Events

Upcoming Event:

Workshop: LEO STRAUSS, ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY, AND THE END OF PRE-MODERNITY

This workshop aims to focus on Strauss’ concern with Islamic political philosophy. With a few important exceptions, the long history of criticism applied to Strauss’ thought has neglected the pedagogical weight of that itinerary, an itinerary intended to mark a disruptive way – to quote Strauss himself – to begin the study of medieval philosophy. Our workshop is intended as an occasion to verify to what extent the Straussian inquiry devoted to the Islamic sources of a historical “Western” tension can serve as a resource for thinking about the history of modernity, as well as about the history of medieval Islamic philosophy.

Friday, May 24
Swift Hall Common Room
9:00 am - 5:00 pm (reception to follow)

Schedule:

9:00 am - Introduction: David Nirenberg (University of Chicago), Leonardo Capezzone (Sapienza-Università di Roma)

9:30 am - Steven Harvey (Bar-Ilan University)  
Leo Strauss’ Reading of the Falâsifa and Its Reverberations in the Study of Medieval Islamic (and Jewish) Philosophy
Chair: James Robinson

10:30 am - Joshua Parens (University of Dallas)
From Strauss’s Spinoza to ‘Scholasticism’ and back again to Alfarabi
Chair: David Nirenberg

11:30 am - Coffee break

11:45 am - Miriam Galston (George Washington University)
Introductory Thoughts about the Differences Between Alfarabi’s Political Regime and Virtuous City
Chair: Ralph Lerner

12:45 pm - Lunch

2:00 pm - Charles E. Butterworth (University of Maryland)
Alfarabi on Politics and Legislators as opposed to Lawgivers
Chair: Nathan Tarcov

3:00 pm - Oliver Leaman (University of Kentucky)
Leo Strauss and the role of the attentive reader in Islamic philosophy
Chair: Josef Stern

4:00 pm - Coffee break

4:15 pm - Closing discussion

5:00 pm - Reception

Past Events:

Notes for a History of Nostalgia in Classical
Arabic Culture

With Professor Leonardo Capezzone, Visiting Professor in Social Thought and Associate Professor of the History of the Arab-Islamic Mediterranean at the University of Rome

Friday, April 26
Swift Hall Common Room
4:30 pm (reception to follow)

Workshop: Studying Shīʿī Islam: Prospects and Challenges

What are the methodological issues facing Shīʿī studies?  Are these different from those posed to Islamic studies more generally?  This workshop will examine whether Shiʿism forms a distinct field of research and study, with its own methodological approaches. Through presentations of the latest research from both established and emerging experts in the field of Shīʿī Studies, the future direction of Shīʿī studies will be explored.

Friday March 8
Swift Hall, Common Room

Schedule of Panels:

9:00 am
Welcome remarks: Michael Sells and Robert Gleave

9:45 am
Chair: Paul Walker
Sean Anthony: "Hidden Redeemers, Sleeping Heroes, and Wandering Messiahs: Early Shi'ite Messianism in the Sectarian Milieu". 
Respondent: Edmund Hayes

10:30 am - Coffee Break

10:45 am
Chair: Tahera Qutbuddin
Najam Haider: “The Reconstruction of Local Ritual Practice in the 2nd/8th Century: Some Shi'i Considerations”. 
Respondent: Said Amir Arjomand

11:30 am
Robert Gleave: “Early Shi’i hermeneutics and the Kitab Sulaym b. Qays”. Respondent: Todd Lawson

12:15 pm - Lunch

1:15 pm
Chair: Franklin Lewis
Devin Stewart: “Preserving Family Tradition:  The Autobiography of ʿAlī al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1692).”
Respondent: Judith Pfeiffer

2:00 pm
Bella Tendler: "Concerning the Charge of Ibāḥat al-Nisāʾ: New Evidence from a Nineteenth Century Nusayri Text."
Respondent: Evrim Binbaş

2:45 pm - Coffee Break

3:00 pm
Chair: Alireza Doostdar
Orit Bashkin “Whose isolation? Antisectarian moments in Modern Iraq”.
Respondent: Fadi Bardawil

3:45 pm
Elvire Corboz: “Khomeini in Exile: Writing the Najaf History of Iran's Revolutionary Leader”.
Respondent: Said Amir Arjomand

4:30 pm
Closing remarks: Robert Gleave

5:00pm - Reception

Workshop Participants:

Islam, Violence & the Sacred: Insurgent Shi'ism in Muslim History

With Robert Gleave, Visiting Professor in the Department of History, and Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter.

Friday January 18
Swift Hall, Common Room
4:30 pm (reception to follow)

Qur'anic Studies Today: a workshop

Organized by Angelika Neuwirth, Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, Professor Freie Universität Berlin, this workshop reviews the diverse methodologies currently applied in Qur’anic studies. It takes a fresh look at texts that incorporate traditional and modern, Arab and Muslim scholarship. Rather than searching for influences or deviations, the relationship between the various traditions will have to be considered as a conversation—a process of negotiating, and sometimes superseding, given versions.

Workshop Participants

The Qur'an and the discovery of writing: an epistemic turn in Late Antiquity

With Angelika Neuwirth, Visiting Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Professor of Arabic Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin

Friday, October 12
Swift Hall, Common Room
4:30 pm