Filtering by: Adab Colloquium
Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race
Dec
6
11:00 AM11:00

Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race

Date: Friday, December 6 
Time:
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Location:
Online

Join Rachel Schine, Assistant Professor of Arabic & History at the University of Maryland, and Kristina Richardson, Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia, for a discussion on Schine's book Black Knights. In this work, she explores how the medieval Arabic-speaking world developed distinct racial concepts, shaped by transregional exchanges from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. She examines how racialized blackness became central to envisioning an inclusive Muslim world, drawing insights from Islamic epics, legal, medical, and religious texts to illustrate the fluidity of racial ideas in premodern Islamic societies.

View Event →

The Adab Colloquium with Austin O'Malley: The Poetics of Spiritual Instructio
Sep
27
11:00 AM11:00

The Adab Colloquium with Austin O'Malley: The Poetics of Spiritual Instructio

THE POETICS OF SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTION

Date: Friday, September 27

Time: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM

Location: Online

Join Austin O’Malley as he discusses his new book, The Poetics of Spiritual Instruction, a study that explores the performative role of didactic poetry through the narrative verse of Farid al-Din ʿAttar. O'Malley highlights how ʿAttar employed frame-tales, meta-poetic commentary, and allegories to engage readers and assert his instructive authority. The book sheds light on the interactive, participatory nature of Sufi didacticism, revealing how reading was understood as a spiritual exercise, imbued with ritual significance aimed at purifying the soul.

View Event →
ADAB COLLOQUIUM ‘Erfan between Religion and Literature:   Hafez in pre-Revolutionary Iran
Jan
27
1:10 PM13:10

ADAB COLLOQUIUM ‘Erfan between Religion and Literature: Hafez in pre-Revolutionary Iran

This talk focuses on a debate in 1970s Iran about the poetry of Hafez of Shiraz (ca. 1315-1390) between Ayatollah Morteza Motahari (1919-1979), an influential theorist of the Islamic Republic, and Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000), a prominent Modernist poet. At the center of the debate is the meaning of ‘erfan in the poetry of Hafez, expanded and contracted to fit the political aspirations of the poet and the ayatollah. I argue that this phase in refashioning of ‘erfan shows the mutually constitutive relationship between “religion” and “literature” and the role they played in shaping the political discourse of pre-revolutionary Iran.

This a closed event; if you wish to be emailed regarding regular updates on MEI's workshops and colloquiums, register using the link above.  You may then attend this event.  


View Event →
THE ADAB COLLOQUIUM: Two Medieval Muslim Anthologists Reading Christian Arabic Poetr
Dec
9
1:10 PM13:10

THE ADAB COLLOQUIUM: Two Medieval Muslim Anthologists Reading Christian Arabic Poetr

Several new poems by sixth-/twelfth-century Christian poets are now available in the recently rediscovered manuscript of Abū al-Maʿālī’s Zīnat al-Dahr. It is now possible to triangulate between ʿImād al-Dīn, who used Abū al-Maʿālī as a source, and several poems by Christians addressed to Muslims and vice versa, to reconstruct the space for Christian participation in late Abbasid literary discourse.

For access to this invitation-only event, click here. You will be added to the Workshops & Colloquiums email list.

View Event →
The Adab Colloquium: Manifestations of Adab in Timurid Public Space
Nov
2
1:00 PM13:00

The Adab Colloquium: Manifestations of Adab in Timurid Public Space

Adab manifests itself in various ways in the works of Timurid intellectuals. Asil al-din Wâiz presents it as an all-encompassing concept in 1450s. Nawars works from in 1490s suggest that its main function was ensuring the social cohesion. Finally, Käshifi makes it the basis basis of his political philosophy around the 1500s.

View Event →
Adab Colloquium | Borderland Anxieties: Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) and the Politics of Genealogy in Nasrid Granada
Apr
29
11:10 AM11:10

Adab Colloquium | Borderland Anxieties: Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) and the Politics of Genealogy in Nasrid Granada

April 29
Join us for the Adab Colloquium on Friday, April 29th, 11:10am - 1:00pm, to discuss this chapter which explores how genealogical notions of “Arabness” (‘urūbiyyah) structured the process of identity formation and the articulation of cultural memory in Nasrid Granada.

View Event →
Adab Colloquium: Desire and the Diseases of Translation: The Metaphorology of Civilization in Alas, I am Not a European
Jan
28
1:10 PM13:10

Adab Colloquium: Desire and the Diseases of Translation: The Metaphorology of Civilization in Alas, I am Not a European

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Ziad Dallal, Visiting Assistant Professor of Arabic and The Humanities at Bard College, and discussant Matthew Keegan, Moinian Assistant Professor of Asian & Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College of Columbia University, on "Desire and the Diseases of Translation: The Metaphorology of Civilization in Alas, I am Not a European.



View Event →
Adab Colloquium: Proto-Secular Spaces? Mapping Infidelity in the Poetry of ʿAṭṭār
Oct
22
3:10 PM15:10

Adab Colloquium: Proto-Secular Spaces? Mapping Infidelity in the Poetry of ʿAṭṭār

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Dr. Cyrus Ali Zargar, Distinguished Professor in Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida, and discussant Dr. Ali Altaf Mian, Assistant Professor of Religion and Izzat Hasan Sheikh Fellow in Islamic Studies at the University of Florida, on "Sober in Mecca, Drunk in Byzantium: Antinomian Space in the Poetry of ʿAṭṭār.”



View Event →
Adab Colloquium: From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought
Sep
24
1:10 PM13:10

Adab Colloquium: From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Dr. Haifa S. alFaisal, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at King Saud University and discussant Dr. Boutheina Khaldi, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the American University of Sharjah on "From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought.”

View Event →
Adab Colloquium: All Muhammad, All the Time: The Poetic, Prophetic Cosmology and Epistemology of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse in Three Treatises and Poems
Apr
28
4:10 PM16:10

Adab Colloquium: All Muhammad, All the Time: The Poetic, Prophetic Cosmology and Epistemology of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse in Three Treatises and Poems

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Oludamini Ogunnaike (University of Virginia) and discussant Mamadou Diouf (Columbia University) on "All Muhammad, All the Time: The Poetic, Prophetic Cosmology and Epistemology of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse in Three Treatises and Poems”

View Event →
Adab Colloquium: Islamic Philosophy and Medieval Persian Poetry: Theories of Imagination, the Unseen, and Sensory Experience in Saʿdi’s Ghazals
Mar
12
3:10 PM15:10

Adab Colloquium: Islamic Philosophy and Medieval Persian Poetry: Theories of Imagination, the Unseen, and Sensory Experience in Saʿdi’s Ghazals

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Presenter Domenico Ingenito (UCLA) and Discussant Sayeh Meisami (University of Dayton) on Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry (Brill, 2020)

View Event →
Adab Colloquium: Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif: Conceptions and Discussions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World
Jan
29
1:10 PM13:10

Adab Colloquium: Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif: Conceptions and Discussions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World

Join us for the first Adab Colloquium of 2021. With Presenter Murat Umut Inan, (Social Sciences University, Ankara) and Discussant Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, (University of Pennsylvania) on the Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif: Conceptions and Discussions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World.

View Event →
The Imprint of the Era in the Adab of the Times: Circulation and the Persianate at Empire’s End
Sep
23
4:00 PM16:00

The Imprint of the Era in the Adab of the Times: Circulation and the Persianate at Empire’s End

The Imprint of the Era in the Adab of the Times: Circulation and the Persianate at Empire’s End with Presenter Mana Kia, Columbia University and Discussant Sunil Sharma, Boston University. In this Adab Colloquium, Dr Mana Kia will discuss her paper examining the relation between material circulation of texts, commemorations of collectives, and transregional social imaginaries at the end of Persianate empires between Iran and India.

View Event →