The Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative
The Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative is a three-year project, designed to support the expansion and enhancement of the study of Islam at the University of Chicago. Administered by the Divinity School, the initiative is a cross-divisional collaboration, intended to create a sustained campus conversation about the future of Islamic studies.
Funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative will bring to the University distinguished visiting scholars representing a wide range of topics in Islamic Studies. Each visitor will bring to the community a unique area of expertise, which they will share with the campus by giving a public lecture, teaching a class, and organizing a conference or symposium on their topic of study.
With one visitor per quarter over the next three years, the result will be a substantive, sustained discussion about both specific topics in Islamic studies and the wider field of study. Our campus-wide program of visitors is a bold attempt to create a more seamlessly interdivisional and interdisciplinary context for Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago and, in so doing, to establish a model for academia more broadly.
The following visitors will come to the University of Chicago for academic year 2011-2012:
• Professor Maribel Fierro, will serve as a Visiting Scholar in Islamic Studies in the Divinity School in the Fall Quarter 2011. Dr. Fierro is the Head of the Institute of Arabic Studies at the National Research Council of Spain, and a leading scholar on the history of Islamic Spain, as well as the interaction of violence and religion in the Islamic world. She will teach a class titled "Religious Deviation in Premodern Islamic Societies."
• Professor Abdulkarim Soroush will join the Divinity School in the Winter Quarter 2012. Dr. Soroush is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Epistemological Research in Tehran and a Research Associate of the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is an internationally renowned Islamic philosopher, an author on Islam, history and human rights, as well as a noted scholar and reciter of the poetry of Rumi. He will teach a class on the Religious and Intellectual History of Modern Iran.
• Professor Serpil Bagci will join the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in Spring Quarter 2012. Dr. Bagci is the Chair of the Department of Art History at Hacettepe University in Ankara, and the foremost historian of the visual arts of the book in the Ottoman Period (ca. 1300-1924) active today. She will teach a course on Ottoman Painting.
Upcoming Events
The Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative is pleased to present:
Friday, May 18: Workshop
Location: Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Room 157
RE-IMAGINING ALEXANDER IN THE “EAST”
Identified with the mysterious and eschatological Two-Horned Dhu'l-Qarnayn of the Qur'an, Alexander of Macedon commands an imposing presence in Islamic culture as a powerful, just, wealthy and wise universal sovereign. His legendary personality, and its attributes, constituted an attractive model for competing rulers who sought to appropriate his qualities, especially after the non-Muslim Mongols conquered much of the Islamic world in the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as a model of not only world-encompassing but also sacral kingship, the Alexandrine empire received new attention that emphasized its eschatological and prophetic dimensions. This workshop will examine the image of Alexander, or Iskandar-i Dhu’l-Qarnayn, from historical and art historical perspectives in order to understand the attributes of his personality within the visual and political cultures of the pre-modern Islamic world.
PARTICIPANTS:
Serpil Bagci, Hacettepe University
Evrim Binbas, Royal Holloway, University of London
Cornell Fleischer, University of Chicago
Massumeh Farhad, Freer/Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution
Discussants:
Cemal Kafadar, Harvard University
John Woods, University of Chicago
SCHEDULE
1:00pm Introduction & Welcome
1:15 Evrim Binbas, Royal Holloway College, University of London
“The First Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction: Alexander the Macedonian and Post-Mongol Islamic Political Thought”
2:00 Cornell Fleischer, University of Chicago
“Apocalyptic Alexander in the Millennial Ottoman Empire
2:45 Break
3:15 Massumeh Farhad, Freer/Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution
“From Greek Conqueror to Persian Sage: The Image of Alexander in Iran”
4:00 Serpil Bagci, Hacettepe University
“Alexander as Mehmed: A Physiognomic Documentation
4:45 Discussant – John Woods
5:00 Discussant – Cemal Kafadar
For more information on the initiative, please contact Erin Glade at eglade@uchicago.edu.
Photo: Inside of the dome of Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque. Isfahan, Iran.
