of the event itself. By participating, you agree to Zoom's privacy policy. If you have problems registering or you do not receive a registration confirmation email, please contact us via email.