MIISSC Symposium 2019
Preliminary Programme
This symposium is free and open to the public
Venue: Thomson House Ballroom, McGill University
Thursday, April 4th
Registration and Breakfast – 07:30-08:00
Opening Remarks by Dr Michelle Hartman – 08:00-8:15
Session 1 – 08:15-09:30
Intellectual Dialogue and Political Change in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic
Peter F. Kitlas (PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University)
“Islamic Humanism and the Transition to Modern Diplomacy in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire”
San Soyer (MA Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“A Study of the Intellectual and Cultural Context of the Ibrahim Müteferrika Printing Press”
Sarp Kurgan (PhD Candidate, Department of Global Studies, University of California Santa Barbara)
“Modernisation from Novelists’ Eyes: Intellectual Reactions to State Making in Iran and Turkey”
Moderator: Hasan Umut
Discussant: Dr Veysel Şimşek
COFFEE BREAK – 09:30-09:45
Session 2 – 09:45-11:00
Islamic Law and the Postcolonial State
Mohamed R. Abdelsalam (PhD Candidate, Law School, Sciences Po)
“The Relationship between Constitutional Obligations and Islamic Sharī‘a Principles – A System of conflict?”
Nirav Bhardwaj (MA Student, Islamic Text Studies, Zaytuna College)
“Maintaining Congruence Between Islamic Legal Theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and Islamic Theology (kalām): Revisiting Islam's Proscription of Ribā and the Dilemma of Contemporary Islamic Finance”
Mina E. Khalil (PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania)
“Approaching the Criminal Mind in Modern Egypt”
Moderator: M. Fariduddin Attar
Discussant: Dr Katherine Lemons
COFFEE BREAK – 11:00-11:15
Film Screening and Discussion – 11:15-12:45
Qasba Sanskriti: Bilgram – a film by Yousuf Saeed (2011)
A documentary film on Muharram mourning rites among the Shi‘i, Sunni, and Hindu community in the small Indian town of Bilgram, famous for producing renowned scholars over the ages.
Followed by a discussion, featuring
Professors Pasha M. Khan & Rula Jurdi Abisaab.
LUNCH BREAK – 12:45-13:45
Session 3 – 13:45-15:30
Legitimacy and Elite Politics at the Safavid, Mughal, and Mamluk Imperial Courts
Amit Sadan (PhD Student, Department of History, University of Michigan)
“The Nature of Legitimacy: An Environmental Reading of the Safavid Chronicle Tārīḵẖ-i ‘Ālam-ārā-yi ‘Abbāsi”
Jawan Shir Rasikh (PhD Candidate, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania)
“A Forgotten Historian of Islam: Minhāj Sirāj al-Dīn Jūzjānī and his Visions of Islamic History in T̤abaqāt-i Nāṣirī”
Fatima Razavi (PhD Student, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad; Visiting Student, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto)
“Wus‘at-i Mashrab as an Iranian Model of Absolute Civility: Cultural Heritage of Iranian Elites at the Mughal Court”
Zahra Sabri (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
Kingly Religiosity and Alcohol Consumption: A Case Study of the Mughal Emperors
Emma Kalb (PhD Candidate, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago)
“Beyond the Mughal Harem: Eunuch Slaves as Elite Servitors”
Moderator: Kausar Bukhari
Discussant: Dr Rula Jurdi Abisaab
COFFEE BREAK – 15:30-15:45
Keynote Address – 15:45-17:00
Dr SherAli Tareen (Franklin & Marshall College)
“Defending Muḥammad in Modernity: Perspectives from Colonial South Asia”
How does the loss of political sovereignty generate debates on divine sovereignty and its relationship with prophetic authority and everyday ritual practice? This talk will examine this conceptual question by considering some fragments of what is arguably the most long-running, complex, and contentious polemical battles in modern Islam, with beginnings in colonial South Asia: the Barelvī-Deobandī polemic.
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Friday, April 5th
Breakfast – 07:30-08:30
Session 4 – 08:30-10:00
Marvellous Tales in the Persianate Tradition
Allison Kanner (PhD Student, Divinity School, University of Chicago)
“Amongst the Animals: Archetypal Literary Depictions of Majnūn”
Shahrouz Khanjari (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Metamorphosis and Incarnation in the Shāhnāme”
Aqsa Ijaz (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Indo-Persian Romance(s): Reflections on the two 19th-century versions of the Qiṣṣa-i Gul-i Bakāwalī”
Hassan Syed Zaidi (PhD Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Ghalib’s Poetry in Its Intellectual Context”
Moderator: Sabeena Shaikh
Discussant: Dr Pasha M. Khan
COFFEE BREAK – 10:00-10:15
Session 5 – 10:15-11:45
Courts, Intellectuals, and Colonial Modernity in Muslim India
Ankita Choudhary (MA Student, Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University)
“European Presence at Indian Courts: A Case Study of 18th and early 19th-century Awadh”
Sarah A. Qidwai (PhD Candidate, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto)
“The Intersection of Christianity, Islam, and Science in Colonial India: A Case Study of Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Commentary on the Holy Bible (1865)”
Muhammed Ashraf Thirisseri (PhD Student, Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad)
“Printing Modernity, Writing Social Reform: Jamāluddīn Afǥẖānī in Princely Hyderabad”
Moderator: Aqsa Ijaz
Discussant: Dr Subho Basu
COFFEE BREAK – 11:45-12:00
Session 5 – 12:00-13:15
Contemporary Dynamics and Discourses of Political Mobilisation and Resistance in North Africa and the Middle East
Grailing Anthonisen (MA Student, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University)
“Building Prisons as Nationalist Space: Palestinian Prisoners’ Experiences during the Palestinian Revolution”
Alexander Charles McCrae (MA Student, Department of Religions and Cultures, Concordia University)
“The Druze and the Israeli Nation-state Law: Resistance, Cultural Autonomy, and Religion”
John C. Thibdeau (PhD Candidate, Religious Studies Department, University of California Santa Barbara)
“Sufism and Civil Society in Morocco”
Moderator: Faisal Mairiga
Discussant: Dr Khalid Mustafa Medani
LUNCH BREAK – 13:15-14:30
Session 6 – 14:30-15:45
Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Mysticism
Soroosh Shahriari (PhD Student, Department of Jewish Studies, McGill University)
“Faḵẖr al-Dīn Rāzī’s Taʾwīl Issue: Betrayal of Muʿtazilism?”
Dominique Sirgy (PhD Student, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University)
“Post-Classical Islamic Philosophy in the Medieval Syriac Tradition: Faḵẖr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī’s Influence on Bar Hebraeus’ Theology of Bodily Existence in the Afterlife”
Andi Herawati (PhD Student, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Bloomington)
“A Semantic Analysis of Ibn ‘Arabī’s Account of Metaphysical Love”
Moderator: Fateme Savadi
Discussant: Dr Alison Laywine
COFFEE BREAK – 15:45-16:00
Session 7 – 16:00-17:30
Ethics and Politics of Knowledge in Iranian and Transnational Contexts
Pegah Zohouri Haghian (DPhil Candidate, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford)
“Transnational Networks and Intellectual Authority in the Study of Islam in Anglophone Europe: The Case of Naṣr Ḥāmid Abū Zayd, Moḥammed Arkoun, and ‘Abdolkarīm Soroush”
Majid Bahrevar (PhD Student, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Charles University)
“Turning Pamphlets into Papers: Iranian Women's Journalism in the Post-Constitutional Era”
Annalysse Mason (MA Student, Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania)
“An Interdisciplinary Assessment of Scholarly Engagement with the Sex-Reassignment Surgery Fatwas of Contemporary Iran”
Samuel David Blanch (PhD Student, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University)
“The Shia Muslim tithe (ḵẖums) in Iran and the Diaspora as a Problem for Social Theory”
Moderator: Shirin Radjavi
Discussant: Dr Setrag Manoukian
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