McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies Student Council will be hosting its third annual Graduate Student Symposium on 3rd and 4th of MAy, 2013. The theme of this year's symposium is Tracing Encounters.
The Institute of Islamic Studies gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the State of Qatar for this event.
The Symposium will take place in the PGSS Thomson House of McGill University, located on 3650 McTavish, Montreal H3A 1Y2.
The working program for this year's symposium is below:
Friday, 3rd May 2013
9:00-9:30 - Breakfast
9:30-9:45 - Opening comments
9:45-11 - The Limits of Belief
Discussant: Prof. Ahmad Ibrahim
Haya Zuberi- Reinventing Tradition: the case of blasphemy laws in Pakistan
Feryal Salem- A Fifth Century Vision of Sunnī Orthodoxy: ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī’s Encounter with Early Islamic Sects and his Description of the Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jamā‘a in His Farq bayn al-firaq
Elisabetta Loi- Ibn al-Rawandi’s atheism and the relationship with some Greek philosophical traditions
11:00-11:15 - Break
11:15-1:00 - Philosophical Reflexions
Discussant- Prof. Robert Wisnovsky
Hossein Hosseini Nassab- Images of the Prophet Muhammad according to the Falāsifa: From Kindī to Ṭūsī
Ryan Sawyer- Islamic Philosophy and the Dialogue of Civilizations: Pre-Modern Lessons, Post-Modern Potentials?
Nasser Dumairieh- Philosophical Hermeneutics as a medium for the Renewal of Islamic Theology
Kamran Karimullah- Sayasa as Akhlaq?
1:00-2:00 - Lunch/Jum`a
2:00- 3:15 - Rhetorics of Portrayal
Discussant- Prof. Laila Parsons
Pascal Abidor - Conceptualizations of Geography and their Implications among the Shiis of Jabal Amil (Southern Lebanon and Northern Palestine)
Janet O'Brien- The Imaginary World of Emperor Jahangir: Political Encounters and Visual Propaganda in Mughal Allegorical Painting
S. M. Omar Shaukat Ali- Countering in Encountering: A Hegelian Reading of Islam’s Encounter with Christianity
3:15-3:30 - Break
3:30-5:00 - Keynote Address
Dr. M. Shahab Ahmed
Saturday 4th May 2013
9:00-9:30 - Breakfast & Welcome
9:30-10:45 - Embodiment in Transformation
Discussant- Prof. Pasha Khan
Krista Riley- Online Encounters: Muslim Women, Blogs, and Religious Authority
Safa Samiezade-Yazd- Performing Islam: Music and Muslim Youth Identity
Shobhana Xavier- Tracing the Sufi Metaphysics and Cosmology of a Tamil Sufi Sheikh: Encountering the Insan Kamil of Bawa in North America
10:45-12:00 - Islam and Christianity at the Crossroads
Discussant- Heather Empey
Alberto Tiburcio- Christian Converts and Polemics in Safavid Iran
Bogdan Smarandache - The Ḥanbalī Migration of 551 AH/1156 AD: A Microstudy in Frankish-Muslim Relations
Hans Harmakaputra- Discerning the Motives of Muslim-Christian Debates in the Early ʽAbbāsid Period: The Cases of Timothy I and Theodore Abū Qurra
12:00 - 12:45 - Lunch
12:45-2:00 - The Promise of Method
Discussant- Prof. Prashant Keshavmurthy
Basit Iqbal- Critique, Qur’anic Studies, and Form-of-Life: ‘Contemporary Critical Practices’ Reprised
Selim Karlitekin- Deanthropologizing Islam: Djinns, Cats and a Program for an Elementary Onticology
Youcef Soufi- Self-cultivation and Critique in the Anthropology of Islam
2:00-2:15 - Break
2:15-3:30 - Modern Strands
Discussant- Prof. Malek Abisaab
Crystal Marie Whetstone- Women’s Activism during Lebanon’s Civil War
Presentation partly made possible by generous funding from Wright State University's College of Liberal Arts
M. Taimoor Khan- Islam’s Encounter With “Marxism:” Remapping the Islamic in Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s “Communist” Poetry
Ulrich Brandenburg- Infatuation with Japan or infatuation with Europe? The Effect of the Russo-Japanese War on Egyptian Muslims
3:30 - 4:45 The Construction of Discourse
Discussant- Prof. Jamil Ragep
Arafat Razzaque- “Tasting of the sweet honey:” Sex and Jealousy in Islamic Discourses of Divorce and Taḥlīl Marriage
Amina Inloes- Eve Encounters Abbasid Iraq: Portrayals of Eve in the Shīʿī ‘Four Books’ of Ḥadīth
Matthew L Keegan- Fatherly Advice: Tracing the Trickster's Waṣīya from al-Jāḥiẓ to al-Ḥarīrī
4:45-5:00 - Closing Comments