Islamic Studies and Ottoman Studies Panels at MESA 2019

As a resource for our readers, the Maydan presents panel, session and paper information related to Islamic Studies and/or Ottoman Studies at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on 14-17 November, 2019.

Get a pdf version of the complete program book here.

Ottoman Political Economy in the Mediterranean (5433) 

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA

Organized by Ellen M. Nye

Chair: Maurits Van Den Boogert, Brill

  • Irena Fliter, U Goettingen–The Commerce of the Camondos: Jewish Merchants between Ottoman and European Authorities in the Late Eighteenth Century
  • Michael Talbot, U Greenwich–Peaceful Commerce and the Abode of Holy War: Regulating Trade between Algiers and Western Europe in the Eighteenth Century
  • Ellen M. Nye, Yale–Ottoman Monetary Policy and the Shaping of Inter-Imperial Credit Relations at the Turn of the 18th Century

 

From Libya to Lausanne: International Law, Diplomacy, and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty in Wartime (5491)

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA

Organized by Pinar Odabasi Tasci and Kate Dannies

Chair/Discussant: Lale Can, City Col of New York CUNY

  • Will Smiley, U New Hampshire–A Question of Interest: The Russian Indemnities Arbitration and Its Eurasian Context
  • Pinar Odabasi Tasci, U Akron–Edirne during the Balkan Wars: Reclaiming Sovereignty and Utilizing Violence in the Ottoman Western Borderlands
  • Kate Dannies, Miami U–The 1917 Law of Family Rights and the Ottoman Quest for Sovereignty in World War I
  • Aimee Genell, U West Georgia–From the Legalist Empire to the Sovereign State: International Law at the Treaty of Lausanne

 

Race in the Middle East (5619)

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA Roundtable

Organized by Sherene Seikaly Chair: 

  • Sherene Seikaly, UC Santa Barbara 
  • Sophia Azeb, U Chicago
  • Eve Troutt, U Penn
  • Marc Lamont Hill, Temple U

 

Mapping Connections across Space and Time: Combining Ethnography and Radical Cartography in Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul 5682

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA

Organized by Carl Rommel and Patricia Scalco

  • Carl Rommel, U Helsinki–Spatial Connections and Temporal Inflections: Mapping Large and Small Egyptian Projects (Mashari‘) through Ethnography and Cartography
  • Patricia Scalco, U Helsinki–SpatioTemporal (Dis)Connections in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar: Ethnographic and Cartographic Insights on the Politics of Location through the Centuries-old Carpet Trade
  • Samuli Lähteenaho, U Helsinki– Circulation of Waste and the Deferral of Future on the Littoral of Beirut
  • Philippe Rekacewicz, U Helsinki– Ethnographic Insight through the (Radical) Cartographer’s Eye: Mapping Spatiotemporal (Dis)Connections in Three Middle East Contexts

 

Sufism in Medieval and Ottoman Times 5742

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA 

Chair: Madeline Zilfi, U Maryland College Park

  • Mustafa Kaya, U Chicago–Between Comradery and Conflict: Narratives of Encounters between Sufis in the Fifteenth Century
  • Caitlyn Olson, Harvard–Commanding Right Belief and Forbidding Wrong: Islamic Theology for the 10th/16th-Century Moroccan Masses
  • Christian Blake Pye, U Texas Austin– Tahqiq and Human Perfection: The Impact of the Philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi on Early-Modern Sovereigns
  • Baris Basturk, U Arkansas–Erefolu Rumi: A Shaykh Between “High” and “Popular” Sufi Islam

 

Thematic Conversation Mapping Islam in Middle America 5449

8:00-10:00am Room TBA

Organized by Camila Pastor de Maria y Campos, Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas 

  • Miguel Fuentes Carreno, UC Santa Barbara 
  • Brittany Dawson, UC Berkeley 
  • Mariam Saada, UCLA

 

Slaves as Agents and Free People as Low-Status Dependents: The Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Worlds 5456

8:00-10:00am Room TBA

Organized by Suraiya Faroqhi, Ibn Haldun U, Istanbul 

  • Veruschka Wagner, U Bonn–De Jure Legal Property, De Facto Social Agents –An Analysis of the Legal and Factual Status of Slaves in 16th and 17th Century Istanbul Court Registers 
  • Dina Rizk Khoury, George Washington U–Documenting and Regulating Slaves and Bonded Laborers in the Persian Gulf 1880s-1920s 
  • Amal Sachedina, George Mason U–The Lasting Legacy of Slavery in the Politics of Social Interactions in Nizwa, Oman 
  • Betul Argit, Marmara U–Freed Palace Slaves and Their Former Owners in the Ottoman World: The Role of Inheritance

 

Reconsidering Jihadism 5511

8:00-10:00am Room TBA

Organized by Mark Sedgwick 

Chair: Anne Stenersen, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment 

Discussant: Brynjar Lia, U Oslo 

  • Anthony Celso, Angelo State U–Sunni Jihadist Groups and Their Progressive Development of a Total War Doctrine 
  • Thomas Hegghammer, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment–Muslim Foreign Fighting in the Early 20th Century 
  • Bjarke Aae, Aarhus U–Intra-Jihadi Contention and Its Wider Effects: The Case of Libya 
  • Mark Sedgwick, Aarhus U–The Muslim Brothers and the Origins of Modern Jihadism

 

Articulating Community and Inter-confessional Interactions across the Middle East and North Africa 5531 

8:00-10:00am Room TBA 

Organized by Richard Antaramian and Murat C. Yildiz 

Chair: Michelle U. Campos, U Florida 

Discussant: Lior B. Sternfeld, Penn State U 

  • Sinem Adar, Humboldt U–Rethinking the Relationship between Family Law Pluralism and Modern Nation-State 
  • Richard Antaramian, U Southern California–Armenians and Sufis 
  • Murat C. Yildiz, Skidmore Col–Sports and Communal Boundaries in Late Ottoman Istanbul 
  • Chris Silver, McGill U–Cosmopolitan Nationalism? Border-Crossing Music and the Making of the Nation in the Interwar Maghrib

 

Between Ayans, Janissaries and Centralization: 19th Century Ottoman Provincial Political Economy before 1850s 5542 

8:00-10:00am Room TBA 

Organized by M Safa Saracoglu 

Chair: Christine Philliou, UC Berkeley 

  • M. Safa Saracoglu, Bloomsburg U–After the Janissaries, before Midhat Pasha: Ottoman Provincial Economic Institutions between 1826 and 1849 
  • Ugur Bayraktar, Universitat Basel–Transcending the Local: Empire, Notables, and Administration in Ottoman Albania and Kurdistan, 1835-1878 
  • Selçuk Dursun, Middle East Technical U–Provincial Political Ecology in the Ottoman Empire: Management of Royal Forests and Local Politics before 1850s

 

Zionism at Imperial Crossroads: From Fin de Siècle Anatolia to 1948 Palestine 5627

8:00-10:00am Room TBA 

Organized by Omri Eilat 

Chair/Discussant: Hillel Cohen, Hebrew U 

  • Omri Eilat, Tel-Aviv U–Ottomanizing the Professional Elite of the Jewish Yishuv, 1890-1918 
  • Dotan Halevy, Columbia U–The Zionist Gaza: Utopia and Ruins at an Imperial Borderland 
  • Liora Sion, U Copenhagen–The Colonial Legacy of the British Mandatory Rule and the Assassination of British Agents 
  • Louis Fishman, Brooklyn Col CUNY– Modern Jewish Settlements in Ottoman Anatolia: Between Ottomanism and Zionism

 

Women’s Tafsir: Beyond Feminism

10:15am-12:15pm Room TBA 5505 

Organized by Ellen McLarney and Hina Azam 

Sponsored by the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) 

  • Hina Azam, U Texas Austin–Women and Gender in the Qur’an: A Narrative Ethics Approach 
  • Hanadi Al-Samman, U Virginia–Towards a Queer Qur’anic Tafsir 
  • Ellen McLarney, Duke U–Qur’an Tafsir in Popular Culture: Bint al-Shati’s Literary Interpretations 
  • Jamila Davey, U Texas Austin–The Beauty of Joseph and the Gendered Gaze: Assia Djebar’s Literary Account of Sura XII

 

Non-Sunni Muslims, Yezidis, and the (Local) Ottoman State: Politics of Difference between Persecution and Accommodation

10:15am-12:15pm Room TBA 5512 

Organized by Benjamin Weineck 

Chair/Discussant: Vefa Erginbas, Providence Col 

  • Ines Asceric-Todd, U Edinburgh–Heretics, Atheists or Simply Undesirable? The Ottoman Officials’ Treatment of Bayrami-Melami Sufis and the Anatolian Kizilbas in the Late 16th Century 
  • Benjamin Weineck, U Bayreuth– Kizilbash and Nusayri in the Ottoman State, 16-18th Centuries: Ottoman Strategies of Accommodation in Comparative Perspective Bahadin H. Kerborani, U Chicago–Yezidi Resistance on the Peripheries of the Ottoman Empire 
  • Thomas Kuehn, Simon Fraser U–Zaydi Elites Claim an Ottoman Yemeni Fatherland: Negotiating Imperial Citizenship in Ottoman Yemen, 1908-1914

 

“Ancient” Knowledge and “New” Learning in the Early Modern Ottoman World

10:15am-12:15pm Room TBA 5640 

Organized by Side Emre 

Chair: Taylor M. Moore, Rutgers U 

  • Carlos Grenier, Florida International U– Solomon, His Temple, and Ottoman Imperial Anxieties A. 
  • Tunç Sen, Columbia U–Rivalry of “Occult” Powers and Sufi Disdain for Astrologers in the Ottoman World 
  • Side Emre, Texas A&M U–“Mystical Cosmologies” in Early Modern Ottoman Sufi Literature: An Analysis of Letters, Numbers, and Diagrams

 

Islamic Theologies and Ideologies

10:15am-12:15pm Room TBA 5745 

Chair: Youssef Yacoubi, Seton Hall U 

  • Maryam Alemzadeh, Brandeis U– Bringing Religion Back In: Cultural Practice and Post-Revolutionary Institution Building in Iran (1979-80) 
  • Dragos Stoica, Independent Scholar– No Sovereignty but God’s Sovereignty: A Comparison between Sayyid Qutb’s Doctrine of Hakimiyyah and Rousas Rushdoony’s Reconstructionist Theonomy 
  • Zeynep Oktay Uslu, Bogaziçi U–Alevism as Islam: How Alevi Poetry Forces Us to Rethink Shahab Ahmed’s Conceptualization of Islam 
  • Nadav Samin, National U Singapore–The Making of a Da’wa: Muhammad b. ‘Abd alWahhab between Poesy and Scripture 
  • Harald Viersen, Radboud U Nijmegen– Meaning and Islam: Tracing Wittgenstein in the Writings of Talal Asad

 

Politics and Resistance in the Ottoman Balkans

10:15am-12:15pm Room TBA 5773 

Chair: Amy Singer, Brandeis U 

  • Naqaa Abbas, Qatar U–Ali Pasha of Yannina and the Manipulation of Orientalism 
  • Fredrick Walter Lorenz, UCLA–Migrants, Militias, and Martinis: Generative Forces of Local Security in the Late Ottoman Balkans 
  • K. Herman Adney, UCLA–Rebellion on the White Sea: The Peasant Challenge to Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Macedonia and Thrace 
  • Jelena Radovanovic, Princeton–Negotiating Property of Pious Foundations in Post-Ottoman Niš 
  • Mohamed Abdou, NYU–Waqf Reform as International Treaty: Empire, Sovereignty, and Minority Rights in the Khedival Waqfs in Kavala and Thasos, 1902-1924

 

Imperial Creditors, Global Crises: Views from the Ottoman Provinces 5675 

12:30pm-2:30pm Room TBA 

Organized by Zoe Griffith

Chair: Antonis Hadjikyriacou, Boğaziçi U 

Discussant: Ali Yaycioglu, Stanford 

  • Zoe Griffith, Baruch Col CUNY–Paying for a New Order: Financiers and Ottoman Reforms in Egypt, 1786-1806 
  • Gürer Karagedikli, Middle East Technical U–Villagers and Waqfs: Credit Activities of Pious Endowments in Rural Societies in Early Modern Ottoman Europe, 1740s-1810s

 

Islam and the West: Discourses, Spaces, and Practices

12:30pm-2:30pm Room TBA 5746 

Chair: Talinn Grigor, UC Davis

  • Sena Duran, U Michigan–Sexual Terror and the Arab Demon: Identifying Ethnoreligious Monstrosity in “The Exorcist” 
  • Semra Horuz, TU Wien – Bilgi U–Ottoman Bourfeois en route: Conceptions of Cityspace, Architecture and Art in 19th Century Ottoman Travelogues on Europe 
  • Ihsan Alkhatib, Murray State U– American Muslims, Law and Interfaith Divorce 
  • Pegah Zohouri Haghian, U Oxford– Negotiating the Politics of Islamic Reformation in the “West:” The Case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Abdolkarim Soroush 
  • Eliana Abu-Hamdi, MIT–The Growing Invisibility of Islamic Space in America: The Case of Park51

 

Transitions in 7th-9th Century Iraq and Syria: Muslims and NonMuslims

2:45pm-4:45pm Room TBA 5438 

Organized by Pamela Klasova 

Sponsored by Middle East Medievalists (MEM) 

Chair: Alison Vacca, U Tennessee 

Discussant: Luke Yarbrough, UCLA 

  • Simcha Gross, UC Irvine–From Local Community to Transregional Authorities: The Spread of Babylonian Rabbinic Influence between the Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods 
  • Pamela Klasova, Bowdoin Col–The Foundation of Wasit: History and Memory 
  • Michael Payne, Brown U–Zandaqa, Race, and the Reactionary Politics of al-Jahiz 
  • Jessica Mutter, Bowdoin Col–Syriac Christian Responses to Islam: Conversion and Apostasy in the Legal Literature

 

Narratives of Selfhood and Accounts of Culpability in the Late Ottoman World

2:45pm-4:45pm Room TBA 5536 

Organized by Ugur Z. Pece 

Chair: Julia Phillips Cohen, Vanderbilt U 

Discussant: Christine Philliou, UC Berkeley 

  • Ümit Selim Kurt, Van Leer Jerusalem Inst– Life and Death from Yemen to Euphrates: Syrian Governor Cemal Pasha in Armenian Memoirs 
  • Secil Yilmaz, Franklin and Marshall Col– Becoming Riza Nur: Selfhood, Desire, and Life in Hayatim ve Hatiratim 
  • Emre Can Daglioglu, Stanford–What Can a Propaganda Book Tell Us about the Genocide? Faiz el-Ghusein’s Memoir on the Armenian Genocide 
  • Ugur Z. Pece, Lehigh U–Reminiscing in Greek, Narrating in Turkish: Constructing Ethnic Origin in Ahmet Cevat Emre’s “Iki Neslin Tarihi”

 

Female Religiosity and Sainthood in Early Modern Iran and Central Asia

2:45pm-4:45pm Room TBA 5695 

Organized by Aziza Shanazarova 

  • Devin A. DeWeese, Indiana U–On His Mother’s Side: Tracing Sanctity and Initiation through Female Ancestors in 18th- and 19thCentury Central Asia 
  • Michael Krautkraemer, Indiana U– Cloistered by the Graves of Her Forefathers: The Genealogy and Hagiography of a Female Saint of Yarkand 
  • Aziza Shanazarova, Indiana U Bloomington–A Female Saint in Muslim Polemics: Aga-yi Buzurg and the Rhetoric of Female Religiosity 
  • Ahoo Najafian, Carleton Col–Soul of the World: Ghazals of Jahan Malik Khatun

 

Covering Muslim Women: Working with Journalists for Accurate Representation

2:45pm-4:45pm Room TBA Thematic Conversation 5715 

Organized by Sarah Gualtieri 

  • Suad Joseph, UC Davis 
  • Sarah Gualtieri, U Southern California 
  • Brahim Chakrani, Michigan State U

 

Medieval Islam and Islamic Law

2:45pm-4:45pm Room TBA 5748 

Chair: Josie Hendrickson, U Alberta 

  • Sami Al Daghistani, Columbia U– Environmental and Economic Ethics: Revisiting the Islamic Tradition 
  • Evan Metzger, UCLA–Not All Zakat Is Equal: Zakat and Legality in Mamluk Egypt 
  • Yasser Sultan, Georgetown USpace & Gender in Islamic Law: The Early Discourses 
  • Mariam Sheibani, Harvard–Innovation, Borrowing, and the ‘Anxiety of Influence’ in Mamluk Legal Thought: The Case of Ibn ‘Abd al-Salam and al-Qarafi’s Canon Collections 
  • Mohammed Al Dhfar, U Nottingham– Tafsir and the Conflict of the Empires in the 14th Century: Al-Subki on al-Zamakhshari’s Kashshaf

 

Ottoman History: Sources and Perspectives

2:45pm-4:45pm Room TBA 5772 

Chair: Mark Stein, Muhlenberg Col 

  • Melis Hafez, Virginia Commonwealth U– Late Ottoman Moral Entrepreneurs 
  • Patrick Schilling, Georgetown U–Model and Rival: The Image of Russia in Ahmed Midhat Efendi’s “Acâib-i Âlem” (1882) 
  • Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Brigham Young U–Why Did the Noble Corsair Cigala Marry the Dizdar’s Daughter? 
  • Basil Salem, U Chicago–Biographical Dictionaries as Emotional Histories: Towards a New Reading of Biographical Writing in Eighteenth-Century Damascus 
  • Usman Ahmedani, U Amsterdam–For Love and Homeland: The Travels of Abdülhak Hamit Tarhan’s “Tarik”

 

Modes and Methods of Manuscript Publication in the Early Modern Period: The Ottoman, Safavid, and European Realms

5-7pm Room TBA 5391 

Organized by Evren Sunnetcioglu 

Chair/Discussant: John Curry, U Nevada Las Vegas 

  • Aslihan Gurbuzel, McGill U–Manuscript as Family Archive: Notes on the Life of an ‘Ulama Family in Early Modern Ottoman Bursa 
  • Evren Sunnetcioglu, Central European U– From Archival Documents to a Reference Book of Jurisprudence: A Culture of Compiling Legal Opinions in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire 
  • Melis Taner, Özyeğin U–An “Elegant” Compilation Paul Babinski, Princeton–Haqvirdi’s Manuscripts: A Persian Amanuensis in Early Modern Europe

 

Whither Islamic Finance: Beyond Conventional Banking?

5-7pm Room TBA 5393 

Organized by Clement Moore Henry 

Chair: Clement Moore Henry, U Texas Austin (Emeritus) 

Discussant: Ibrahim Warde, Tufts U 

  • Mahmoud El-Gamal, Rice U–The Financial Meeting Point of Three Islamisms: Pietist, Parasitic, and Political 
  • Walid Hegazy, Hegazy & Partners Law Firm–Islamic Finance: What Went Wrong? 
  • Miriam R. Lowi, Col of New Jersey– Islamic Banking and Finance in GCC States

 

Time and Anthropology of Islam

5-7pm Room TBA 5469 

Organized by Delbar Khakzad 

Chair: Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, U Toronto 

  • Hassan Arif, McGill U–Avicenna’s Response to the Challenge of Time and Temporality 
  • Delbar Khakzad, U Toronto–A New Time, a Modern Calendar: The Formation of the Hijri-Shamsi Calendar Alongside the Islamic Hijri Calendar in 19th Century Iran 
  • Parnia Vafaeikia, U Toronto–Iranian Landscapes of the Shi’i Messianism 
  • Hamza Esmili, ENS/EHESS, Paris– GivingTime. About an Islamic Da’awa in Paris Suburbs

 

Beyond Islamic Art: New Approaches to the Material Culture of the Middle East

5-7pm Room TBA 5527 

Organized by Stefan Maneval 

Chair: Stefan Maneval, Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg 

  • Daniella Talmon-Heller, Ben-Gurion U–From Master Copy to Sacred Relic to Museum Artifact: The Vicissitudes of the `Uthmani Qur’an (7th-20th Centuries) 
  • Irfana Hashmi, Whittier Col–The Lockers of Shaykh Ahmad al-Ghunaymi al-Ansari at al-Azhar Mosque, 1634 to 1637 
  • Katie J. Hickerson, U Chicago–The ThreeDome Problem: The Syncretic Architecture of Healing in Sudan 
  • Sara Kuehn, IDEMEC-CNRS–Piercing the Skin: Materializing the Sensory in Rifa’i and Sa’di Dhikr Rituals (Remembrance of God) 
  • Enaya Othman, Marquette U–Crossroad Imagination: The Thob Mediating between Palestinian Material Culture and Gendered Activism

 

Slavery, Power, and the State in the Premodern Islamic World

5-7pm Room TBA 5573 

Organized by Hannah Barker 

Sponsored by Middle East Medievalists (MEM) 

Chair: Matthew Gordon, Miami U 

  • Craig Perry, Emory U–Nubia, the Buja, and the Slave Trade at the Frontiers of Medieval Egypt 
  • Hannah Barker, Arizona State U–Flight, Apostasy, Murder: Resistance by Elite Slaves in the Mamluk Era 
  • Thomas A. Carlson, Oklahoma State U– Enslaving Dhimmis: Rulers, Fiqh, and Religious Diversity in Late Medieval Türkmen States 
  • Baki Tezcan, UC Davis–Empowering the Emasculated: Arabic and Turkish Literary Sources on African Eunuchs

 

Magical Materialities: Toward A History of (Occult) Technology in the Islamicate World from the 13th to the 21st Century

5-7pm Room TBA 5585

Organized by Taylor M. Moore 

Chair: Side Emre, Texas A&M U 

  • Taylor M. Moore, Rutgers U–Occult(ed) Ontologies 
  • Noah Gardiner, U South Carolina–Are Islamic Books of Magic Magical Books? Materiality and Textuality in Medieval Arabic Occult Texts 
  • Nicholas Harris, U Penn–Becoming a Time-Lord: Later Islamicate Alchemy as a Technology of Time Matthew 
  • Melvin-Koushki, U South Carolina–Talismans as Technology: The Construction and Operation of Magical Machines in Early Modern Persian Grimoires and Chronicles 
  • Alireza Doostdar, U Chicago–Sensing Jinn

 

Different Faces of State and Society Relationship in Anatolia during Late Ottoman and Early Republican Era: Negotiation, Conflict or Cooperation

5-7pm Room TBA 5668 

Organized by Mustafa Batman 

Chair: Seda Ozdemir Simsek, Boğaziçi U 

  • Seda Ozdemir Simsek, Boğaziçi U– Different Representations of Greek-Turkish Forced Population Exchange: State and the Middle Class Immigrants in Ayvalik 
  • Mustafa Batman, Yale–Dynamics of Contention: Analyzing Mass Protests in Erzurum and Bitlis 1906 – 1908 
  • Önder Uçar, Boğaziçi U–Young Turk Officials’ Alternative Approaches to the Armenian Question: Two Sub-District Governors of Zeitun
  • Özkan Akpinar, Özyeğin U–Immigrants, Local Tribes and the State: Land Property Disputes in Late 19th Century Sivas

 

Gender on the Line in the Long Nineteenth Century: Translating Violation and Protection in Ottoman and Egyptian Debates about the “Woman Question”

5-7pm Room TBA 5669 

Organized by A. Ebru Akcasu

Chair: Usman Ahmedani, U Amsterdam 

  • Marilyn L. Booth, U Oxford and A. Holly Shissler, U Chicago–Translating ‘Women of Islam’ from Istanbul to Alexandria to Paris 
  • A. Ebru Akcasu, Charles U and Maha AbdelMegeed, AUB–The Woman Question: Historicizing the Debates on ‘Human Nature’ 
  • Claire Savina, Aga Khan Centre, London and Hannah Scott Deuchar, NYU–“Define ‘Rape’?”: Translation and Correction of Sexual Violence across French, Ottoman and Egyptian Penal Codes

 

Contestation, Coup, and Islam in Turkey

5-7pm Room TBA 5722 

Chair: Özde Celiktemel-Thomen, Middle East Technical U

  • Yusuf Sarfati, Illinois State U–Contesting Official Religious Narratives in Turkey: Democratic Islamic Egalitarianism in Ihsan Eliacik’s Works 
  • Timur Hammond, Syracuse U– Remembering to Forget: Memorial Practices of the July 15, 2016 Coup Attempt 
  • Özgür Özkan, U Washington–The Turkish Military’s Social Alienation through Purges and Promotions: The Composition of Officer Corps and Its Implications for the MilitarySociety Relations in Turkey 
  • Nora Fisher-Onar, U San Francisco– Pathways to Pluralism: Islam, Liberalism and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond

 

Islam and Islamist Movements after the Arab Uprisings

5-7pm Room TBA 5743 

Chair: Didier Leroy, Royal Higher Inst for Defence 

  • Guy Eyre, SOAS–Divine Paths to Politics: Salafism, Islamism, and the State in North Africa 
  • Lucia Ardovini, Swedish Inst of International Affairs and Erika Biagini, Dublin City U–Mapping the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Internal Divisions after 2013 
  • Inga Kristina Trauthig, King’s Col London–The New Islamist Scene in Libya: How Did the Salafi-Madkhalis Develop in PostQaddafi Libya? 
  • Quinn Mecham, Brigham Young U– Islamists and the State: Why Some Islamist Groups Survive and Thrive under State Repression

 

From al-Hadi ila al-Haqq to Husayn al-Huthi: The Zaydi Phenomenon in Yemen

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5406 

Organized by Daniel Martin Varisco 

Sponsored by American Inst for Yemeni Studies (AIYS) 

Discussant: Brinkley Messick, Columbia U 

  • Najam Haider, Columbia U–Making an Imam: The Rebellion of Yahya b. ‘Abd Allah in Zaydi Historiography 
  • Alexander Weissenburger, Austrian Academy of Sciences–The ahl al-bayt’s Return to Power: The Legitimation of Religious Rule in the Speeches of Husayn al-Huthi in the Context of the Current Crisis in Yemen 
  • Daniel Martin Varisco, American Inst for Yemeni Studies–Rasulid Sultans and Zaydi Imams: War (Mostly) and Peace (a Little) in Yemen during the 13th-15th Centuries 
  • David B. Hollenberg, U Oregon–Title TBA

 

Conceptualizing Sectarianism(s): Structures and Changes in Modern Lebanon

8:30-10:30am Room TBA Roundtable 5460 

Organized by Rima Majed and Pascal Abidor 

Sponsored by Lebanese Studies Association (LSA) 

Chair: Seda Altug, Boğaziçi U 

  • Linda Sayed, Michigan State U 
  • Joanne Nucho, Pomona Col 
  • Rima Majed, AUB 
  • Joseph Daher, U 
  • Lausanne Pascal Abidor, McGill U

 

Adaptation, Transformation and Transcendence – Sufi Communities in the Contemporary World

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5472 

Organized by Feyza Burak-Adli 

Chair: Annika Schmeding, Boston U and Harvard 

Discussant: Seema Golestaneh, Cornell U 

  • Rose Aslan, California Lutheran U–Art, Sufism, and Politics in Contemporary Istanbul 
  • Annika Schmeding, Boston U and Harvard–The Death of the Pir and the Dream of a New Path – Contemporary Sufism in Afghanistan 
  • Ezgi Guner, U Illinois Urbana Champaign–Turkish Sufi Curricula in Muslim Africa 
  • Feyza Burak-Adli, Boston U–Training Sufis in the Secular U: The Rifaiyye and the Institutional Transformations of Sufism in Turkey

 

The Vocabularies of Islamic Sovereignty: Fashioning Authority in the Medieval Maghrib and Mashriq

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5552

Organized by Ali Karjoo-Ravary 

Discussant: Sara Nur Yildiz, Max-Planck Inst for History of Science 

  • Jonathan Brack, Hebrew U–“The King’s Speech”: The Muslim, Persian, Buddhist and Mongolian Contexts of the Ilkhan Öljeitü’s Questions 
  • Mohamad Ballan, Stony Brook U–“The Last of the Himyarites”: Pre-Islamic Genealogy and Royal Legitimacy in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (1238–1492) 
  • Ali Karjoo-Ravary, Bucknell U– Muhammad’s Song, Firaydun’s Wine: Language and Kingship in 14th Century Anatolia 
  • Enass Khansa, AUB–From Damascus to Córdoba: Kinship and the Construction of the Umayyad Caliphal Model

 

Roundtable Iran’s Revolution Turns 40: Consequences of Islamic Republican Governance

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5643

Organized by Nahid Siamdoust 

Chair: Nahid Siamdoust, Yale 

  • Alireza Doostdar, U Chicago 
  • Nahid Siamdoust, Yale 
  • Nazanin Shahrokni, London School of Economics 
  • Shervin Malekzadeh, Williams Col 
  • Orkideh Behrouzan, SOAS U London 
  • Kevan Harris, UCLA 
  • Hosna Sheikholeslami, Denison U 
  • Ali Kadivar, Boston Col

 

Late Ottoman Communities and the Centralizing State

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5706

Organized by William Bamber and Michael Sims 

  • Pelin Tünaydin, U Washington– Precarious Belonging: The Ottoman Roma at the End of Empire 
  • William Bamber, U Washington–Sartorial Change and the Transformation of Social Order in Mahmud II’s Post-Janissary Reforms 
  • Tuna Basibek, U Washington–The Ottoman Refugee between Enslavement and Abolitionism, 1856-1890 
  • Michael Sims, U Washington–The Impact of April, 1909 on Ottoman Syriac Christian and Kurdish Nationalist Movements

 

Exclusions and Belonging: Identities through Conversion, Slavery, and Family 

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5733 

Chair: Eric Dursteler, Brigham Young U 

  • Bilal A. Kotil, Istanbul, Turkey–“Beyond the Circle of Toleration”: Runaway Slaves, International Law, and Politics of Intimacy in the Late Ottoman Empire 
  • Matthew Sharp, U Penn–Trusting in the Benevolence of the Caliph: Petitions to Abdülhamid II from British Female Converts to Islam 
  • Aykut Mustak, Independent Scholar– Spouse Selection among the Ottoman Élite in the Eighteenth Century 
  • Ezgi Cakmak, U Penn–Remnants of the Past: Encounters with the History of African Slavery in the Early Turkish Republic 
  • Ayse Zeren-Enis, Binghamton U–Women’s Petitioning to the Hamidian State: The Case of Mustafa Edib Pasa’s Family

 

Globalizing Islam 

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5750 

Chair: Nicholas E. Roberts, Sewanee: U the South 

  • Inna Blaich Chemla, Ben Gurion U– Sharia Courts and Legal Pluralism – The Case of Muslim Highlanders in Soviet Dagestan, 1917-1927 
  • Radha Dalal, Virginia Commonwealth U Qatar–The Khilafat Movement and the Satirical Press 
  • Jonathan McCollum, Brigham Young U– Young Turks, Hamidian Alliances, and Global Muslim Anticolonial Resistance: Volunteerism in the Italo-Turkish War and the Turkish War of Independence 
  • Glenn E. Robinson, Naval Postgraduate School–Homogenizing Trends in Islam under Globalization: Revisiting Clifford Geertz 
  • John M. Willis, U Colorado–All is a Constant Mobility: Muhammad Iqbal’s Geography of the Middle East

 

Adaptive Emotions: Feelings, History, and Ottoman Society

11am-1pm Room TBA 5401 

Organized by Ido Ben-Ami Chair: Miri Shefer Mossensohn, Tel Aviv U 

Discussant: Julia Bray, U Oxford (UK) 

  • Ayse Dalyan, American U Cyprus– Ottoman Poetry in the Context of Culture, Neuroscience and Emotions 
  • Ido Ben-Ami, Tel Aviv U–Early Modern Imperial Ottoman Architecture and the Notion of Bewilderment/Wonder 
  • Gorkem Ozizmirli, Boston Col–A Traveler’s Fears: Understanding Evliya Çelebi’s Identity and Perceptions in the Seventeenth Century Ottoman Empire
  • Miri Shefer Mossensohn, Tel Aviv U– Professional Jealousy and Envy: Competition among Physicians in the Ottoman World

 

Hybrid Pathways to Resistance in the Islamic World: Islamist Groups in Iraq, Mali, Libya and Lebanon

11am-1pm Room TBA 5474 

Organized by Tine Gade

Organized under the auspices of Hyrbid Pathways to Resistance in the Islamic World (RCN Project 2017-20) 

Chair: Dlawer Ala’Aldeen, Middle East Research Inst 

  • Kjetil Selvik, Norwegian Inst of International Affairs–Juggling Roles and Messages: On the Political Strength of Muqtada al-Sadr 
  • Are John Knudsen, Chr. Michelsen Inst (CMI)–Sheikhs and the City: Urban Pathways of Resistance in Sidon, Lebanon 
  • Morten Boas, Norwegian Inst of International Affairs and Abdoul Wakhab Cissé, ARGA–Appetite Comes with Eating – Religious Actors on the Campaign Trail 
  • Virginie Collombier, European U Inst– Libya’s Salafis after 2011: Conquering or Supporting the Nascent State? 
  • Tine Gade, Norwegian Inst of International Affairs–‘Kurdish Islam’?: The Invention of Sunni Orthodoxy in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

 

Intersex and Trans* Identities and Rights in Islamic Societies

11am-1pm Room TBA 5503 

Organized by Mehrdad Alipour and Indira Falk Gesink 

Chair: Everett K. Rowson, NYU 

  • Shaminder Takhar, London South Bank U–Muslim Hijras, Khawaja Sira and Third Gender Recognition in India Indira 
  • Falk Gesink, Baldwin Wallace U– Intersex and Gender Conforming Surgery: A History of “Islamic” Options 
  • Mostafa Abedinifard, U British Columbia–Masculinist Gheyrat: The Missing Link in Iranian Transgender Studies 
  • Mehrdad Alipour, U Exeter–Intersex and Transsexual People, Gender Conforming Surgery, Medical Treatment, and Illness: A Close Examination of Five Islamic Fatwas

 

On the Margins of Shi’r: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on the Development of Modern Arabic Poetry (Panel I)

11am-1pm Room TBA 5522 

Organized by Adey Almohsen and Hamad Al-Rayes 

Sponsored by Lebanese Studies Association (LSA) 

Chair: Hamad Al-Rayes, Loyola U New Orleans 

Discussant: Terri L. DeYoung, U Washington 

  • Terri L. DeYoung, U Washington– Egyptian Modernism: From the Center to the Periphery 
  • Adey Almohsen, U Minnesota–Before Shi’r, after the Nakba: A History of Palestinian Contributions in Prose-Poetry 1948-63 
  • Esraa al-Shammari, U Penn–Salim Barakat and the Language of Poetry 
  • Hatem Alzahrani, Georgetown U–The Poet as Palm-Tree: Muhammad al-Thubayti and the Re-Imagining of Saudi Identity

 

The Dimensions of Sacred Sound: Analyzing the Various Contemporary Lives of the Islamic Call to Prayer

11am-1pm Room TBA 5560 

Organized by Laura Thompson 

Chair: Ali Asgar Alibhai, U Texas at Dallas 

Discussant: Denise Gill, Stanford 

  • Eve McPherson, Kent State U Trumbull– The Persuasive Voice, the Call, and Neil Armstrong’s “Conversion” to Islam 
  • Laura Thompson, Harvard–Does God Belong in a Discotheque?: Remixing the Islamic Call to Prayer in a Tunisian Nightclub 
  • Ian VanderMeulen, NYU–Medina Acoustics and Immersive Religion: The Islamic Call to Prayer in Rabat’s Traditional Quarter

 

Ibn Khaldun in the Ottoman Empire

11am-1pm Room TBA 5566 

Organized by Vefa Erginbas Chair: Vefa Erginbas, Providence Col Kenan 

  • Inan, Avrasya U–Tursun Bey’s Tarih-i Ebü’l-Feth (1488) and Ibn-i Haldun’s Mukaddime 
  • Vefa Erginbas, Providence Col–Ibn Khaldunism in the Seventeenth Century: Khaldunian Concepts in Katip Celebi’s “Fadhlaka” 
  • Uygar Aydemir, Üsküdar U–Mahmud Nedim Pasha’s “Ayine-i Devlet” as a Modern Khaldunian Political Credo 
  • Madeleine Elfenbein, U Göttingen– Namik Kemal and Ibn Khaldunism in an Age of Nationalist Historiography 
  • Yeliz Cavus, Ohio State U–Between Ibn Khaldunism and Ottoman Exceptionalism: Abdurrahman Seref Efendi’s “Tarih-i Devlet-i Osmaniyye” (“History of the Ottoman State”)

 

Missionaries and Foreigners in the Ottoman Empire 

11am-1pm Room TBA 5771 

Chair: Nancy L. Stockdale, U North Texas 

  • Mary Momdjian, UCLA–From the Mundane to the Intellectual: A Reconstruction of the Life and Times of a Hybrid Levantine Consul through His Inventory 
  • Israa Alhassani, James Madison U– Dorothy Van Ess, a Missionary Educator in Basra 1912-1950 
  • Mazin Tadros, Georgia Gwinnett Col–17th Century Jesuit Reports and the Syrian Other 
  • Devrim Umit, Karabuk U, Turkey–Caught by the Storm: Robert College of Istanbul and the Committee of Union and Progress, 1909-1914 
  • Kathryn Kalemkerian, McGill U–An Encounter between Race and Masculinity: Ottoman Beirut, the Missionaries, and the Case of John Wortabet

 

An Encyclopaedic Collection of Early Modern Knowledge: The Library Inventory of Bayezid II

3-5pm Room TBA Roundtable 5419 

Organized by Ferenc Csirkes Chair: Gulru Necipoglu, Harvard Cornell Hugh Fleischer, U Chicago 

  • Cemal Kafadar, Harvard
  • Noah Gardiner, U South Carolina 
  • A. Tunç Sen, Columbia U 
  • Guy Burak, NYU 
  • Nukhet Varlik, Boğaziçi U-Newark 
  • Pinar Emiralioglu, Sam Houston State U 
  • Sooyong Kim, Koç U 
  • Nikolay Antov, U Arkansas 
  • Aleksandar Shopov, Max Planck Inst for the History of Science 
  • Himmet Taskomur, Harvard

 

Intersections of Sufism and Law in the Maghreb and Mashreq

3-5pm Room TBA 5480 

Organized by Kameliya Atanasova Discussant: Jamal J. Elias, U Penn 

  • Nathan Hofer, U Missouri–Bureaucratic Sufism in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Sultanates 
  • Elias Saba, Grinnell Col–Sufis and Sufism in the Jamal al-Din al-Asnawi’s Biographical Dictionary 
  • Carolyn Baugh, Gannon U–Ibn Khaldun’s Fatwa on Sufism: The Shifa’ al-sa’il fi tahdhib al-masa’il 
  • Kameliya Atanasova, Washington & Lee U–Ibn ‘Abbad’s Fatwa on the Prophet’s Birthday: An Example of Sufi-Legal Discourse in Fourteenth-Century Maghreb 
  • Matthew Ingalls, American U in Dubai– Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Sufism through the Fatwas of Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (d. 974/1567)

 

Concepts on the Move in Transottoman Spaces. Case Studies from the Long 19th Century

3-5pm Room TBA 5487 

Organized by Dennis Dierks and Barbara Henning Chair: Stefan Rohdewald, Giessen U 

Discussant: Michael A. Reynolds, Princeton 

  • Robert Born, Leibniz Inst for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Leipzig–Monument Protection in the Middle East during World War I as an Arena of Transnational Exchange? 
  • Barbara Henning, Otto-FriedrichUniversität Bamberg–Ottoman Concepts of Social Difference from a Transcultural Perspective: Late-Ottoman Layiha-Reports on Tribal Society Lyubomir Pozharliev, Transottomanica, 
  • Justus-Liebig U–Vehicles as “Civilization”: The Steamship Transport between the Danube and the Black Sea in the Second Half of the 19th Century 
  • Dennis Dierks, U Jena–Explaining ‘Science’ and ‘Progress’ at the Periphery. Transimperial Knowledge Circulations in Ottoman and Habsburg Bosnia

 

The Ottoman Capitulations “Revisited:” New Approaches and New Perspectives on a Much-Discussed Ottoman Institution

3-5pm Room TBA 5489 

Organized by Tommaso Stefini Chair: Joshua White, U Virginia 

  • Tommaso Stefini, Yale–An Ottoman Institution or Part of a Mediterranean-Wide Tradition of Charters for Foreign Merchants? The Ottoman Capitulations in a Comparative Perspective (16th-Century) 
  • Ana Sekulic, Princeton–The Making of an Ottoman Document: Tracing the History of the Franciscan Ahdname, 16th-19th Century 
  • Ian Hathaway, European U Inst–Permits, Passes, and the Capitulations. A Comparative View of Travel Papers and Practices from the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire

 

On the Margins of Shi’r: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on the Development of Modern Arabic Poetry (Panel II)

3-5pm Room TBA 5523

Organized by Adey Almohsen and Hamad Al-Rayes Sponsored by Lebanese Studies Association (LSA) 

Chair: Adey Almohsen, U Minnesota 

Discussant: Huda Fakhreddine, U Penn 

  • Nevine Fayek, U Muenster–Arabic Prose Poetry – A Path of Its Own: Reviewing Early Approaches to Prose Poetry from the Egyptian Press Archive of the 1930s and 1940s 
  • Delilah Clark, Francis Marion U– Mediation and Meditation: Fu’ad Rifqa’s Phenomenological Poetry 
  • Rawad Wehbe, U Penn–Khalil Hawi: Poetry on the Margins of Suicide 
  • Hamad Al-Rayes, Loyola U New Orleans– Exhuming the “Dead Chorus” in Qassim Haddad and Amin Saleh’s Al-Jawashin

 

The Dimensions of Sacred Sound: Historicizing the Various Lives of the Islamic Call to Prayer in the Medieval World

3-5pm Room TBA 5561 

Organized by Ali Asgar Alibhai 

Chair: Laura Thompson, Harvard 

Discussant: Lisa Nielson, Case Western Reserve U 

  • Andrew Petersen, U of Wales–The Form and Function of Minarets in Early Islam 
  • Sihem Lamine, Harvard–Minarets in Times of Discord in Fatimid Tunisia 
  • Ali Asgar Alibhai, U Texas Dallas (EODIAH)–Melodies of Power: Understanding Sacred Sound and the Demarcation of Space in Almohad Andalus and the Maghrib

 

Ottoman Politics, Governance, and Authority 

3-5pm Room TBA 5770 

Chair: Carter V. Findley, Ohio State U 

  • Doga Ozturk, Ohio State U–Ottoman Orders and Medals in Egypt: Symbols of Ottoman Consciousness, 1841-1909 
  • Ashley Sanders Garcia, UCLA–Dependent Power: Ottoman Governors and Algerian Elites in Constantine, 1567-1837 
  • Gunes Murat Tezcur, U Central Florida and Yusuf Magiya, Columbia U–Provincial Power & Representation: An In-depth Analysis of the Ottoman and Turkish Governors between 1876 and 2014 
  • Peter Kitlas, Princeton–Ragusa in the Middle?: Exploring 18th Century Diplomatic Mediations between Morocco and the Ottoman Empire Charles Wilkins, Wake Forest U–Mustafa b. Taha (d. 1681) and the Rise of the Urban Notables of Aleppo

 

Mortals and Afterlives: Social and Political Life of Death

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA 5490 

Organized by Asli Zengin Chair: Asli Zengin, Brown U 

Discussant: Sima Shakhsari, U Minnesota 

  • Osman Balkan, Swarthmore Col–Death in the Diaspora: Migration and the Necropolitics of Belonging 
  • Nukhet Varlik, Rutgers U Newark– Governing Bodies and Souls: Death and Burial in Early Modern Ottoman Society 
  • Denise Gill, Stanford–Deathwork, Sensory Ethnography, and the Sonic Remnants of Lives Lived 
  • Asli Zengin, Brown U–“Cemetery for the Unknown”: A Mortal Topography of Social Margins in Turkey 
  • Ali Yaycioglu, Stanford–Inventories of Death: Politics of Post-Mortem Documentality in the Ottoman Empire

 

Ottoman Armenian Subjectivities: Identity and Image on the Eve of Modernity

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA 5673 

Organized by Armen Manuk-Khaloyan Chair: Mustafa Aksakal, Georgetown U 

Discussant: Ipek K. Yosmaoglu, Northwestern U 

  • Hazal Ozdemir, Northwestern U– Denaturalizing Armenians, Recording Their Photographs: Ottoman State Policies towards Armenian Return Migration, 1888-1915 
  • Armen Manuk-Khaloyan, Georgetown U–Reimagining the Past: Ottoman Armenians, Public Heritage, and the Politics of the 1913 
  • Jubilee Irem Gülersönmez, Birkbeck Col– Witnessing the Catastrophe: A Case Study of the German Consulate in Erzurum in 1915

 

Thematic Conversation Everyday Life of Sectarianism in the Middle East: Ambivalent Articulations of “Sectarian” Difference and the “Other” 5716

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA 

Organized by Jenna Rice Rahaim and Yasemin Ipek 

Session Leaders: Jenna Rice Rahaim, Macalester Col and Yasemin Ipek, George Mason U

  • Sumaiya A. Hamdani, George Mason U 
  • Jean-Michel Landry, Carleton U 
  • Sarah Tobin, Chr. Michelsen Inst 
  • Simon Mabon, Lancaster U

 

Medieval Islamic History and Thought 

5:30-7:30pm Room TBA 5747 

Chair: Christian Mauder, Yale 

  • Brian J. Ulrich, Shippensburg U–The Qualities of a Sayyid: A Case of Bedouin Ideals and Cultural Construction in the Ninth Century 
  • Rachel T. Howes, CSU Northridge–The Great Crisis: The Political, Environmental, Intellectual, and Social Dimensions of the Egyptian Famine and Civil War of 1058-1074CE 
  • Elaine van Dalen, Columbia U–Should Physicians Theorize? Ibn Rushd’s Redefinition of the Medical Discipline 
  • Kaveh Niazi, Stanford Online High School–Rhetoric and Power: Political Expediency in Tusi’s Risala-yi Muiniya 
  • Tamer El-Leithy, Johns Hopkins U–The Various Traces of Moral Regulation: New Evidence on the Damascus Fire of 1340

Africa and Africans in Ottoman/Turkish Studies: Past, Present, Future

8:30-10:30am Room TBA Roundtable 5517 

Organized by Michael Ferguson 

  • Michael Ferguson, Concordia U
  • Ezgi Cakmak, U Penn
  • Mostafa Minawi, Cornell U & AUB
  • Ezgi Guner, U Illinois Urbana Champaign
  • Aysegul Kayagil, The New School

 

Scandinavian Emigration to the Islamic Caliphate

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5617 

Organized by Ümit Necef

Organized under the auspices of University of Southern Denmark 

  • Ümit Necef, U Southern Denmark–“I Was After Something I Could Identify With” – An Islamic State Warrior Tells His Story 
  • Henriette Frees Esholdt, Lund U–“Completely Ordinary Girl”: Firsthand Narrative from a Swedish Syrian Traveler Who Joined Islamic State

 

Islamist Politics and Mobilization

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5744 

Chair: Martin Kear, U Sydney

  • Raihan Ismail, Australian National U– Rethinking Salafism: Transnational Networks of Salafi ‘Ulama 
  • Arran Walshe, NYU–Sealed with a Thumbprint: The Epistemology and Poetics of a Martyrdom Contract 
  • Ahmad Kindawi, Rowan U–A New Synthesis: Saudi Salafism and the Contested Ideologies of Muḥammad Surūr 
  • Emy Matesan, Wesleyan U–Organizational Change and the Politics of Exile: Ennahdha and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood 
  • Sumita Pahwa, Scripps Col–Remaking Emotional Selves and Communities: Narratives of Islamist Mobilization in Morocco and Egypt

 

Colonialism, Islamic Law, and Gender

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5752 

Chair: Marya Hannun, Georgetown U 

  • Hassanaly Ladha, U Connecticut–Islamic Law and the Postcolonial State 
  • Josie Hendrickson, U Alberta–Go Ahead and Lie to Me: French-Sponsored Taqiyya in Colonial Mauritania 
  • Katrina E. Yeaw, U Arkansas Little Rock– Colonialism Remembered: Libyan History in Women’s Imagination 
  • Ari Tolany, U Texas Austin–Conflict or Collaboration? Discourses on the Shariat Application Act (1937) and the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act (1939)

 

Society, Culture, and the Economy in the Late Ottoman Empire

8:30-10:30am Room TBA 5788 

Chair: Fariba Zarinebaf, UC Riverside 

  • Ahmet Yusuf Yuksek, NYU–Sufis and the Sufi Lodges in Istanbul in the Late 19th Century: A Spatial Analysis 
  • Onursal Erol, U Chicago–In-Transit: Women’s Publics and Urban Transportation in Ottoman Istanbul 
  • Naz Yucel, George Washington U– Ottoman Political Economy in the Hamidian Era: The Writings and the Career of Sakizli Ohannes Pasha 
  • Ozde Celiktemel-Thomen, Middle East Technical U–Cinema and Entertainment in Imperial Istanbul Ceren Abi, UCLA–Entertainment in Times of War: Istanbul during World War I

 

Education, Gender, and Modernity: Islamic and Secular Schooling in the Middle East and France

11am-1pm Room TBA 5476 

Organized by Dahlia El Zein

Chair: Ami Ayalon, Tel Aviv U 

  • Dahlia El Zein, U Penn–Revisiting State Feminism: Education and Gender in the United Arab Republic 1958-1961 
  • Amina Tawasil, Columbia U–The Howzevi (Seminarian) Women in Iran: Constituting and Reconstituting Paths 
  • Afaf Khoshman (Alkhashman), Columbia U–Socialization and Societal Change-Families Negotiating Changing Education Environment-Al-Rawda Jordan 
  • Carine Bourget, U Arizona–How Can One Be a Muslim French? Religious Studies in Muslim Schools in France

 

Islamic Media and Political Futures

11am-1pm Room TBA 5486 

Organized by Hatim El-Hibri, Yasmin Moll, and Narges Bajoghli

Chair: Narges Bajoghli, Johns Hopkins U 

Discussant: Aaron Rock-Singer, U Wisconsin-Madison 

  • Hatim El-Hibri, George Mason U–The Mediatization of Islam: Hizbullah’s Mleeta Museum, Verticality, and Contemporaneity 
  • Narges Bajoghli, Johns Hopkins U– Iranian Regime Media: Islam, Nationalism, and Political Control 
  • Yasmin Moll, U Michigan–Sovereign Categories: The Concept of Islamic Media in the Arab Postcolony 
  • Marwan M. Kraidy, U Penn–“Islamic State” Media and the Age of Pyropolitics

 

Contested Modes of Islamic Leadership

11am-1pm Room TBA 5498 

Organized by John Walbridge

Chair: John Walbridge, Indiana U 

  • Seyed Amir Asghari, Indiana U–Qāḍī Ṭabāṭabā’ī as a (Hidden) Sufi Master in the Shi’a Seminary 
  • Neset Ulusal, Indiana U Bloomington–A Shaykh in the Ottoman Palace: Ismail Haqqi Bursawi’s Struggle against Moral Decline, Corruption, and Injustice 
  • Andi Herawati, Indiana U Bloomington– Sufi Women in America: Innovation and Adaptation in Muslim’s Spirituality Today 
  • Alexander Shepard, Indiana U Bloomington–Intra-Shi’ite Polemics in Kulayni’s “Usul Al-Kafi”

 

Margins, Marginals, and Marginalities in the Late Ottoman Empire

11am-1pm Room TBA 5594 

Organized by Canan Bolel

Chair/Discussant: Neveser Koker, Arizona State U 

  • Amaan Merali, U Oxford–Righting Wrongs in Late Ottoman Syria: Ismaili Petitions to the Sultan in the Second Constitutional Era 
  • Sebnem Yucel, MEF U, Istanbul–Marginal Spaces/Sheltering the Marginals: Izmir’s Cortijos 
  • Canan Bolel, U Washington–Jewish Body, Jewish Quarter, Jewish Disease: Cholera Epidemics in Late Ottoman Izmir 
  • Nefise Kahraman, U Toronto–Nerves on the Loose: Female Nervousness in Halid Ziya Usakligil’s Early Novels

 

Women as Patrons and Producers of the Islamic Sciences

11am-1pm Room TBA 5635 

Organized by Mirjam Kuenkler

Chair: Behnam Sadeghi, Oxford U 

Discussant: Roy P. Mottahedeh, Harvard 

  • Yasmin Amin, Exeter U–Umm Salamah: A Female Auhority Legitimating the Authorities
  • Yusuf Unal, Emory U–Princesses, Patronage, and the Production of Knowledge in Safavid Iran
  • Edith Szanto, American U Iraq, Sulaimani–The ‘Alimat of Sayyida Zaynab: Female Shi’i Religious Authority in a Syrian Seminary
  • Mirjam Kuenkler, NIAS–Women Islamic Scholars and Jurists in Shi’i Lands

 

Modern Ethnic and Religious Minorities I

11am-1pm Room TBA 5768 

Chair: Marwan D. Hanania, UC Berkeley 

  • Aghil Daghagheleh, Rutgers U–The Genesis of Refusal: The Colonial Encounter and Modalities of Resistance among Arab Communities of Khuzestan in the 18th and 19th Centuries 
  • Pascal Abidor, McGill U–Revisiting the Shi’i Experience under Ottoman Rule: The Political and Economic Lives of the al-Amin Family in Jabal ‘Amil 
  • Andrew Wickersham, U Arizona–Turkey’s Ambivalent Minority: Situating the Alevis within Çağaptay’s Hierarchy of Turkishness

 

Ottoman Genres beyond the Literary: New Methodologies for Tracing Historical Change

1:30-3:30pm Room TBA 5417 

Organized by Isin Taylan and Choon Hwee Koh

Chair/Discussant: C. Ceyhun Arslan, Koç U

  • Sasson Chahanovich, Harvard–A Supernatural Genre: Jafr and Esoteric Revelation in the 15th – 17th Century Ottoman Intellectual World 
  • Isin Taylan, Yale–The Birth of a Genre: Atlas in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Intellectual World 
  • Choon Hwee Koh, Yale–The Post Station Register (Menzil Defteri): Creating New Fiscal Genres and Administrative Knowledge in the Ottoman Empire over the Long 18th Century 
  • Zeinab Azarbadegan, Columbia U–A Provincial Genre?: Baghdad Salnames and Modern Global Administrative Practices 
  • Chloe Bordewich, Harvard–The Afterlives of Ottoman Espionage: Treason, Slander, and the Memoir Genre in the Interwar Middle East

 

Islamism between Cold and Gulf Wars: A Crucial Decade

1:30-3:30pm Room TBA 5459 

Organized by Samuel Helfont and Aaron Rock-Singer 

Discussant: Thomas Hegghammer, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment 

  • Vish Sakthivel, U Oxford–Religion and Polemics in Post-Conflict Algeria 
  • Aaron Rock-Singer, U Wisconsin Madison–Winds of Pious Change: The Consolidation of Salafi Social Practice, 1980-1995 
  • Michael Brill, Princeton–The Muslim Brotherhood in 1990s Iraq: Repression or Accommodation? 
  • Rachel Kantz Feder, Tel Aviv U, Haifa U– The Struggle for Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr’s Authority in Exile: Intra-Iraqi Shi‘i Splits amid Shifting Political Dynamics, 1980-2003 
  • Samuel Helfont, Naval War Col–Baghdad or Riyadh: The Struggle for Islamist Support in the 1990s

 

Syria in Transition from Mamluk to Ottoman in the Late 15th – Early 16th Centuries

1:30-3:30pm Room TBA 5558 

Organized by Linda T. Darling

Chair: Guel Sen, U Bonn 

Discussant: Adam Sabra, UC Santa Barbara 

  • Timothy J. Fitzgerald, James Madison U– Of Renegades and Renaissance Men: Ludovico di Varthema (d. 1517) in Late Mamluk Damascus 
  • Wakako Kumakura, Research Inst for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa–Land Holding and Financial Activities of the Awlād al-Nās: Continuity and Change during the Transition Period 
  • Aleksandar Shopov, Max Planck Inst for the History of Science–Agricultural Manuscripts and the Mobility of Agricultural Science and Practice between Cairo, Damascus, and Istanbul around 1500 
  • Linda T. Darling, U Arizona–A Changing Geopolitical Role for a New Ottoman Province: The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition in Syria

 

Undone Jinns and Dragons: The Limits of the Human and the Borders of the Other in Medieval Islamicate Literatures

1:30-3:30pm Room TBA 5606 

Organized by Alexandra Hoffmann 

  • Allison Kanner-Botan, U Chicago–Women of Paradise: Houris of the Qur’an and Early Islamicate Romance 
  • Samantha Pellegrino, U Chicago–Gender, Magic, and Ontology in the Sirat Sayf bin Dhi Yazan 
  • Alexandra Hoffmann, U Chicago–The Monster within: Sexuality in Iranshah b. Abi Khayr’s Kushnameh 
  • Samuel W Lasman, U Chicago–Snakemen: The Anthropomorphic Dragons of Persian Epic

 

Post-Ottoman Challenges to Imperialism

1:30-3:30pm Room TBA 5683 

Organized by Alp Yenen

Chair: Ramazan Hakki Oztan, U Neuchatel 

Discussant: Houri Berberian, UC Irvine 

  • Sarah Khayati, U Basel–‘L’Orient aux Orientaux’: Middle Eastern Activists under International and National Surveillance in Interwar Switzerland 
  • Remzi Çagatay Çakirlar, Leiden U, EHESS Paris–Anti-British Currents in PostWar Middle East: Transnational Encounters of Kemalists, Bolsheviks, and French Radicals 
  • Alp Yenen, Leiden U–‘Enver & Talaat & the CUP-Jew-German-Bolshevik Combination’: Making Sense of Muslim Revolutionary Societies after World War I

 

Middle Eastern Communities in the US: National and Islamic Identities

1:30-3:30pm Room TBA 5751 

Chair: Kent Schull, Binghamton U 

  • Abdulkader Sinno, Indiana U–Muslim, Christian Arab and Chaldean Paths to Political Integration: Representation, Participation and Activism in Metro Detroit 
  • Sean Widlake, Independent Scholar– Iranian Counterpublics: Social Media, Diaspora, and Changing Culture 
  • Afsane Rezaei, Ohio State U–Framing and Affect in Faith-Based Gatherings of Iranian Women in Southern California 
  • Ehsan Estiri, Ohio State U–Talking to America: How Iranian Public Events in Los Angeles Respond to American Political and Media Discourses 
  • Lydia Yousief, U Chicago–Mapping Community and Its Implications: A Case Study of Copts in Nashville