Islamic Studies Workshop

The Islamic Studies Workshop is once again up and running for the 2017-2018 academic year, and we invite all interested faculty and graduate students to present.  Presentations can include portions of dissertation chapters or proposals, job talks, master’s theses, conference presentations, or other research.  We aim for half of all our workshop presenters to be University of Chicago graduate students.  The pre-circulation of papers via the email list is encouraged, but not required.

We are especially interested in presentations that will bring Islamic Studies into conversation with other disciplines and areas of study, such as (but certainly not limited to!) anthropology, comparative literature, philosophy, history of science, history of Christianity and Judaism, South Asian studies, and political science.

We will meet on alternate Thursdays from 12:30-1:20pm (Swift 201), beginning in the fall quarter on October 5th and continuing on October 19th, November 2nd, November 16th, and November 30th.  We will also be placing papers for the upcoming winter and spring quarters, so please indicate when you submit in which quarter you would like to present.  If you would like to present but cannot attend at the regular scheduled time, please contact us and we will do our best to accommodate you, since we will occasionally have workshop sessions outside of the regular schedule.

Email Alex Matthews (acmatthews@uchicago.edu) and Zahra Moeini (zahramoeini@uchicago.edu) with the following information if you would like to present:

• Your name
• A tentative title for your presentation
• Your university and departmental affiliation
• The type of work you are presenting (dissertation chapter, article-in-progress, etc.)
• Your preferred term (fall, winter or spring )
• A brief overview of your project (1-3 sentences)

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at our meetings!

Dear colleagues,

Dear colleagues,

Dear colleagues,

How can we think of evidence when it is situated amid multiple fields of knowledge and practice? This conference examines the problems that evidence poses for a range of inquiries in Muslim communities, from law and theology to science and historiography.

Keynote lecture by Omnia El Shakry, Associate Professor of History at University of California Davis:
“The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt”
April 28, 4:30pm at the Franke Institute

Keynote lecture by Khaled Fahmy, Professor of History, The American University in Cairo and Visiting Professor in Modern Middle Eastern History at Harvard University:
“Medical evidence in nineteenth-century Egyptian courts”
April 29 at 4:30pm: Classics 110 

Schedule

Thursday: venue is the Franke Institute

4:30pm: Keynote lecture by Omnia El Shakry: “The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt”

Friday : venue is Classics 110 

10am-12pm, Panel 1: The Evidence of Science

Daniel Stolz (Northwestern University): “Eyes, Fingers, and the corruption of tables: Uncertainties of astronomy among nineteenth-century ‘ulama'”
Satyel Larson (Princeton University): “The Gender Politics of Facts and Evidence. Islamic Law, French Gynecology and Women’s Medical Expertise in Colonial Morocco”
Elham Mireshghi (University of California, Irvine): “Of Fatwas and Citadels: Islamic Law, Expertise, and Kidney Sales in Iran”

1:30-3:30pm, Panel 2 : Evidence in Islamic Law

Junaid Quadri (University of Illinois, Chicago): “Constructivism, Correspondence, and Representation: Approaches to Knowledge in Islamic Legal Texts”
Aria Nakissa (Washington University, St. Louis): “Islamic Legal Interpretation as the Interpretation of Action”
Nada Moumtaz (Ohio State University): “Statistics as Evidence in Islamic law? Debates on the validity of the family waqf in the Levant and Egypt (1903-1945)”

4:30pm: Keynote lecture by Khaled Fahmy: “Medical evidence in nineteenth-century Egyptian courts”

Saturday : venue is the Franke Institute 

10am-12pm, Panel 3: Imaginative Frontiers

Ana Maria Vinea (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): “What is your Evidence?”: Qur’anic Healing and Shifting Contemporary Egyptian Therapeutic Epistemologies.
Yunus Dogan Telliel (CUNY Graduate Center): “Miraculous Evidence: Scientific Wonders and Religious Reasons”
Alireza Doostdar (University of Chicago): “Techno-spiritual Reflexivity”
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Cosponsored by the Office of the Dean of the Divinity School, Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Martin Marty Center, the Norman Wait Harris Fund, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), the Anthropology Department, Islamic Studies Workshop, the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Please join the Islamic Studies Workshop this Thursday:

Thursday, April 21st, 12:00pm-1:30pm

Swift Hall room 106

Allison Kanner (Divinity School), “Self-Made Mystics: Autobiographies of al-Ghazali and Ibn Tufayl”

A vegetarian lunch will be provided.

Hope to see you there!

Thursday, April 14th, 12:00pm-1:30pm

Dear colleagues,

Join us for the last session of the Islamic Studies Workshop this quarter, and stay tuned for an exciting spring lineup!

March 1st (Tuesday), 4:30pm

Cochrane-Woods Art Center room 152

Jessica Mutter (NELC), “Evolving Depictions of Religious Transformation in Eighth-Century Greater Syria,” co-sponsored with the Workshop on Late Antiquity and Byzantium

Dear colleagues,

Please join us for Thursday’s workshop session:

Rachel Farell (CMES): “E’tibar nist: Shi’i Ritual Expression in Contemporary Afghanistan”

Thursday, February 11th, 12:00pm-1:30pm

Swift Hall room 106

A vegetarian lunch will be provided.

For more information, including past events, please visit the Islamic Studies Workshop

website.

Hope to see you there!

Francesca Chubb-Confer

Graduate Student Coordinator