Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies

Islamic Studies Lecture Series

2019-2020

Presenter: Bernard Freamon
Title: “Possessed by the Right Hand: Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures”
When: Tuesday, March 3, 5:00 PM
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 141 (enter through 241)
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Shuaib Ally – PhD Candidate, University of Toronto
“On the Pragmatic Turn in Quran Commentary”
Wednesday, November 20, 2019, 5:00 PM, Regents 550

Sara Omar – Professorial Lecturer, Yale University
“Genealogy and the Formations of Muslim Discourse”
Thursday, November 21, 2019, 5:00 PM, Regents 550

Rodrigo Adem – Assistant Professor, El Colegio de México
“Themes of Early Ismailism: Beyond the Margins of Classical Islamic Thought”
Friday, November 22, 2019, 5:00 PM, Regents 550

Mohamad Ballan – Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University
“The Last of the Himyarites”: ‘Urūbuyya, Community and Sovereignty in the Medieval Islamic West.”
Monday, November 25, 2019, 5:00 PM, Regents 550

Abdul Rahman Mustafa – Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Paderborn
“Law Beyond Law”
Tuesday, November 26, 2019, 5:00 PM, Regents 550

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2017-2018

Presenter: Wael Hallaq, Columbia University
Title: “Conceptualizing the Human: Toward a New Theory of the Subject”
When: April 25, 6:00 PM in CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)
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Presenter: Sohaira Siddiqui, Georgetown University in Qatar
Title: “Certainty and Continuity: Epistemology, Law and Politics in al-Juwayni’s Thought”
When: February 14th, 6:00pm in CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)
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Presenter: Guy Burak, New York University
Title: “Prayers, Commentaries and the Edification of the Ottoman Supplicant (1500-1750)”
Where: November 15th, 6:00pm in Mortara Center (located at the corner of 36th and N Streets)
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Presenter: Tony Street, University of Cambridge
Title: “Reckoning and Recounting: Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi’s Philisophical and Quranic Commentaries”
When: January 31st, 6:00pm in CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)
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Presenter: Ahmet Targon Karamustafa, University of Maryland
Title: “Vernacular Islam: Historical Perspectives on Muslim Identity.” 
When: October 18th, 6:00pm
Where: Mortara Center (located at the corner of 36th and N Streets) Islamic Studies
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2016-2017

Presenter: Sabine Schmidtke, Institute for Advanced Study – Princeton
Title: “Preserving, Democratizing, and Studying the World Heritage of Islamic Manuscripts: The Zaydi Manuscript Tradition”
When: 1 March, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)
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Presenter: Robert Wisnovsky, McGill University
Title: “Abduh and the Avicennian synthesis”
When: February 2, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)
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Presenter: A. Kevin Reinhart, Dartmouth College
Title: “What to think about before we think about (Islamic) ritual”
When: 9 November, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)
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Presenter: Fouad Ben Ahmad, Dar el-Hadith el-Hassania – Rabat
Title: “The Arabic Reception of Averroes in Muslim Spain. New Findings in Ibn Ṭumlūs’s Book of Logic”
When: 5 October, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom (ICC 241)

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2015-2016

Presenter: Asad Ahmed, University of California – Berkeley
Title: “Patronage, Sectarianism, and the History of Rationalism in Post-Classical Islam”
When: 13 April, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Conference Room, ICC 241
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Presenter: Maria Mavroudi, University of California – Berkeley
Title: “Greek philosophical texts at the court of Mehmed the Conqueror”
When: 16 March, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Conference Room, ICC 241
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Presenter: Dimitri Gutas, Yale University
Title: “The History of Science up to Avicenna and the Intentions of the Philosophers after him”
When: 3 February, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Conference Room, ICC 241
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Presenter: Ahmed Ibrahim, McGill University
Title: “Child Custody in Islamic and International Law of the 17th to 19th Centuries: A Comparative Legal Approach”
When: 28 October, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Conference Room, ICC 241
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Presenter: Ahmed El Shamsy, University of Chicago
Title: “The Epistemology of the Miraculous”
When: 30 September, 6:00pm
Where: ICC 450
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2014-2015

Presenter: Rumee Ahmed, University of British Columbia – Canada
Title: “Shari’a 2.0: Islamic Systematics and the Science of Islamic Legal Reform”
When: 22 April, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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Presenter: Joseph Lowry, University of Pennsylvania
Title: “Law and the Fulfillment of the Law in the Qur’an.”
When: 1 April, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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Presenter: Alexander Key, Stanford University
Title: “Thinking about maʿnā after Richard Frank”
When: 18 March, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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Presenter: Nicolai Sinai, University of Oxford
Title: “Interpreting the Medinan Qur’ān”
When: 11 February, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241

Presenter: Suleiman Mourad, Smith College
Title: “Why do we need Tafsīr? The Muʿtazila Perspective”
When: 21 January, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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Presenter: Thérèse-Anne Druart, The Catholic University of America, DC
Title: “Why music matters for language and interpretation: al-Fārābī”
When: 19 November, 6:00pm
Where: ICC 450
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Presenter: Nadja German, University of Freiburg
Title: “Words and their Meaning: The Problem of Signification (waḍʿ) in Early Islamic Thought”
When: 15 October, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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2013-2014

Presenter: Michaelle Browers, Wake Forest University
Title: “Democratic Citizenship and National Identity in Contemporary Arab Political Thought”
When: 14 November, 5:30pm
Where: ICC 462
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Presenter: Charles Butterworth, University of Maryland
Title: “Alfarabi on Politics and Legislators as opposed to Lawgivers”
When: 3 October, 5:30pm
Where: Mortara Conference Room 
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Presenter: Ovamir Anjum, University of Toledo
Title: “Ibn Taymiyya and the Islamic State”
When: 12 September, 5:30pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241


2012-2013

Fall 2012 – From Late Antiquity to Early Islam

Presenter: Antoine Borrut, University of Maryland
Title: “Memory and Power in Early Islamic Syria”
When: 28 November, 6:00pm
Where: Mortara Center

Presenter: Nancy Khalek, Brown University
Title: “John the Baptist in Medieval Damascus”
When: 7 November, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241

Presenter: Robert Hoyland, ISAW – New York University
Title: “Arab Conquests or Islamic Conquests?”
When: 24 October, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241

Presenter: Jack Tannous, Princeton University
Title: “What difference did Islam make? Christians, Muslims, and the End of the Ancient World”
When: 26 September, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241

Spring 2013 – Qur’anic Studies in memory of Barbara Stowasser

Presenter: Ayesha Chaudhry, The University of British Columbia
Title: “An Issue of Cosmological Proportions: Constructing Gender in Pre-Modern and Modern Tafsir”
When: 20 March, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241

Presenter: Shahab Ahmed, Harvard University
Title: “The Problem of the Satanic Verses and the Formation of Islamic Orthodoxy”
When: 27 February, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241

Presenter: Karen Bauer, Institute for Ismaili Studies
Title: “Who does the Housework? Interpretations of the Qur’anic Ethics and Etiquette of Marriage”
When: 30 January, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241


2011-2012

Presenter: Louise Marlow, Wellesley University
Title: “Between Wisdom and Philosophy: Exemplary Texts in a Tenth-Century Mirror for Princes”
When: 15 March, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
**Recommended reading for this talk.
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Presenter: Frank Griffel, Yale University
Title: “Deism in Islam? The Context of al-Ghazali’s Condemnation of the Position that God Doesn’t Know Individuals”
When: 16 February, 6:00 pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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Presenter: Walid Saleh, University of Toronto
Title: “Tafsir Studies and the Study of the Past”
When: 26 January, 6:00pm
Where: Mortara Building
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Presenter: Wadad Kadi, University of Chicago
Title: “Security Positions Under the Umayyads”
When: 3 November, 6:00pm
Where: Mortara Building
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Presenter: Baber Johansen, Harvard University
Title: “The limits of change and contingency in the history of Muslim Law”
When: 6 October, 6:00 pm
Where: ICC 462
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Presenter: David Powers, Cornell University
Title: “The Making of the Last Prophet”
When: 15 September, 6:00pm
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 241
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2010-2011

Presenter: Wilferd Madelung, Oxford University
Title: Social Legislation in Sûrat al-Ahzâb
When: 14 April, 2011
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Presenter: Jonathan Brockopp, Pennsylvania State University
Title: “The Lost Manuscripts of Egypt: Reconstructing the Earliest School of Islamic Law”
When: 17 March, 2011
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Presenter: Fred Donner, University of Chicago
Title: “How Muhammad’s Movement Became Islam: The Qur’anicization of Early Islamic Political Terminology”
When: 24 February, 2011
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Presenter: Michael Cook, Princeton University
Title: “An Early Text of an Epistle of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab”
When: 4 November, 2010
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