*Titles and schedule subject to change. Please check this page regularly for updates.*

2023 University of Chicago Shiʿi Studies Symposium Program

Swift Hall, Third Floor Lecture Hall
1025 E 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Friday, May 12th

8:30am: Breakfast

8:45am: Welcome Remarks: Dr. Paul Walker, University of Chicago

9:00am-11:00am: Panel 1: Conceptualizing Community Identity in Shī‘ī Islam

• Yaron Friedman (University of Haifa), “A Brief History of the Shīʿa in Medieval Palestine: Shīʿī Communities and Sects, Shīʿī Shrines of the Ahl al-Bayt”
• Fouad Gehad Marei (Lund University), “Objects of Walāya, or the Power of ‘Things’ in Shiʿi Political Ecologies”
• Reza Hemyari (University of Chicago), “Wilāyah in Communal Prayer: Communal and Theological Repercussions of a Fiqhi Ruling”

11:00am-11:15am: Coffee Break

11:15am-1:15pm: Panel 2: Esoteric Understandings of Walāya

• Leila Chamankhah (University of Dayton), “Wilāyat Nāmih: Intensification of Faith and Devotion in the Context of Akbarīan Mysticism”
• Nicholas Boylston (Seattle University), “The Role of Walāya in Sayyid Ḥaydar Āmulī’s Tafsīr al-Muḥīṭ al-Aʿẓam: A Harmonization of Shʿism and Sufism”
• Eliza Tasbihi (McGill University), “Revisiting the Concept of Walāya in Ḥaydar Āmulī’s (d. 1385) Naṣṣ al-Nuṣūṣ fī Sharḥ al-Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam”
• Sarah Aziz (Harvard University), “Fatimid Hermeneutics in Light of Walāya: The Interpretation of Imān in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿman’s Taʾwīl al-Daʿāim”

1:15pm-2:00pm: Lunch

2:00pm-3:00pm: Featured Speaker

Scott Lucas (University of Arizona), “A Guide to a Virtual Library of Zaydi Hadith Books”

 

**[Keynote Lecture: Professor Tahera Qutbuddin (University of Chicago): Postponed]**

 

Saturday, May 13th

9:00am-11:00am: Panel 3: Walāya in Early Shī‘ī Islam

• Roy Vilozny (University of Haifa), “The Imams after al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765): Declining Charisma or Mere Historical Circumstances?”
• Liyakat Takim (McMaster University), “Between Theory and Practice: The Walaya of the Imams in the Basaʾir al-Darajat”
• Vinay Khetia (Shiʿa Research Institute), “The Ziyārat of Imām al-Ḥusayn as Liturgical Text in Early Shīʿī Ḥadīth and its Role in the Promulgation of Shīʿī Piety”
• Shayesteh Ghofrani (The Institute for Ismaili Studies), “Wilāya and Knowledge in the Formative Period of Shiʿism”

11:00am-11:30am: Coffee Break

11:30am-12:30pm: Featured Speaker

Mushegh Asatryan (University of Calgary), “Imam the Debater: Disputation, Traditionalism, and the Shiʿa in the early Abbasid Empire”

12:30pm-1:30pm: Lunch

1:30pm-3:30pm: Panel 4: Walāya in a Modern Context

• Mohammad Nabeel Jafri (University of Toronto), “’Will the miracles not be recited from the minbar?’: The limits of devotion in contemporary Urdu Shiʿi khiṭābat“
• Wafi Momin (Institute of Ismaili Studies), “Negotiating Devotion to the Prophet Muhammad and his Family in the Satpanth Ismaili Tradition of South Asia”
• Fizza Joffrey (Oxford University), “Ye Gham Zinda Rahe: Devotion in the Urdu Nauha”

3:30pm: Closing Remarks

 

Sponsorship

This event is free and open to the public. Funding and support for this symposium is provided by various funders within the University of Chicago, including the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Divinity School, the Graduate Council Academic and Professional Fund, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, the History Department, the Anthropology Department, and the Islamic Studies Workshop.

Accessibility

If you have any questions about access, or to request any reasonable accommodations that will facilitate your full participation in this event, please contact Zach Winters (zwinters@uchicago.edu), Ameena Yovan (ayovan@uchicago.edu), or Reza Hemyari (mrhemyari@uchicago.edu).