Calendar

All seminar meeting dates (except Sept 17) are open to the whole academic community.

Sept 10, 2009
Ahmed El Shamsy, History UNC. Ahmed El Shamsy is an assistant professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research and teaching focus on the history of North Africa and the Middle East between the seventh and fifteenth centuries. He is particularly interested in intellectual history, cultures of orality and literacy, education, and Islamic law. He received his PhD from Harvard University, where his doctoral dissertation examined the early evolution of Islamic law and its institutions in ninth-century Egypt. His recent publications include articles in the Journal of the American Oriental Society and in Islamic Law and Society.

Oct 1, 2009
Banu Gokariksel, Geography and International and Area Studies, UNC
On October 1st at 6pm, Professor Banu Gokariksel will present a paper entitled, "Spaces and Subjects of 'Veiling-Fashion' Turkey", followed by a time for discussion. Banu Gokariksel is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research engages in a critical re-assessment of neoliberal globalization, dimensions of public space, and identity-formation through contemporary everyday Islamic and secular practices and ideologies in Turkey. She has been doing ethnographic fieldwork research in Istanbul since 1996. Her primary research questions have examined competing and contested secular and Islamic visions and practices of contingent modernity in mall spaces, cultural politics of dress, and consumer capitalism. Her publications have appeared in the journals Area, Global Networks and Social and Cultural Geography and in the edited book Gender, Religion and Space. She is currently working on a NSF-funded project on the transnational veiling-fashion industry based in Turkey.

Oct 15, 2009 -
Carl Ernst, Religious Studies and the Director of the Carolina Center for the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, UNC
Carl W. Ernst is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. His published research, based on the study of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, has been mainly devoted to the study of Islam and Sufism. His most recent book, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World (UNC Press, 2003), has received several international awards, including the 2004 Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Achievement. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright, NEH, and Guggenheim programs, and he has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current research projects include Muslim interpretations of Indian religions, the literary interpretation of the Qur'an, and the poetry of al-Hallaj. His publications include Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond (co-authored with Bruce Lawrence, 2002); Teachings of Sufism (1999); a translation of The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master by Ruzbihan Baqli (1997);Guide to Sufism (1997); Ruzbihan Baqli: Mystical Experience and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (1996); Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (1993); and Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (1985). He studied comparative religion at Stanford University (A.B. 1973) and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1981), and has done research tours in India (1978-79, 1981), Pakistan (1986, 2000, 2005), and Turkey (1991), and has also visited Iran, Egypt, the Gulf, and Uzbekistan. He has taught at Pomona College (1981-1992) and has been appointed as visiting lecturer in Paris (EHESS, 1991, 2003), the University of Seville (2001), and the University of Malaya (2005). On the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 1992, he has been department chair (1995-2000) and Zachary Smith Professor (2000-2005). He is now William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor (2005- ) and Director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. He and Bruce Lawrence are co-editors of the Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks Series at the University of North Carolina Press.

Nov 5, 2009
Akram Khater, Religion, NC State Dr. Akram Khater is Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. His work focuses on the social and cultural history of Lebanon. His first book, titled Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921, examines how immigration transformed peasants in terms of class and gender. He is also interested in how “modernity” was constructed in the process through architectural and educational transformations. His forthcoming book, titled Embracing the Divine: Christianity, Gender and Politics in the Middle East, 1720-1798, looks at the concept of religious modernization through the lens of gender and sectarianism. In particular, he is tracing how some women and Christians use the trope of exclusion to empower and transform themselves from minorities to majorities.

Nov 19, 2009 - UPCOMING EVENT!
Claudia Koonz, Ph.D., Professor and Peabody Family Chair, History, Duke University. Dr. Koonz’s research examines the role of public culture, popular science and expert opinion in creating negative opinions about and justifying the violence toward ethnic and sexual minorities. In "The Nazi Conscience," her focus was on the Third Reich (1933-1939) and how mainstream Germans were led to believe that Jews, homosexuals, Roma (Gypsies) were so "alien" that they scarcely counted as human at all. In her current research she examines contemporary Europeans' reactions to Muslim women who wear the headscarf, or "hijab." She is particularly interested in the subtle prejudices common in generally liberal milieus. Identifying visual and textual representations of the "hijab" in mass-market media of Germany, France, and the U.K., her current project analyzes the production of ethnic panic in countries where immigration is economically essential, but immigrants are culturally marginalized.

Dec 4-5, 2009
CONFERENCE: Gender, Minorities, Constitutions