Reminder: Final Deadline for Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize

Posted on January 24, 2022 by iqsaweb

A friendly reminder that the deadline for Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize submissions has been extended to Monday, January 31, 2022, meaning you still have one week left before the call closes!

Submissions should be sent to contactus@iqsaweb.org by January 31, 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.

Deadline Extended: Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize 2021-22

Posted on January 11, 2022 by iqsaweb

Miss the cutoff for Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize submissions? Now worries! The deadline has now been extended to Monday, January 31, 2022. 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 31, 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, 2022. All rights reserved.

Reminder: Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize 2021-22

Posted on December 22, 2021 by iqsaweb

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.

Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize 2021-22

Posted on December 6, 2021 by iqsaweb

Andrew Rippin was the inaugural president of the International Qur’anic Studies Association (2014). He is remembered as “an esteemed colleague, revered mentor, and scholarly inspiration to many members of the IQSA community.”

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.

Summer School “The Qur’an in inter-Christian polemic” June 2022

Posted on December 6, 2021 by iqsaweb

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:

full name and affiliation of the doctoral student, along with the name(s) of their dissertation director(s)
title for the proposed communication
an abstract (200-500 words) of the communication
a list of 5-10 keywords
A CV

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 :

Maurizio Busca
Florence Ninitte
Irene Reginato
Emmanuelle Stefanidis
John Tolan

Read the Call (PDF)

Content courtesy of Amanda Rio de Pedro (IAS-Nantes)

Call for Papers: International Congress for Medieval Studies

Posted on August 30, 2021 by iqsaweb

The Great Lakes Adiban Society (GLAS) is the sponsor of two events at the upcoming International Congress for Medieval Studies, to convene on May 9–14, 2022. This event includes two panels relating to medieval Islam:

Sociability between Justice and Tyranny
Medieval Islamicate Paratexts in Contexts

To submit a paper to either of these events, go to https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi, select the respective title for which you would like to apply under the dropdown menu “Session Selection,” or follow the hyperlinks noted below.

The due-date for all submissions is September 15, 2021. We will inform you of our decision within a week, and per ICMS guidelines, any papers not accepted will be passed on to the Medieval Institute to be considered for inclusion in the General Sessions.

For any questions, please contact Nathan Tabor, nathan.tabor@wmich.edu.

Please read below for the full descriptions of these panels; for more information about our group, and to join our mailing list, visit greatlakesadiban.github.io.

Panel 1. Sociability between Justice and Tyranny

This panel explores the question of how Islamicate texts from a wide variety of traditions ambivalently consider the role of sociability within pre-modern settings, whether lauded as ethical conduct or condemned as unjust tyranny. Muslim majority and Muslim-ruled societies dwelling in lands between the western reaches of the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern Indian Ocean shared notions of association and political order informed by connected multi-lingual literatures and widely accepted notions of proper comportment. Among these varied settings, friendship could be a deeply existential and often a political endeavor, and noble enmities were often grounded in conversation and intellectual exchange. So too, pre-modern Islamicate texts occasionally valorized characters, settings, and scenarios that unseated the social order, as tricksters (ʿayyarun) and conspirators (khuwwan) interrupted friendships or overturned proper governance.

This tension between maintaining social order and overturning it can be witnessed in Islamicate literary manuals, works on ethical guidance, and didactic stories that portray sociability as accommodating both conviviality and competition; while treatises on political instruction and governance dwell on the just and companionable charisma of absolutist rulers. In the marketplace, Sufi brotherhoods and professional guilds cultivated values that appeared to overturn accepted norms on sociability and centralized rule, witnessed among the ideas of qalandar, khaksar, and luti orders; on the political front, accusations of conspiracy or heretical practices served to legitimate conquests that often began under similarly questionable circumstances; and within the private realm family relationships were often fraught to the point that go-betweens and servants became singular trustworthy intimates. Potential questions that could be addressed within this panel include:

How does a military leader comport with a victorious or defeated adversary?
What is the proper way to rejoin a party after being sick from imbibing too much alcohol?
What are the rules of conduct in literary, physical, and martial competitions?
What are the gracious ways to defer confrontation with kings and other social superiors?
What are the rules of ethical seduction?
How do certain texts obfuscate their counter arguments against social cohesion?
What are the ways in which mirrors for princes perhaps distract rulers from tyranny?

We hope that by considering a wide variety of texts from across Islamicate traditions this panel can illuminate subtle ambivalences toward sociability and despotism to better understand the competitive nature of friendship and the seductive pull of absolutist rule. Click here to apply.

Panel 2. Medieval Islamicate Paratexts in Contexts

In recent years, the study of paratexts in modern and premodern contexts has received increased critical attention, with scholars examining how features of a book or manuscript outside of its primary textual content contribute to the work’s overall meaning, reception, and interpretation. Oftentimes, modern editions of premodern works obscure or entirely erase such features, significantly altering the reading or perusing experience. In an effort to heighten sensitivities to the dynamics of such phenomena, this panel will explore the nature of the paratext in the lettered traditions of the medieval Islamicate world and ask how developments in textual technology (manuscript, lithograph, print, digital) as well as practices of reading and editing have changed how such works are understood and valorized.

As the existence of detailed style guides for premodern Muslim scribes and secretaries demonstrates, how one decided to present a text on the page and in a book was not just an aesthetic choice, but one of profound social importance. The medieval Islamicate paratext was therefore often subject to careful consideration and possessed of a certain shared semiotics. In the context of premodern Islamicate manuscript culture, aspects of the paratext may be thought to include (though are not limited to): prefaces and prologues, marginalia, illustrations, illuminations, calligraphic choices, colophons, doodles, page layout, and binding. In order to understand the complicated ways in which these elements imbued meaning, the panel might consider the following questions:

What role have paratexts played in a work’s reception and canonicity?
How stable are paratexts across different manuscript editions?
How did paratexts work in different textual genres (literary works, history, biography, law etc.)?
What do paratexts communicate about genre, authority, and textual community?
What, if anything, distinguishes the paratext from the text in the medieval Islamicate context?
How does paratextuality complicate understandings of Islamicate authorship?
How have new textual technologies shifted the borders between text and paratext, and what are the implications of these shifts?
What possibilities and problems does the digitization of manuscripts present for retrieving the premodern paratext?
What do secretarial style guides (inshaʾ treatises) reveal about premodern attitudes to the paratext?
How does paratextuality in the Islamicate world contribute to or complicate Eurocentric theories of the paratext and the history of the book?

In exploring these and related questions, we hope to illuminate historically contingent and yet expansive ways of reading and interpreting Islamicate written works, stimulate comparative discussion between scholars of diverse lettered traditions, and highlight especially problematic examples and trends of what we might call paratextual erasure. Click here to apply.

Call for Papers: Esotericism and the Qur’an

Posted on May 24, 2021 by iqsaweb

Esotericism and the Qur’an / L’ésoterisme et le Coran
Unversity of Lausanne & University of Geneva
Lausanne, May 5–7, 2022

Background and Objectives

The Qur’an proclaims itself a message to all humankind (e.g. Q 14:52, This is a proclamation for all mankind . . .). This does not mean, however, that the verses of the Revelation are easy to grasp and comprehend. The Islamic scholarly tradition developed its science of interpretation or commentary on the text, one which emphasizes two areas in particular: (i) language and (ii) the context of the Prophet’s life in which the various verses were revealed. Early commentators sometimes noted that certain aspects were better understood by Arabic-speakers, or that the Companions of the Prophet possessed a superior understand of the message because they were present at its revelation, but by and large the science of interpretation is open to anyone with the necessary intellectual capacity.

There came to be, however, separate from this scholastic science of interpretation, certain communities which associated true understanding of the Qur’an with particular individuals and with certain methods that are not available to all. Esoteric interpretation of the Muslim scripture is best known in various Sufi and Shiite traditions. In these traditions, the ever-present concept of taʾwīl (in the sense of a hermeneutics aimed at a hidden meaning) and the ẓāhir/bāṭin (exterior/interior sense) dichotomy both imply, inescapably, that the Qur’an remains, in a sense, incomplete without the wisdom and experience of certain privileged interpreters.

Methods and doctrines vary considerably among the learned Shiites and the Sufi masters on how to reach or grasp the bāṭin, the hidden inner meaning. There are numerous variations of the Sufi tendency to the immanence of personal meditation, and the Shi’i teaching of the living Imam expressing the hidden sense’s transcendence to a handful of initiates. Certain communities, such as the Ḥurūfīs or the Bektashīs, fruitfully combined these Shi’i and Sufi practices. Early Shiism established a doctrine that was both dual and dualist, according to which the external, apparent form (al-ẓāhir) of the revelation contains a hidden aspect (al-bāṭin), destined only for a handful of the initiated who are able to embrace and protect it. In its dualist conception, this doctrine can go so far as to create an opposition between the people of knowledge and those of ignorance, even assigning to certain historical figures the role of adversary (ḍidd), actively working against the precepts of the community.

The majority of scholarship has tended to treat such groups and tendencies as representing the outer limits, if not the Twilight Zone, of scriptural hermeneutics in Islam. They represent, nonetheless, the practices of a wide range of groups and communities who produced and preserved a substantial corpus of sources spanning at least twelve centuries.

The objective of this conference is to take stock of these esoteric uses of the Qur’an and to examine how they relate to each other and to non-esoteric traditions and methods, to set them in the broader context of Muslim uses and interpretations of the Qur’an.

We invite proposals for conference papers in the following areas: a) the status and role of the Qur’an in intellectual esoterism, be it exegetical, theological, or juridical; b) the hermeneutic of taʾwīl (methods, sources, ijtihād) mobilised by Sufi and Shiite authors in order to comment on certain Qur’anic verses and, from there, the establishment and legitimation of their doctrines, be they of a theological nature (e.g. al-tawḥīd) or juridical (e.g. the status of women); c) the social status of religious figures who are authorized to comment on the Qur’anic text and their role in the perpetuation or renewal of anterior spiritual or legal traditions; d) the correlation between the development of the science of taʾwīl and the intellectual milieu of the authors concerned.

We are particularly interested in contributions that will make the link between these esoteric traditions and those disciplines that are usually considered separately, viz., jurisprudence, theology, and qur’anic interpretation.

Every effort will be made to fund participants’ travel and accommodation costs.

We are planning to produce a peer-reviewed collection of essays in 2023 (in both English and French).

Please send an abstract of 200-300 words, in the body of the email message, to the organizers at the addresses below. Deadline for abstracts: 25 June, 2021

Organizers

Prof. Bruce Fudge
Department of Mediterranean, Slavic and Oriental Languages and Literature
University of Geneva, Switzerland
Bruce.Fudge@unige.ch

Prof. Wissam Halawi
Institute of History and Anthropology of Religions
University of Lausanne, Switzerland
wissam.halawi@unil.ch

Call for Submissions: “New Approaches to Qur’anic Hermeneutics in the Muslim World”

Posted on May 10, 2021 by iqsaweb

The journal Religions is planning a special issue titled “New Approaches to Qur’anic Hermeneutics in the Muslim World,” guest edited by Dr. Hakan Coruh and Dr. Ismail Albayrak. Please see the following announcement for details:

Special Issue Information:

The Qur’an, as a basic Islamic source, and its exegesis have a special place under the broad umbrella of Islamic studies disciplines. In Qur’anic studies, contemporary approaches to Qur’anic exegesis are an area that needs constant updating with the participation of new actors. This Special Issue of the journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444)—“New approaches to Qur’anic hermeneutics in the Muslim world”—will discuss the approaches that play defining roles in modern Qur’anic interpretation in the Islamic world. It will critically analyze the intellectual efforts to understand the Qur’an in modern times by contemporary Muslim thinkers from different linguistic and geographic backgrounds. The new Qur’an readings, initiated by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) and continued with the works of Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905), have been further developed by important names such as the late Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), Muhammad Arkoun (d. 2010) and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d. 2010), along with contemporary approaches. The participation of feminist Muslim authors in the discussions on their reading of the Qur’an has further expanded the circle of these contemporary approaches. It is also possible to find similar examples of these approaches based on linguistic and historical hermeneutics in the Shi’ite world. This Special Issue discusses to what extent these and other leading figures represent approaches to the Qur’an in the Muslim world. Is there any study of Qur’an commentary that is suitable for the theoretical ground these new approaches put forward? Or are contemporary efforts in the Islamic world taking place within a framework that goes beyond the above mentioned names? If so, what are the important representatives and methods that have guided recent Qur’an interpretations? The subject will be covered from modern Salafi or literalist approaches to different philosophical readings. This issue will handle the representation and classification questions in contemporary approaches to the Qur’an in a way that includes the general Muslim world from different linguistic and geographic backgrounds.

Submissions: Scholars interested in submitting manuscripts can find complete instructions here.

IQSA International Meeting CfP Deadline Approaching

Posted on May 5, 2021 by iqsaweb

Friends of IQSA,

A friendly reminder that the Call for Papers deadline for IQSA’s fourth biennial International Meeting held in partnership with the “Giorgio La Pira” Library and Research Centre in Palermo, Sicily has been extended, and all paper and panel proposals are due this Friday May 7th, 2021.The organizing committee will send a notification of acceptance for abstracts by May 23, 2021.

Please note that all proposals for single papers must include:

Author name and affiliation
Paper title
200-word paper abstract (in English)

while proposals for panels must include:

Chair name and affiliation
Panel title
200-words panel abstract (in English)
speakers contacted and selected by the proponent and title of each paper.

Applicants are kindly asked to submit their abstracts to the attention of Dr. Alba Fedeli at iqsa2021@fscire.it.

Conference registration fees are structured as follows:

Students to assistant professors – IQSA members: $50 USD / Non-IQSA members: $100 USD
Associate professors and above – IQSA members $75 USD / Non-IQSA members: $150 USD
Members of the public – $150 USD
Affiliates to the “Giorgio La Pira” Library will receive a special code for registration.

The event registration page is https://members.iqsaweb.org/event-4189882

Individuals in the Global South interested in attending the conference should email contactus@iqsaweb.org for accommodations. Any other questions concerning the registration process should also be addressed to contactus@iqsaweb.org.

The organizing committee thanks the IQSA community for its understanding and flexibility during these extraordinary times, and looks forward to convening in July!

Deadline Extended! IQSA International Meeting 2021

Posted on April 22, 2021 by iqsaweb

Due to certain circumstances, the Call for Papers deadline for IQSA’s fourth biennial International Meeting held in partnership with the “Giorgio La Pira” Library and Research Centre in Palermo, Sicily has been extended to May 7, 2021. The organizing committee will send a notification of acceptance for abstracts by May 23, 2021.