New Article by Prof. Rula Abisaab
The essay "Writing Islamic Legal History" is part of the Islamic Law Blog’s Roundtable on Islamic Legal History & Historiography, edited by Intisar Rabb (Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Law School) and Mariam Sheibani (Lead Blog Editor, University of Toronto). Read it here.
Congratulations Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Professor Rula Jurdi Abisaab on her Arabic-language novel “Fi ʿulbat al-ḍawʾ” [A Box of Light] being selected as a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Khayrallah Prize for Best Artistic Expression of the Lebanese Diaspora. The winner will be announced in January.
Rhodes Scholarships for Faculty of Arts students
The Institute of Islamics Studies would like to send a warm congratulations to Abdel Dicko, a U3 Joint Honours Political Science and African Studies student, and Ffion Hughes, a U4 Honours in History student, both have been named 2021 Rhodes Scholars. Please see link below by Neale McDevitt, Editor, McGill Reporter for more details.
Online lecture series ReOrienting the Global Study of Religion Event
Dr Florian Zemmin, Leipzig University - The Secular in Middle East and Islamicate History
November 26, 2020, 1:30 PM EST (UTC -5).
Hosted on Zoom
For more information: https://www.mcgill.ca/religiousstudies/channels/event/reorienting-global-study-religion-325493
Book Launch (virtual) | The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020)
Please join us for the book launch of The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian (2020) edited by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, Senior Lecturer of Persian Language and Linguistics, McGill University.
The launch will begin with a conversation with the editor moderated by Anaïs Salamon, Head, Islamic Studies Library, McGill University, followed by a panel discussion featuring authors of selected chapters:
- Karine Megerdoomian, Principal Artificial Intelligence Engineer, Judiciary & Legal Technology Modernization Department, MITRE Corporation
- Nahal Akbari, Assistant Clinical Professor and Director of Persian Language Program, University of Maryland
- Michelle Quay, Assistant Instructional Professor, University of Chicago
- Asghar Seyed-Gohrab, Chair and Professor of Persian and Iranian Studies, Utrecht/Leiden University
- Mahbod Ghaffari, Associate in Persian Language and Culture, University of Cambridge
Congratulations Professor Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
The IIS congratulates Professor Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi on her newly published book chapter, "A Cultural Linguistic Survey of Nuances in Translation", in the volume Persian Linguistics in Cultural Contexts. Edited by Alireza Korangy and Farzad Sharifian as part of the series: Routledge Studies in Linguistics.
Persian Linguistics in Cultural Contexts - 1st Edition - Alireza Kora - Routledge & CRC Press
Korangy and Sharifian’s groundbreaking book offers the first in-depth study into cultural linguistics for the Persian language. The book highlights a multitude of angles through which the intricacies of Persian and its many dialects and accents, wherever spoken, can be examined.
WIMES Arabic Minor Student Ian Greer Wins in CMCC Essay Competition
Ian Greer, a double-major in PoliSci and Geography with an Arabic language minor, was one of seven international winners in the undergraduate essay competition held by the Centre for Muslim Contribution to Civilisation (CMCC) at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS) at Hamad Bin Khalif University. The subject of this year’s competition was ‘Muslim Intellectual Life in 2nd Century Hijri/8th Century CE Baghdad.’, and Ian entered his essay with the title “Zindīq Heresy and the Transmission of Hellenism in Barmakid Baghdad”.
Ian describes the work on his entry as a long but rewarding process that took months of work, and credits some students at the Institute of Islamic Studies for their contribution: “I really could not have done it without the valuable reading suggestions and academic writing tips of a number of current and former graduate students at the Institute, namely Osama Eshera, Brian Wright, Fariduddin Attar, and Zain Alattar, the last of whom loaned me a huge stack of books sitting on his carrel on the very last day of physical access to the Islamic Studies library before the Coronavirus shut everything down.”
The award Ian received for his work is USD 5,000. Congratulations, Ian, from everybody at the Institute of Islamic Studies!
For more information:
Gulf Times | Qatar Tribune | Al-Watan | Al-Raya | Al-Sharq | Lusail | MENAFN – JO
Congratulations to Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan and Dr Fateme Savadi
Congratulations to IIS PhD student Sajjad Nikfahm-Khubravan and IIS Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Fateme Savadi (PhD 2019), on the publication of their critical edition of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s al-Risālah al-Muʿīniyyah, along with Ṭūsī’s supplementary Ḥall-i Mushkilāt-i Muʿīniyyah (Tehran: Miras-e Maktoob, 2020). The volume includes a preface by recently retired IIS professor F. Jamil Ragep.
For more information, please use the following link: https://ismi.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/page/muiniyya-edition-2020.
XVI. Great Lakes Ottomanist Workshop (GLOW): Bi-weekly Zoom gatherings. November 20, 2020 - January 22, 2021.
Please see the 
GLOW Workshop Program for details and Zoom links for each session.
Zoom Panel: 'Sociological and Pedagogical Aspects of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages'
The Persian Program at McGill University, represented by Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, is inviting to a Zoom panel discussion on Sociological and Pedagogical Aspects of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages. Please consult the document for details and registration: Social and Pedagogical Aspects of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages
Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi at Webinar on Persian Pedagogy
Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi has been invited to co-organize a webinar and present a paper at a panel on Persian Pedagogy in University of North Carolina (UNC). The virtual panel discussion will take place on Thursday, October 15, 2020, 11 am - 1 pm EST. For information, please see here: Persian Pedagogy UNC.
Congratulations to Dr. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Shabani-Jadidi on the publication of The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian. It offers a detailed overview of the field of Persian second language acquisition and pedagogy. The Handbook discusses its development and captures critical accounts of cutting edge research within the major subfields of Persian second language acquisition and pedagogy, as well as current debates and problems, and goes on to suggest productive lines of future research.
More information here.
Congratulations to our Islamic Studies MA student Caline Nasrallah
McGill University’s Institute of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF) has awarded Institute of Islamic Studies MA student Caline Nasrallah for one of this year’s Friends Best Paper Prizes for her paper “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Shift between Two Worlds". Congratulations Caline on behalf of the IIS community!
Congratulations to Professor Aslihan Gürbüzel
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Prof. Gürbüzel who has received an Insight Development Grant from SSHRC for her new project, entitled “Medical Knowledge and Political Power: Sufism and the Making of Ottoman Medical Knowledge (1500-1800).” The project studies the involvement of Ottoman Sufi orders in the production and circulation of medical knowledge and in everyday provision of medical care. The broad aim of the project is to demonstrate the social significance and political nature of healthcare and medical knowledge in the pre-modern Ottoman context. This project aims to be the first study that underline the importance of healthcare as a source of authority for sub-state social networks in the Ottoman context in particular, and in Islamic societies in general.
Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Sajjad Nikfahm Khubravan
Congratulations to IIS PhD student Sajjad Nikfahm Khubravan, whose article "The Gnomonic Application of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī’s Linear Astrolabe" has just been published in the Iranian Journal for the History of Science (Tarikh-e Elm). It is available online via this link.
Congratulations to Professor Michelle Hartman
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Michelle Hartman on receiving the College Language Association’s Award for Creative Scholarship for 2020 for her book, Breaking Broken English: Black-Arab Literary Solidarities and the Politics of Language.
College Language Association, founded in 1937 by a group of Black scholars and educators, is an organization of college teachers of English and foreign languages which serves the academic, scholarly and professional interests of its members and the collegiate communities they represent.
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Professor Michelle Hartman
Congratulations to Michelle Hartman on the publication of her newest article, “Zahra’s Uncle, or Where are Men in Women’s War Stories?” which appeared in the winter 2020 edition of the Journal of Arabic Literature in a special issued dedicated to our late IIS colleague and professor, Dr Issa Boullata. It is part of the Women’s War Stories project with Prof. Malek Abisaab, and available open access on the JAL website:
https://brill.com/view/journals/jal/51/1-2/article-p83_4.xml
Congratulations to Dr. Veysel Şimşek
The Institute of Islamic Studies congratulates Dr. Veysel Şimşek on the publication of a volume of collected essays, which he co-edited as a Festschrift for Professor Virginia H. Aksan: Ottoman War and Peace: Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan, edited by Frank Castiglione, Ethan Menchinger and Veysel Şimşek. The book was published by Brill (Leiden).
https://brill.com/view/title/55943?language=en
Quebec City mosque shooting: McGill remembers the victims, three years later
On January 29, members of the McGill and Montreal community gathered in the mezzanine of the Macdonald Engineering Building to honour the victims of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City (CCIQ) shooting. It marked the third anniversary of the tragic incident in which a lone gunman killed six men and injured numerous others following evening prayer at the mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of Quebec City.
Full article by Neale McDevitt (Editor, McGill Reporter) please click here.
Congratulations to Mr. Muhammad Ahmad Munir
The Institute of Islamic Studies would like to congratulate Mr. Muhammad Ahmad Munir on his successful PhD oral defense on January 17th, 2020, entitled, “Development of Khul‘ law: Legal, judicial and interpretive trends in Pakistan”. Muhammad's academic supervisor was Professor Pasha M. Khan.
Congratulations to IIS MA student Caline Nasrallah
MA student Caline Nasrallah has been awarded a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master’s) from the SSHRC for her studies at the IIS. Congratulations Caline!
Please join the Institute of Islamic Studies for a talk commemorating the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting:
ISLAMOPHOBIA AS RACISM
A Critical Phenomenology of Muslim Women's Racialization
A talk by Alia Al-Saji, Associate Professor, Philosophy Department
Friday January 31, 2020
15h00
Morrice Hall - Room 017 (TNC Theatre)
3485 McTavish Street