Dominic Brookshaw (Oxford University) "Zulaykha’s Redemption: From Lustful Villain to Female Icon" The guile associated with Zulaykha in the Qur’an is largely absent from her depiction in the ghazals of fourteenth-century Iran. The negativity surrounding Zulaykha’s expression (or manifestation) of female sexuality dims in the Persian ghazal where we witness the character’s salvific rehabilitation. On...

Leili Anvar (Sorbonne, Paris) "From the Desert of Arabia to the Gardens of Herat: Wanderings of Majnûn, the Poet-Lover" In this presentation, we will follow Majnûn in his journeys from the Arabic poems to the great Persian masnavis (composed by Nezâmi, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and Jâmi). We shall see how -with the development of sufism and...

Prashant Keshavmurthy (McGill University) "Reading Niẓāmi Ganjavī’s Leylī u Majnūn as a Novel" Neither the Byzantines nor the Persians had any generic name for the Greek and Persian novels that were composed in the 12th century. Beholden to older (Attic Greek and Abbasid Arabic) models, the taxonomies of literary forms in both geographically adjacent literary cultures lagged...

Justine Landau (Sorbonne) "An Epic Tribute to the Lyric Poem" Poetry does things with words. In the premodern world, this fact is perhaps nowhere acknowledged more unanimously than in the Persianate sources. Chief among the arts of language, lyric poetry is associated with “licit magic,” after the Arabic saying, since its mastery is said to...

Julia Rubanovich (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presents an online lecture titled "The Tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā through the Eyes of a Jewish Poet". This talk will examine a string of episodes from the tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā embedded into the “Book of Genesis” (Bereshit-nāma), a biblical poem composed by the fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian poet...

Paul Losensky (Indiana University) "A Common Thread: Three Literary Careers in Early Modern Persia, England, and Spain" The emergence of the concept of the Global Renaissance has brought new attention to the political, diplomatic, economic, and artistic connections between major civilizational centers in the early modern period. For the most part, however, literature has remained...

Shahzad Bashir (Brown University) "The Market in Poetry in the Persian World" The discussion will focus on Professor Bashir’s book The Market in Poetry in the Persian World (Cambridge UP, 2021), which treats poetic utterances as objects of material value sought by those with power and resources. The book provides a sense for the texture...

This session has been cancelled. Camilla Miglio (La Sapienza, Rome) "From Medieval Persian Literature to Modernist German Poetry" Iranian 250, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC), offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate...

"Making Things Visible: Galileo and the Spottiness of the Moon" by guest scholar Brian Baigrie (IHPST Toronto). Register to attend here. The Fall 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar is “Picturing Knowledge in Historical Perspective” (Philosophy 206) taught by Professors Calvin Normore (Philosophy) and Brian Copenhaver (Philosophy, History). This interdisciplinary seminar traces some of the ways, from...

"Curzio Inghirami (1614-1655), Forger and Playwright of Volterra" by guest scholar Ingrid Rowland (Architecture, University of Notre Dame). Online with Zoom and in person in Royce 314. Register to attend in person here. Register to attend on Zoom here. The Fall 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar is “Picturing Knowledge in Historical Perspective” (Philosophy 206) taught by...

This lecture, "Religious dissent and violence in Late Antiquity," is by Professor Maijastina Kahlos (Helsinki/Lisbon), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). Violence was part of the late antique life. How considerable role did violent conflicts play in Late...

This lecture, "The Acts of the Christian Martyrs and Court Protocols," is by Professor Éric Rebillard (Cornell), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). It has long been assumed that acts of martyrs derived from court protocols of their...

This lecture, "Re-Staging the Judean 'Nation': The Rise of the Neighborhood in Roman Palestine," is by Professor Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). Co-sponsored by UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Professor Fonrobert...

As part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Fall 2023, Money Matters: Between Antiquity and the Enlightenment (ca. 600-1600), guest lecturer, Wolfgang Mueller (Fordham University) will share about his research that focuses on written norms and laws of the European West between 500 and 1500 CE.  He is author of several scholarly monographs,...

As part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Fall 2023, Money Matters: Between Antiquity and the Enlightenment (ca. 600-1600), guest lecturer, Professor Craig Muldrew (Cambridge, UK) will share about his expertise in British Social and Economic History from 1500 to 1800. Craig Muldrew's research mainly focuses on the investigation of the economic and...