Islamic Societies & Cultures
Over the last few years, the College of Liberal Arts has seen impressive growth in faculty strength in several areas of teaching and research relating to Islamic Societies and Cultures, with the addition of more than a dozen new full-time faculty members in departments across the college. In addition, CLA’s offerings in related languages have also been rapidly expanding.
As a result of all of these exciting developments, in the fall of 2007 several interested faculty members already involved in CLA’s “Mediterranean Studies Initiative” formed a working group to explore ways to institutionalize Islamic studies as a part of this larger endeavor. The most logical first step was to organize a lecture and workshop series in order to raise awareness about the extent of the resources already available here at the university; to begin to build a more cohesive sense of community among relevant faculty, graduate students and community members; and to provide a regular forum to share research ideas and to address practical issues related to the study of Islamic societies and cultures.
The workshop and lecture series is structured so that each guest will make a presentation of their research in the format of a public lecture, and in addition run a smaller workshop featuring discussion of a pre-circulated paper. This combination allows for both a broad public conversation, and space for a more intimate engagement with the scholars written work. These two parallel activities are equally important to our goal of raising the profile of Islamic societies and cultures in the community at large, while at the same time deepening the sense of community among affiliated faculty and graduate students.
2008-09 Schedule of Speakers
- Selim Kuru, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, University of Washington
- October 29, 135 Nicholson Hall, 5:00 PM
- Lecture: Framing sexuality in the Early 16th Century: An Ottoman Poet's Vision of Desire and Sexual Conduct.
- October 30, 235 Nolte Hall, 5:30 PM
- Workshop: Sex in the Text
- Khaldoun Samman, Department of Sociology, Macalester College
- December 10, 710 Social Science Building, 5:00 PM
- Lecture: The Colonizer's Time Machine and the Remaking of the Middle East
- December 11, 135 Nicholson Hall, 12:00 PM
- Workshop: Why Jewish and Arabic History Books are Stacked in Two Different Sections of the Library Stacks
- Saba Mahmood, Department of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley
- Lecture: February 24, 2009 5:00 PM
- Location and Title TBA
- Workshop: February 25, 2009 3:30 PM
- Location and Title TBA
- Nazif Shahrani, Department of Central Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Indiana University
- Lecture: March 23, 2009 5:00 PM
- Location and Title TBA
- Workshop: March 24, 2009 3:30 PM
- Location and Title TBA
- Amaney Jamal, Department of Politics, Princeton University
- Lecture Only: April 22, 2009 3:30 PM
- Location and Title TBA
- Joseph Massad, Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
- Lecture: May 11, 2009 5:00 PM
- Location and Title TBA
- Workshop: May 12, 2009 3:30 PM
- Location and Title TBA
Co-sponsored by: Institute for Global Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Consortium for the Study of the Asias, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative, Department of Political Science, Department of History, the Center for Early Modern History, and the European Studies Consortium