Congratulations to Ms. Anne Farray, Administrative Officer - IIS
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Ms. Anne Farray on receiving her service award pin for 40 years of employment at McGill University. The pin was presented at the Dean of Arts Brunch - December 17, 2019.
Congratulations to Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi on the publication of her new book The Routledge Advanced Persian Course: Farsi Shirin Ast 3.
The Routledge Advanced Persian Course: Farsi Shirin Ast 3 aims to help students of higher-level proficiency continue elevating their proficiency level to achieve near-native level. Key features include:
Authentic texts on a variety of topics related to Iran’s history, geography, arts, literature, culture, religions, society, and people.
Each lesson includes a prominent poet and their most representative poem familiarizing students with the Persian literary canon, while indirectly learning the higher order registers used in the language of poetry.
Lessons end with a Persian proverb and the story behind it, so that students will not only master the language but also the culture of the language and reach a near-native level of linguistic and cultural proficiency. The proverbs and some of the classical poetry are written in the calligraphy form to make students get used to reading handwritten texts resembling calligraphy.
Audio files are provided so that learners who are studying on their own can have access to correct pronunciations.
This textbook continues the series from The Routledge Intermediate Course in Persian and is ideal for Advanced or B2-C1 level students of Persian.
Nathan is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Islamic philosophy at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.
Congratulations to IIS alumnus Carl Sharif El-Tobgui (Ph.D. 2013)
Congratulations to IIS alumnus Carl Sharif El-Tobgui (Ph.D. 2013), whose revised doctoral dissertation on Ibn Taymiyya has just been published electronically by Brill. For more info, please check Brill's website. Carl is currently Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and Director of the Arabic Language Program, at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Ministry of Religious Affairs in Indonesia - visit to the Institute
Visitors from the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Indonesia (and graduates of the IIS!) meeting with Professors Malek Abisaab and Khalid Medani (Graduate Program Director) on December 3, 2019.
New Book by Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and University of Oxford's Associate Professor Dominic Parviz Brookshaw on the publication of their new book The Routledge Introductory Persian Course, found on Routledge's website.
Congratulations to Professor Jamil Ragep on his Turkish Academy of Sciences Prize
The Institute of Islamic Studies extends congratulations to Professor Jamil Rapep on his Turkish Academy of Sciences Prize in Social Sciences and Humanities. For more info on this prize please see the website of TUBA, the Turkish Academy of Sciences.
Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies present:
A conversation on our shared past, present and future
Please enjoy photos of our recent event from the Islamic Studies 2019-2020 Speakers Series "A conversation on our shared past, present and future". Thank you to everyone who attended.
Congratulations to our PhD students
Congratulations to IIS PhD students Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan and Osama Eshera, whose jointly authored article, "The Five Arabic Revisions of Autolycus’ On the Moving Sphere (Proposition VII)" has just been published in the Iranian Journal for the History of Science (Tarikh-e Elm). It is available online on the website of the Journal for the History of Science.
Congratulations to Mr. Hasan Umut
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Hasan Umut on his successful PhD oral defense on October 25th, 2019 entitled, "Theoretical Astronomy in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire:
ʿAlī al-Qūshjī’s Al-Risāla al-Fatḥiyya". Hasan's academic supervisor was Professor Jamil Ragep.
Image by Sarah Lessard.
Congratulations to Professor Pasha M. Khan
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Pasha M. Khan, the Chair in Urdu Language & Culture, on his new book, The Broken Spell: Indian Storytellers and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu.
The Broken Spell tells the story of the rise and fall in popularity of “romances” (qissahs)—tales of wonder and magic told by storytellers at princely courts and in public spaces in
India from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. It points to the worldviews that lay beneath the popularity of Urdu and Persian qissahs, before Islamicate and Western colonial rationalist epistemologies came to prominence in India.
Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies present:
Slaves, Generals, and Rulers: East Africans in India
This event is part of a lecture series titled "Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies." The series is sponsored by the Institute of Islamic Studies, the History and Classical Studies, and the African Studies program. The cosponsor are the SSHRC Climate Change association, the Rathlyn Lecture Series on Disability Studies, the Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at McGill, the Black Students' Network at McGill, and the African Studies Students Association
Join us for Professor Sylviane Diouf's lecture titled "Slaves, Generals, and Rulers: East Africans in India." Sylviane A. Diouf is an award-winning historian of the African Diaspora. She is Visiting Professor at Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice and a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience Maison des Esclaves project on Goree Island, Senegal.
A social historian, Dr. Diouf focuses on uncovering essential stories and topics that were overlooked or negated, but which offer new insights into the African Diaspora. She has a special interest in the experience of the Africans deported, through the international slave trade, to the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, including the particular experience of African Muslims.
Dr. Diouf is the author of Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (NYU Press, 2014); and Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
Tuesday October 22, 2019 at 4:30 p.m.
3485 McTavish Street
Morrice Hall - Room 017
Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies
Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, The Lost Chapter
This event is the first in a series titled "Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies." The series is sponsored by the Institute of Islamic Studies, the History and Classical Studies, and the African Studies program. The cosponsor are the SSHRC Climate Change association, the Rathlyn Lecture Series on Disability Studies, the Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at McGill, the Black Students' Network at McGill, and the African Studies Students Association.
Join us for Professor Therí Picken's discussion of her latest book Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, The Lost Chapter wherein she rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the common theorization that they are mutually constitutive. Pickens shows how Black speculative and science fiction authors such as Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Tananarive Due craft new worlds that reimagine the intersection of Blackness and madness. These creative writer-theorists formulate new parameters for thinking through Blackness and madness. Pickens considers Butler's Fledgling as an archive of Black madness that demonstrates how race and ability shape subjectivity while constructing the building blocks for antiracist and anti-ableist futures. She examines how Hopkinson's Midnight Robber theorizes mad Blackness and how Due's African Immortals series contests dominant definitions of the human. The theorizations of race and disability that emerge from these works, Pickens demonstrates, challenge the paradigms of subjectivity that white supremacy and ableism enforce, thereby pointing to the potential for new forms of radical politics.
** Professor Pickens' latest book will be available for sale at the event
Tuesday October 15, 2019 at 4:30 p.m.
3485 McTavish Street
Morrice Hall - Room 017
Photos from the Black Madness :Mad Blackness, The Lost Chapter lecture on Oct. 15, 2019.
Congratulations to Professor Robert Wisnovsky on being awarded a grant by the John Templeton Foundation
Congratulations to Professor Robert Wisnovsky on being awarded a grant by the John Templeton Foundation. The three-year grant, totaling $307,510 (USD$233,159), will fund two postdoctoral researchers to assist Prof. Wisnovsky in preparing a new edition, English translation, and source-critical analysis of a major work of late post-classical Islamic philosophical theology: Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s Supercommentary on al-Dawānī’s Commentary on al-Ījī’s Creed.
Congratulations to Professor Michelle Hartman on her 2019 Honorable Mention - Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation - Teaching Literature Book Award.
Professor Michelle Hartman awarded an Insight Development Grant
Congratulations to Michelle Hartman on being awarded an Insight Development Grant as co-applicant with colleague and Principle Investigator, Professor rosalind hampton of OISE, University of Toronto. Their project is titled, “Coalition Building by and with Black Students at Canadian Universities from 1960-2000."
Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab's Second Issue of Mitra
Congratulations to Professor Rula Jurdi (Abisaab) on the publication of the second issue of Mïtra. Rula Jurdi is a co-founder and co-editor of this multilingual literary and artistic electronic magazine, issued once a year. She is joined by Nadie Ltaif, George Bou-Hsab, Yasmine Hajj, and Yasmine Nachabe. Alia’ Kawalit was a main inspiration behind its formation. Please check this page to flip through the latest issue.
Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi at AATP Workshop
Congratulations to Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, our Senior Lecturer of Persian Language and Linguistics, co-organized and gave a talk in the first American Association of Teachers of Persian (AATP) Professional Development Workshop at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University in August 5-7, 2019. Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, who is the current President of the AATP (2018-2020) gave a talk on "Peer Correction and Learner Metacognitive Awareness Raising in Teaching Persian as a Second/Heritage Language."
Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab shortlisted for the Magpie Poetry Award
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Peiyu Yang on her successful PhD oral defense on August 8, 2019 entitled “Triangular translation: Interpreting Nahdawi literary production on China”. Her academic Supervisor was Professor Michelle Hartman.
Congratulations to Professor Michelle Hartman on her recent co-authored article (with rosalind hampton, University of Toronto) published in the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, “Whose Values: Who’s Valued?: Race and Racialization in Quebec."
Demonstration against Quebec's Bill 21 on religious symbols - Monday, June 17, 2019 in front the Montreal office of Premier Francois Legault (McGill College Avenue & Sherbrooke Street)
Image by Demonstration against Bill 21.
Congratulations to our newest graduates!
We celebrated convocation 2019 with a lunch reception for staff, students, and their families at IIS following the ceremony on Monday, June 3.
A special congratulations to Arts Valedictorian Ommu-Kulsoom Abdul Rahman, who delivered a powerful and inspiring speech.
Congratulations to Professor Pasha M. Khan
The Institute of Islamic Studies extends its warmest congratulations to Professor Pasha M. Khan on his attainment of tenure and his promotion to the rank of Associate Professor.
Congratulations to our PhD student Sabeena Shaikh for winning a 2019 Graduate Student Teaching award! An excerpt from her citation from the Faculty of Arts:
Sabeena Shaikh has taught and is currently teaching two full-year levels of the Urdu-Hindi language course at the Institute of Islamic Studies. She has breathed life into the Urdu-Hindi language program through her learned, effective, and passionate teaching. The innovations she has introduced into these courses have made the learning of the language a cultural experience. She communicates her infectious enthusiasm for South Asian culture through her teaching methods.
The Institute of Islamic Studies is pleased to announce the 2019 Annual International Workers Day Lecture, hosted by Le Centre Culturel Lebanais, given by our Professor Khalid Medani and introduced by Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab.
This lecture was held on May 4, 2019.
It is with regret that the Institute of Islamic Studies informs you of the passing of Professor Emeritus of Arabic Literature, Issa J Boullata Mark, on Wednesday May 1 2019, at the age of 90.
Professor Issa J Boullata was a quiet, hardworking professor whose dedication has educated generations of students in Arabic language and literature at McGill University. His prolific research and literary output has helped to put McGill on the map in the field of Islamic Studies. Throughout his career, Professor Boullata remained an inspiration to students and colleagues in the classroom and in his published work. We have lost a colleague who greatly enriched the life of our institution for many years.
The Institute of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Arts extends its condolences to his family, including his daughter Barbara, his three sons, Joseph, David, and Peter, his brother Kamal, sister Souad and sisters-in-law Therèse and Annette.
Thank you all to those who attended Michelle Hartman's book launch of Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language on Friday April 26, 2019 at Librarairie Eugélionne, it was a great success! For those of you who were unable to attend and would like to purchase the book, please check Syracuse University Press' website.
Please join IIS Professor Michelle Hartman in a conversation about her new book, Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Solidarities and the Politics of Language at its Montreal Launch. It is on Friday, April 26 from 18h00-20h00 at the Librarairie Eugélionne (across from Beaudry Metro station). Click on the Facebook event for more information.
Katherine Lemons - Book Launch
Please join IIS Associate Member, Professor Katherine Lemons at the launch of her new book:
Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism
on April 30, 2019 at Paragraphe Bookstore, 16h30.
Congratulations to Ms.Fateme Savadi
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Fateme Savadi on her successful PhD oral defense on April 9, 2019, entitled, “The historical and cosmographical context of Hay'at al-ard with a focus on Qutb al-Din Shirazi's Nihayat al-Idrak". Photo of Dr. Savadi and Professor Rula Abisaab.
Congratulations, Professor Michelle Hartman!
Congratulations Professor Michelle Hartman, whose edited book Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation, has been nominated for the 2019 Teaching Literature Book Award, a prize for outstanding scholarship on teaching literature at the undergraduate or graduate level. This nationally juried award, the only one of its kind, is overseen and conferred every other year by the faculty in the graduate programs in English and the Teaching of English at Idaho State University. Congratulations, also, to Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab who has a chapter in the book.
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Brian Wright on his successful PhD oral defense on April 2, 2019, entitled “Homicide and Islamic criminal law in 19th century Muslim jurisdictions”. His academic supervisor was Professor Pasha M. Khan.
Australianama: Narrating South Asian and Muslim Presence in Australasia in the Wake of the Christchurch Attacks
Please join us for an event comprising two talks by Dr. Samia Khatun, Associate Professor at the University Liberal Arts Bangladesh and author of the new book Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia; and Dr. Uzma Jamil, Visiting Scholar at the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, and Fellow in Muslim Studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Drs Khatun and Jamil will speak about the long history of South Asians and Muslims in Australia and their relations with Aboriginal people, and about whiteness and violence in the nation.
These talks come in the aftermath of the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which a white supremacist gunman from Australia murdered 50 Muslims and injured as many others. The Institute of Islamic Studies condemns these murderous attacks. We would like to express our sadness and offer our sincere condolences to the families and friends of the victims, and all others affected by it. We continue to stand in solidarity with Muslim communities worldwide and reaffirm our ongoing condemnation of Islamophobia in all of its forms.
Tuesday April 16, 2019
Morrice Hall - Room 017
3485 McTavish Street
2:45pm
Angelical Conjunctions: Crossroads of Medicine and Religion, 1200-1800
Angelical Conjunctions: The Intersection of Religion and Medicine 1200-1800 brings together twenty-five scholars who focus on the late medieval and early modern periods. The conference invites us to see the connection between religion and medicine not as an inconvenient deviance of past societies, let alone as a necessarily adversarial relationship, but as a key phenomenon that enlightens a given society’s conceptions of the mind and the body, and how the society negotiates these competing conceptions. The connection between medical and spiritual practices took many forms over the centuries, from the pious provision of health care (in person or through endowed charity), to the archetypal figure of the healing prophet. Yet despite decades of specialized research, a coherent and analytical history of the "angelical conjunction" itself remains elusive.
Taking an inter-cultural and long-term perspective, Angelical Conjunctions investigates how Islamic, Christian, and Jewish traditions interpreted, produced, and shaped medical knowledge. We aim to develop methodological and theoretical perspectives on the "angelical conjunction(s)" of these two spheres.
Keynote Event April 12th, 2019 - Prof. Lauren Kassell
‘Universal Medicine’: Lessons from Seventeenth Century England
McGill Department of Rare Books & Special Collections
McLennan Library Building 4th Floor - 3459 McTavish Street
Event Time: 5:00pm to 7:00pm
Congratulations to Professor Katherine Lemons
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates associate member Professor Katherine Lemons on her new book Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism.
Divorcing Traditions:Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understand of Indian secularism.
"Katherine Lemons has written a powerful and compelling book that reshapes our understanding of secularism, Muslim law, and divorce in contemporary India." - RACHEL STUMAN, Bowdoin College
For more information from Cornell University Press and to purchase, please see CornellPress.
Congratulations to Ms. Salua Fawzi
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Salua Fawzi on her successful PhD oral defense on March 13, 2019, entitled “Experiencing Islam in America: Muslim Students Associations". Her academic supervisor was Professor Setrag Manoukian.
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and University of Oxford's Associate Professor Dominic Parviz Brookshaw on the publication of their new book The Routledge Introductory Persian Course, found on Routledge's website. 
Please enjoy photos of our recent event from the Islamic Studies 2019-2020 Speakers Series "A conversation on our shared past, present and future". Thank you to everyone who attended.
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Pasha M. Khan, the Chair in Urdu Language & Culture, on his new book, The Broken Spell: Indian Storytellers and the Romance Genre in Persian and Urdu.
This event is part of a lecture series titled "Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies." The series is sponsored by the Institute of Islamic Studies, the History and Classical Studies, and the African Studies program. The cosponsor are the SSHRC Climate Change association, the Rathlyn Lecture Series on Disability Studies, the Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at McGill, the Black Students' Network at McGill, and the African Studies Students Association
This event is the first in a series titled "Conversations: African Studies, Black Studies, and Islamic Studies." The series is sponsored by the Institute of Islamic Studies, the History and Classical Studies, and the African Studies program. The cosponsor are the SSHRC Climate Change association, the Rathlyn Lecture Series on Disability Studies, the Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at McGill, the Black Students' Network at McGill, and the African Studies Students Association.
Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab's Second Issue of Mitra
Congratulations to Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, our Senior Lecturer of Persian Language and Linguistics, co-organized and gave a talk in the first American Association of Teachers of Persian (AATP) Professional Development Workshop at the University of Maryland and Georgetown University in August 5-7, 2019. Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, who is the current President of the AATP (2018-2020) gave a talk on "Peer Correction and Learner Metacognitive Awareness Raising in Teaching Persian as a Second/Heritage Language."
Congratulations to Rula Jurdi on her poem, “Oral,” being shortlisted for the Magpie Poetry Award, Pulp Literature Magazine.
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Peiyu Yang on her successful PhD oral defense on August 8, 2019 entitled “Triangular translation: Interpreting Nahdawi literary production on China”. Her academic Supervisor was Professor Michelle Hartman.
It is with regret that the Institute of Islamic Studies informs you of the passing of Professor Emeritus of Arabic Literature, Issa J Boullata Mark, on Wednesday May 1 2019, at the age of 90.
Please join IIS Professor Michelle Hartman in a conversation about her new book, Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Solidarities and the Politics of Language at its Montreal Launch. It is on Friday, April 26 from 18h00-20h00 at the Librarairie Eugélionne (across from Beaudry Metro station). Click on the Facebook event for more information. 
Please join IIS Associate Member, Professor Katherine Lemons at the launch of her new book:
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Fateme Savadi on her successful PhD oral defense on April 9, 2019, entitled, “The historical and cosmographical context of Hay'at al-ard with a focus on Qutb al-Din Shirazi's Nihayat al-Idrak". Photo of Dr. Savadi and Professor Rula Abisaab.
Congratulations Professor Michelle Hartman, whose edited book Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation, has been nominated for the 2019 Teaching Literature Book Award, a prize for outstanding scholarship on teaching literature at the undergraduate or graduate level. This nationally juried award, the only one of its kind, is overseen and conferred every other year by the faculty in the graduate programs in English and the Teaching of English at Idaho State University. Congratulations, also, to Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab who has a chapter in the book.
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Brian Wright on his successful PhD oral defense on April 2, 2019, entitled “Homicide and Islamic criminal law in 19th century Muslim jurisdictions”. His academic supervisor was Professor Pasha M. Khan.
Please join us for an event comprising two talks by Dr. Samia Khatun, Associate Professor at the University Liberal Arts Bangladesh and author of the new book Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia; and Dr. Uzma Jamil, Visiting Scholar at the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, and Fellow in Muslim Studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Drs Khatun and Jamil will speak about the long history of South Asians and Muslims in Australia and their relations with Aboriginal people, and about whiteness and violence in the nation.
Angelical Conjunctions: The Intersection of Religion and Medicine 1200-1800 brings together twenty-five scholars who focus on the late medieval and early modern periods. The conference invites us to see the connection between religion and medicine not as an inconvenient deviance of past societies, let alone as a necessarily adversarial relationship, but as a key phenomenon that enlightens a given society’s conceptions of the mind and the body, and how the society negotiates these competing conceptions. The connection between medical and spiritual practices took many forms over the centuries, from the pious provision of health care (in person or through endowed charity), to the archetypal figure of the healing prophet. Yet despite decades of specialized research, a coherent and analytical history of the "angelical conjunction" itself remains elusive.
Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understand of Indian secularism.
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Ms. Salua Fawzi on her successful PhD oral defense on March 13, 2019, entitled “Experiencing Islam in America: Muslim Students Associations". Her academic supervisor was Professor Setrag Manoukian.