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Political Theologies of Medieval and Early Modern Islam: A Workshop
October 30, 2015 - October 31, 2015
The workshop is open to interested faculty and graduate students. If you would like to join us at lunch, please contact Adam Morrison at cmes@cmes.ucsb.edu so that we can get an accurate head count.
October 30, 2015:
9:45 AM Greetings and Introduction
10:00 – 10:50 Bilal Orfali (American University of Beirut), “Mystical Poetics: Courtly Themes in Early Sufi Akhbār” (via Skype)
11:00- 11:50 Adam Sabra (University of California, Santa Barbara), “The Cosmic State: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Political Theology”
12:00 – 12:50 Richard J. McGregor (Vanderbilt University), “Sufi Apocalypse and the Limits of Language”
1:00 – 2:00 Lunch
2:00 – 2:50 Manuela Ceballos (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), “Speaking for Others: Sufism and the Politics of Representation in Early Modern Morocco”
3:00 – 3:50 Cornell Fleischer (University of Chicago), “The Mystic and Lettrist ‘Abd al-rahman al-Bistami (d. 1454) and the Origins of Ottoman Historical Consciousness”
4:00 – 4:50 İlker Evrim Binbaş (Royal Holloway, University of London), “The Problem of Sovereignty in the Fifteenth Century Islamic World: The View from Ethics”
7:00 Dinner for presenters and invited guests
October 31, 2015:
10:00 – 10:50 Matthew Melvin-Koushki (University of South Carolina), “Starlord, Letterlord: Astrology and Lettrism in the Construction of Post-Mongol Persianate Imperial Ideologies”
11:00 – 11:50 A. Azfar Moin (University of Texas, Austin), “Saint Shrines as Objects of Imperial Veneration and Desecration in the Post-Mongol Empires”
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 1:50 Daniel Sheffield (University of Washington), “Political Theurgy: Stars and Sovereignty in the Safavid-Mughal World”
2:00 – 2:50 Kathryn Babayan (University of Michigan), “Sovereignty and Amity: Masculinity at the Safavi Court in Isfahan”
3:00 – 4:00 Concluding discussion
Sponsors:
King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
College of Letters and Sciences
Program in Medieval Studies
UCSB Department of History