The Georgetown Arabic Department Graduate Association (GADGA) is very pleased to present the Arabic and Islamic Studies Graduate Colloquium, a forum in which graduate students have the opportunity to present and discuss their research projects, hold academic workshops, and participate in roundtable discussions. The Colloquium aims at encouraging discussions among graduate students and professors over their research and its contribution to the scholarship in the field. It is also open to discuss works-in-progress by more advanced scholars.
Moiz Mohammad — President (2021/2022)
Hatice Ozturk — Treasurer (2021/2022)
E-mail: arabicgradassociation@georgetown.edu
2021-2022
AIS Fellowship and Grant Workshop
Title: AIS Fellowship and Grant Workshop
When: May 16, 2022, 11:00 AM EST
Where: Via Zoom (Zoom link to be shared the week of the event)
Presenters:
Dr. Sara Omar, Georgetown University, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Dr. Anny Gaul, University of Maryland, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Eriko Okamoto, PhD Candidate, Georgetown University, Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Alexander Nikolenko, Colloquium Presentation
Title: “The Ismaʿili Interlude in the Samanid history: the Early Ismaʿili Daʿwah in Khorasan and Mawarannahr”
When: April 20, 2022, 4:00 PM EST
Where: Via Zoom (Zoom link to be shared the week of the event)
Co-sponsored by: The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and The Department of Theology
Abstract:
Ismāʿīlīsm is a branch of Shia Islam and one of the oldest Islamic minoritarian movements that continues to exist today with more than 20 million adherents around the world. Ismāʿīlīsm is usually understood as an oppositional movement to the religious norms and political authority of the Sunni caliphs of Baghdād, challenging established Muslim hermeneutic practices and establishing the vast Fatimid Imamate in the heart of the Muslim world on the Mediterranean, familiar to Western audiences through Crusader histories. During the gradual expansion of the doctrine through the complex system of missionaries (duʿāt) to the Persian provinces and frontiers of Central Asia (Khorasan and Mawarannahr), the Ismāʿīlī “call” (daʿwah) found the response among the different strata of the local population. One of the converts was amir Nasr b. Ahmad (d. 943), the sovereign of the Samanids, the dynasty that governed the eastern provinces of the Caliphate on behalf of the Abbasids. This presentation seeks to explain the phenomenon of the Ismāʿīlī daʿwah from a sociohistorical perspective, focusing on the specific sets of relationships that Ismāʿīlī agents enjoyed with the local population of Khorasan and Mawarannahr.
View the recording here.
Karen McNeil, Colloquium Presentation
Title: “Python for humanities scholars: A little coding goes a long way”
When: March 31, 2022, 3:00 PM EST
Where: Via Zoom (Zoom link to be shared the week of the event)
Co-sponsored by: The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Dr. Maha Nassar, University of Arizona
Title: Equality vs. Freedom: Continuity and Change in the Demands of ’48 Palestinians
When: Friday, February 25th, 2022, 3-4:30 pm EST
Where: Via Zoom (Zoom link to be shared week of the event)
Presenter: Dr. Maha Nassar, University of Arizona
Moderated by: Dr. Jonathan Brown, Georgetown University
Co-sponsored by: The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and The Department of History
Abstract:
In May 2021, as the world’s attention was once again riveted to images of Israel’s violence against Palestinians, thousands of ’48 Palestinians (also known as Palestinian citizens of Israel) rose up in protest. Echoing the chants of Palestinians around the world, they pledged their fidelity to Jerusalem and demanded “hurriya” (freedom). While there is a long history of protest among ’48 Palestinians, a paradigmatic shift has occurred in recent years. Whereas protests in earlier decades were dominated by calls for equality for Palestinians within Israel and for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside it, today younger ’48 Palestinians are increasingly framing their struggle as an integral part of a broader Palestinian demand for unity and national liberation from all forms of Israeli settler-colonialism. In this talk, Dr. Maha Nassar will trace these discursive shifts and discuss what they may mean for the future of Palestinians and Israelis.
View the recording here.
Becoming a PhD Candidate: Strategies for the Comprehensive Exam and the Dissertation
Title: “Becoming a PhD Candidate: Strategies for the Comprehensive Exam and the Dissertation”
When: Monday, November 19, 2021, 3:00 PM (EST)
Where: Via Zoom (https://georgetown.zoom.us/j/95871859530 )
Presenters
- Dr. Rosabel Ansari, Lecturer, Asian and Asian American Studies Stony Brook University
- Dr. Anny Gaul, Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies, University of Maryland
- Ali Cebeci, PhD Candidate Arabic and Islamic StudiesGeorgetown University
- Karen McNeil, PhD Candidate Arabic and Islamic StudiesGeorgetown University
View the recording here.
Marion Katz, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU
Title: “Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity”
When: Monday, November 1, 2021, 3:00 PM (EST)
Where: Via Zoom (https://georgetown.zoom.us/j/95307037448 )
Presenter: Marion Katz, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU
Discussant: Marya Hannun, PhD, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), GU
Abstract:
It is a widely cited fact that classical Islamic law denies that wives have any obligation to do housework. Muslim wives’ exemption from domestic labor was a talking point among Muslims responding to Orientalist stereotypes by the late nineteenth century and was a prominent motif in writings by Muslim feminists in the US starting in the 1980s. Nevertheless, as early as the ninth century CE, the prevalent legal doctrine that wives had no legal duty to do housework stood in conflict with what most Muslim legal scholars understood to be morally and religiously right. They sought to resolve this tension in various ways, from delineating a clear distinction between legal claims and ethical ideals to forging a complete synthesis of the two. As a result, the issue of wives’ domestic labor offers a unique lens for questions about the relationship between Islamic law and ethics that have long been debated in the western academy.
View the video recording here.
Michael Cooperson, Professor of Arabic, UCLA
Title: “Learning Arabic in Pre-Modern Times”
When: Monday, October 18, 2021, 3:00 PM (EST)
Presenter: Michael Cooperson, Professor of Arabic, UCLA
Where: Via Zoom (https://georgetown.zoom.us/j/98171614665 )
Abstract:
Most of the pre-modern Arabic grammar books we have today are too advanced to have been used as foundational teaching texts for Arabic grammar, so how did non-native speakers learn Arabic? In this presentation, Dr. Michael Cooperson explores sources that allude to various dimensions of this learning process. At the same time, he highlights manifestations of anxiety that some non-native speakers seem to have felt when performing in Arabic in this pre-modern context. This anxiety comes through clearly in al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt, which is both a document of multilingualism and an erasure of that some learners who spoke the language poorly were nevertheless able to write it well. Dr. Cooperson proposes a partial explanation of this achievement. A number of sources, chief among them al-Ghuzūlī (d. 1411+) indicate that some learners who spoke the language poorly were nevertheless able to write it well.
Discussant: Mohamed Lamallam, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, GU
*Please note, the talk will be in Arabic followed by the discussion in English. Q&A: English or Arabic
View the video recording here.
Karen McNeil, Colloquium Presentation
Title: “Arabic Vernacular Use Online: A corpus study of a Tunisian internet forum over ten years”
When: October 8, 2021, 3:00 PM (EST)
Where: Via Zoom (https://georgetown.zoom.us/j/95017419100)
View the video recording here.
2020-2021
Eriko Okamoto, Colloquium Presentation
Title: “Prophecy in Arabic and Islamic Philosophy: al-Fārābī’s Psychological Explanation”
When: April 21, 2021, 5:00 PM (EST)
Where: Via Zoom
Saad Yacoob, Colloquium Presentation
Title: “Between Justification and Purpose: Paradigms of Jihad in Abū Bakr al-Sarakhsī’s Theory of Jihad”
When: April 14, 2021, 5:00 PM (EST)
Where: Via Zoom
Marya Hannun, Colloquium Presentation
Title: “Constructing the ‘Impossible State’: Islam, Rights, and Reform in Afghanistan’s First Constitution”
When: March 10, 2021, 5:00 PM (EST)
Where: Via Zoom
Tesneem Alkiek, Colloquium Presentation
Title: Legal Conceptions of Harm in Marriage and Divorce
When: December 9, 2020, 2:30 PM
Where: Via Zoom
Abstract
The Mālikī school of law, unlike the other three Sunnī schools of law, explicitly categorizes the occurrence of harm (ḍarar) as one of the means by which a wife can obtain a divorce. As a result, they are correctly credited with featuring discussions of harm in a much wider and more detailed capacity. In this presentation, I set out to substantiate that Mālikīs’ thorough references to harm is a result of 1) their usage and understanding of the concept of harm itself and 2) their conception of marriage. In short, the Mālikī definition of harm is directly correlated with the rights of the individual and/or of God (ḥaqq al-ʿibād, ḥaqq Allāh). When a right exists, it can be infringed upon, and such infringement constitutes harm. A concern for rights, therefore, is often translated as a concern about harm. Naturally, the rights of individuals and God feature prominently in legal discourse. Since the Mālikī conception of marriage inherently affords more rights to individuals than the other schools of law, we see more discussion and references to harm as a result. Specifically, they grant the wife more rights within the marriage itself than the other schools, and with more rights involved, the room the wife has to experience harm grows. Because Mālikīs understand harm within a “rights” paradigm, their concern for harm—or discussions revolving around harm—is not limited to contexts of physical harm and is thus much more prominent than is often depicted in the current secondary literature. In other words, since harm is understood to occur when one’s rights are infringed upon, it can apply to situations other than hitting, which is often the only lens through which harm is examined. Illustrating the prominence of harm beyond hitting, a goal of this presentation serves two purposes. Number one, it distinctly contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating that Mālikīs’ unique definition of harm lends itself to a broader application to include both the material and immaterial realms. And number two, it is important because it correlates with a larger number of outlets to alleviate harm; a more generous understanding of what constitutes harm provides more room for ramifications for those inflicting harm, and for the purposes of this study, more room for reform efforts.
Umar Shareef, Colloquium Presentation
Title: Navigating New Legal Cases: What the Leading Debates over Tobacco tell us about Islamic Law
When: November 18, 2020, 2:30 PM
Where: Via Zoom
Abstract
Alarmed by the swift dissemination of tobacco in the seventeenth century, Ottoman political and religious authorities judged its consumption to be illegal and religiously prohibited (ḥarām) for the simple reason that it threatened the political and moral order of the Ottoman polity. Instead of stamping out the practice, however, state prohibition merely drove smokers underground where smoking continued to rapidly gain popularity. Unable to effectively curb its growth, political and religious officials subsequently retracted the ban, thereby officially legalizing smoking and deeming it religiously permissible (mubāḥ). In an article on the great tobacco debate, the historian James Grehan points to this moment as the triumph of popular culture over the political and religious, a moment in which the ʿulamāʾ had no choice but to acquiesce to social reality in order to keep the Sharīʿa socially relevant. In this presentation, I challenge Grehan’s position by examining a legal epistle on the topic by the Ḥanbalī jurist Marʿī b. Yūsuf al-Karmī (d. 1032/1623). Al-Karmī contends that any prohibition of smoking violates the basic rule that jurisconsults (muftīs) can only make definitive legal judgments when conclusive and overwhelming proof exists. Taking his approach as an example, I argue that muftīs historically dealt with unprecedented legal cases by exercising a high degree of caution in pronouncing a ruling either as prohibited (ḥarām) or obligatory (farḍ/wājib) so as to not infringe upon God’s sole authority to legislate. Far from expressing an unqualified acceptance of social reality as Grehan suggests, the initial conservatism of the ʿulamāʾ followed by a more moderate tempering of early positions perfectly accords with the muftīs’ circumspect method in cases of legal ambiguity. It also explains why later jurists who maintained its prohibition felt compelled to resort to a different line of argument, one that relied upon the authority of the ruler to limit the permissible (taqyīd al-mubāḥ) so as to sidestep the evidentiary uncertainty associated with legally classifying tobacco.
Hasan Alsulami, Colloquium Presentation
Title: A Self-View of 17th Century Arabic Poetry: Ibn Ma’sum and his Biographical Dictionary
When: October 21, 2020, 2:30 PM
Where: Via Zoom
Abstract
The 11th/17th century Ḥijāzī scholar Ibn Maʿṣūm al-Madanī (d. 1709) wrote a significant later post-classical/pre-modern biographical dictionary of poets, Sulāfat al-ʿaṣr fī maḥāsin al-shuʿarāʾ bi-kulli miṣr (Pressing of the Wine Grapes on the Excellence of Poets from Every Region). Written in India presumably while Ibn Maʿṣūm was under house arrest, the Sulāfa, along with two contemporary biographical dictionaries of poets by two other 11th/17th century authors, al-Khafājī and al-Muḥibbī, attempted to preserve and defend the forgotten literature of the later period that preceded the so-called modern period. In these books, the authors claim to provide instances of great literature that compete with—if not surpass—their ancestors’ literature. By taking the Sulāfa as an example, I argue that besides its merit of preserving a significant amount of prose and poetry in the 11th/17th century and defending contemporary literature, the work provides a set of poetic aesthetics that corresponds to what to them is an excellent literary example. I will focus on what Ibn Maʿṣūm says in his introduction to see why he wrote this book and what aims he attempts to reach, and why it is important to look at books in the later period to understand what is their view of literary eloquence and creativity rather than relying on our own modern literary taste.
2019-2020
Hasan Alsulami, Colloquium Presentation
Title: Portraying Pre-modern Arabic Poetry: lbn Maʿṣūm al-Madanī (d.1709) in His Biographical Dictionary
When: April 27, 2020, 2:00 PM
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 141 (Enter through 241)
Faculty-Led Job Talk
Title: Applying for Academic Jobs: Faculty-Led Workshop
When: March 16, 2020, 2:00 PM
Where: CCAS Boardroom, ICC 141 (Enter through 241)
Karen McNeil
Presenter: Karen McNeil
Title: “Daarija and Changing Writing Practices in Tunisia”
When: November 11, 2019
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm 230
Dr. Felicitas Opwis
Presenter: Dr. Felicitas Opwis
Title: “Workshop on Presenting at Academic Conferences”
When: October 21, 2019
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
Irene Kirchner
Presenter: Irene Kirchner
Title: “The Blockchain in Islamic Law – Are cryptocurrencies sharia-compliant?”
When: October 15, 2019, at 4:00 PM
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
Younus Mirza
Presenter: Younus Mirza
Title: “Workshop on Writing and Publishing Academic Book Reviews”
When: October 2, 2019, at 2:00 PM
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
2018-2019
Abdallah Alaoudh
Presenter: Abdullah Alaoudh
Title: “Quasi-Judicial Activism in Saudi Arabia”
When: October 10, 2018, at 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 450
Mohammad Fakhreddine
Presenter: Mohammad Fakhreddine
Title: “Situating Su’lūk Poetry in the Arabic Literary Tradition”
When: October 31, 2018, at 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 450
Marya Hannun
Presenter: Marya Hannun
Title: “From Cairo to Kabul and Back Again: Exploring Early 20th Century Women’s Movements through the Movement of Women”
When: November 14, 2018, at 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 450
Book Roundtable on Islam Without Europe: Traditions and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought by Ahmed Dallal
This path-breaking intellectual history of the 18th-century Muslim world challenges stale views of this period as one of decline, stagnation, and widespread fundamentalism. Far from being moribund, Dallal argues, the 18th century was one of the most fertile eras in Islamic thought. From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, Dallal charts in rich detail how intellectuals rethought and reorganized religious knowledge and also the reception and impact of their ideas, showing how ideologies were forged in particular sociopolitical contexts. Reformists’ ventures were in large part successful—up until the 19th-century when the encounter with Europe changed Islamic discursive culture into one that was largely articulated in reaction to the radical challenges of colonialism.
When: November 28, 2018, at 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 450
**LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED**
2017-2018
Rezart Beka
Presenter: Rezart Beka
Title: “Fiqh al-Wāqiʿ [Jurisprudence of Reality] and its Discontents: Salafī Debates on the Role of Reality in Sharīʾa”
When: March 21, 2018 at 12:30
Where: ICC 462
Faculty-led Workshops on Giving Academic Presentations
When: September 13, 2017 at 12:30
Where: ICC 450
Tesneem Alkiek
Presenter: Tesneem Alkiek
Title: “The Limits of Darar: how al-Mahdī al-Wazzānī redefined marriage expectations”
When: September 27, 2017 at 12:30
Where: ICC 550
Richard Sutherland
Presenter: Richard Sutherland
Title: “Women in the “Sharia” economy with a focus on Bangladesh and Malaysia
When: October 17, 2017 at 12:30
Where: ICC 450
Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra
Presenter: Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra
Title: “Conceptual Change through Transformation of Linguistic Norms: Tyranny in the Arab Muslim Context”
When: November 1, 2017 at 12:30
Where: ICC 450
Anny Gaul
Presenter: Anny Gaul
Title: “Mother sauces and civilizing processes: Writing cuisine in Egypt and Morocco”
When: November 15, 2017 at 12:30
Where: ICC 450
Book Discussion Roundtable
When: November 29, 2017 at 12:30
Where: ICC 450
2016-2017
Mike Raish
Presenter: Mike Raish
Title: “Measuring the Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency of Written Arabic”
When: Thursday, January 26th, 12:30 pm
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
Tesneem Alkeik
Presenter: Tesneem Alkiek
Title: “Ibn al-Qayyim’s Aḥkām ahl al-dhimmah”
When: Thursday, February 9th, 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 462
Marya Hannun
Presenter: Marya Hannun
Title: “Islam and the environment: an untold history”
When: Thursday, March 16th, 12:30 pm
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
Roundtable on Shahab Ahmed’s Book: “What is Islam? The Importance of being Islamic”
When: Thursday, March 30th, 12:30 pm
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
Nick Mangialardi
Presenter: Nick Mangialardi
Title: “Ṣawt-scapes: Sound and Song in Middle East Studies”
When: Thursday, April 20th, 12:30 pm
Where: Poulton Hall, Rm. 230
**Food will be Provided**
Richard Sutherland
Presenter: Richard Sutherland
Title: “A New Perspective on the Ottoman Safavid War of 1623-39”
When: Wednesday, October 26th, 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 450
Mohammed Bushra
Presenter: Mohammed Bushra
Title: “Dissection of a Digital Debate with Dāʿish: Muḥammad al-Masʿarī vs. Turkī al-Binʿalī on Tawḥīd, Shirk, and ʿIbādah”
When: Wednesday, November 16th, 12:30 pm
Where: ICC 241 (CCAS Boardroom)
**Food will be provided**
2014 – 2015
Abdul-Rahman Mustafa
Presenter: Abdul-Rahman Mustafa
Title: “From God’s Nature to God’s Law: Theology, Law and Legal Theory in Islam”
When: Nov. 5th, 12:30pm
Where: ICC 450
Robert Ricks – POSTPONED
Presenter: Robert Ricks – POSTPONED
Title: “Hard Language or Hardest Language?: Moving Beyond the Myth of Arabic Difficulty”
When: TBD
Where: TBD
**Lunch will be provided**
Robert Ricks
Presenter: Robert Ricks
Title: “Assessing L2 Arabic vocabulary knowledge”
When: February 27, 12:15 pm (Lunch will be served)
Where: Poulton 230
Tuve Floden
Presenter: Tuve Floden
Title: “More Than Oneself: How Muslim Televangelists Empower Individuals to Change the World”
When: March 19, 4:30 pm
Where: Poulton 230
Abdallah Soufan
Presenter: Abdallah Soufan
Title: “Could there be a private language? Ibn Taymiyyah against the Ash’arite conception of God’s speech”
When: April 23, 4:30 pm
Where: Poulton 230
Arabic and Islamic Studies Symposium
Enass Khansa
Presenter: Enass Khansa
Title: “Conceptions of Authorship in 4th/10th c. Literature”.
When: Nov 4th, 12:15 pm
Where: ICC 450
**Lunch will be provided**
Nabil al-Hage Ali
Presenter: Nabil al-Hage Ali
Title: “Men of Mosques: Early Religious Education and Activism in Shi’i Lebanon (1969-1974)”
When: Nov. 20, 12:15 pm
Where: Poulton 230