Announcements - NELC

Eiyad al-Kutubi has been awarded the NELC Outstanding Arabic Instructor Award for the 2010-2011 academic year for his dedication to your pupils and the teaching of Arabic language.

Ahmad al-Mallah, NELC Arabic Literature PhD ABD student, has been appointed for a second year as Arabic lecturer at MIddlebury College.

Mishari al-Musa has successfully defended his dissertation, and is now an assistant professor at Kuwait University.

Ahmad Alqassas has received a three year position to teach general linguistics, and Arabic language and linguistics at Earlham College in Richmond, IN.

Elham Alzoubi has accepted a three year renewable full time lecturer position at Earlham College in Richmond, IN. She will be teaching Arabic language, literature and linguistics. This summer, she will also be teaching a May term at Earlham College.

Danie M. Becknell has been awarded the NELC Outstanding Graduate Student Award for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Adelaide Bryan has been awarded the Palmer-Brandon Prize! This prize awards $20,000 to two outstanding third-year juniors each year, and represents the largest award that the College of Arts and Sciences grants to students in the Humanities in recognition of outstanding academic achievement.

Huda Fakhreddine successfully defended her PhD dissertation, and has been appointed as an assistant professor at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Jaimie Johnson has been awarded the Haddawi Scholarship in honor of accomplishments in the field of Arabic Language Study.

Simon Krishnan has been awarded the NELC Outstanding Undergraduate Award for the 2010-2011 academic year for his exceptional academic achievement and dedication to the department during his undergraduate career.

Walter Lorenz, who became A.B.D. in the NELC Ph.D program last Fall, gained employment at Penn State University as a lecturer in Arabic. He will be teaching elementary, intermediate and advanced Arabic coursework and will also be teaching Arabic this summer at Penn State's StarTalk program. At the same time, he is continuing his dissertation research on Ottoman medicine in Turkey this summer. 

Bilal Maanaki was offered a job at the University of Virginia as instructor of Arabic language and literature starting this August, as well as a position with Oxford University Press as a philologist fo an English-Arabic/Arabic-English dictionary.

Nasser Nabhan, a graduating NELC and History senior, has been accepted into Teach for America and will be teaching pre-kindergarten in Chicago this fall. He is also a member of Phi Sigma Theta, honor society, and vice President of the IU History Club, and a 21st Century Scholar.

Imed Nsiri successfully defended his PhD dissertation this past summer, and is now an assistant professor at the Aumerican Unviersity of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

Elijah Reynolds presented a paper entitled "Introducing English Loanwords into the Arabic Language Curriculum: Existing and Developing Structures" at the 14th Annual Conference hosted by the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages in Madison,WI. He received a travel grant from the Linguistics Department to present this paper. He also will be teaching 1st year Arabic at SWEESL this summer.

Spring 2011 NELC Faculty Updates:

Asma Afsaruddin published "Arabo-Islamic Literature: Continuities and Transformations" in The Sage Handbook of Islamic Studies (Sage Publications, 2010) and "Early Women Exemplars and the Construction of Gendered Space: Redefining Feminine Moral Excellence" in Harem Histories (Duke University Press, 2010). She also published "Recovering the Early Semantic Purview of Jihad and Martyrdom: Challenging Statist-Military Perspectives" in Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam, edited by Dr. Qamar-ul Huda (USIP Press, 2010).

Dr. Huda was invited by Dr. Afsaruddin to lecture at Indiana University through NELC and the Voices and Visions: Islam and Muslims from a Global Perspective project. Afsaruddin gave the papers "Sabr: the Qur'anic Foundation of Sustained Peacebuilding in Islam" at the Center for Middle East Studies at Lund University and "Reading Martyrdom in the Qur'an: An Exegetical Survey of Key Verses" at the Center for Global Islamic Studies of George Mason University.
She also presented "Islam in an Age of Pluralism: Rethinking Modernity" at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She gave the paper "Negotiating Exclusion and Inclusion: The Hermeneutics of Moderation in Qur'anic Exegeses" at the Middle East Studies Association conference in San Diego. Afsaruddin continued her editorial work with the Islam Section of Religion Compass and became a senior editor with the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women.

Salman al-Ani is on sabbatical this semester, researching Arab grammarian Ibn Jinni. In addition to investigating Ibn Jinni's life and work, al-Ani is also rendering an analytical translation of one of Ibn Jinni's Arabic grammar books. The title of the book is al- Luma' fi al-Nahw, or Flashes on Syntax. Al-Ani was also invited by the International Prometic Origination Center to serve as consultant in evaluating the Arabic TOAFL Examination. ALTA Language Services also invited al-Ani to serve as a panelist, and The American Council for International Education invited al-Ani to serve as consultant for Teachers of Critical Languages.

Salih J. Altoma published Iraq's Modern Arabic Literature: A Guide to English Translations since 1950 (Scarecrow Press Inc., 2010). He also published two articles in the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, titled "Translating Iraq's Contemporary Arabic Literature: Ten Years of Banipal's Record 1998- 2008" and "On American Readings of Nuha al-Radi's Baghdad Diarie." He published three essays in al-Jazirah about the Saudi poet Ghazi al-Qusaybi, (September 2010), the "Arab Union Catalog" (October 2010), and Iraqi writer Abd al-Majid Lutfi.

Hasan El-Shamy has contributed to several new scholarly publications. The Motif Index of Folk-Literature, by savant Stith Thompson was Arabized by Prof. El-Shamy. A translation and augmentation for requirements of Arabic-Islamic applicability of the superstructure of Stith Thompson's classic work and El-Shamy's adaptation appeared in Al-Thaqâfah al-Sh`biyyah (Folk Culture) this past summer. El-Shamy also contributed to a book review of Muhsin Jasim Al-Musawi, The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights (Columbia University Press, 2009) which explored the motific structures in Arabic literary works. Prof. El-Shamy wrote the recent entry on motif published by Cambridge University Press, 2011 edition.

He published the article, "Folkloric Behavior: A Theory for the Study of the Dynamics of Traditional Culture." By invitation of the Saudi Ministry of Culture and King Sa`ud University, El-Shamy presented two lectures last March, titled "Folkloric Behavior and The Brother-Sister Syndrome" and "An Open Symposium on Arab Folklore." He was selected to present the inaugural lecture of a biannual series in honor of folklorist P.N. Borotav at Bogazici University.

Additionally, El-Shamy was invited by Yale University to present at the symposium on Counter-Stories and Entangled Histories: Shared Heroes in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam International Conference. He presented his paper, "'Qâla al-Samaw'al ibn `Âdiyâ al-yahûhiyy (The Jew, Al-Samaw'al Son-of-`Âdiyâ Said): Conscientiousness and Fidelity as Heroic Qualities in Arab Traditions (The Jewish Example)."

John Hanson has spent the past year as a fellow at the National Humanities Center, and he received the 2010 John Ryan Award.

Ciğdem Balim Harding published a chapter titled "Turkish Literature Between the 10th and 18th Centuries" in The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 4. She continued as the Middle East Editor for Women's Studies International Forum, and served on the Editorial Board of Linguistic Analysis. In February, she was the moderator of a workshop for the new book series titled Redrawing of Borders: Reconstruction of Identities in Eurasia and Turkey, of which she is one of the authors. In the fall and spring, she conducted three workshops in Turkey to train International Baccalaureate Diploma Program teachers.

During summer 2011, she will take part in the School of Education project, training Turkish and Armenian teachers at IU, and the STARTALK project to train Turkish language teachers. She has served as chair of the Literature Prize Competition (2011) for the Bloomington National Society of Arts and Letters (NSAL). In April, with the help of CSME, she invited Professor Yasir Suleiman of Cambridge University (UK) to talk about language and conflict and teaching language through literature.

Stephen Katz received an Overseas Research Grant for a project entitled:  “The Holocaust in Early Hebrew Literature,” and he has also received a Jewish Studies Supplementary Research Grant for project entitled:  “Hebrew Literary Responses to the Holocaust.” Both of these projects will be conducted over this coming summer in Israel.

Paul Losensky latest book, co-authored with Sunil Sharma, and entitled "In the Bazaar of Love: Selected Poems of Amir Khusrau" has recently been published by Penguin Press India. He has also been awarded a fellowship by the National Humanities Center in North Carolina for the 2011-12 academic year, where he will work on the "Sa'eb Tabrizi and the Poetics of Effulgence" project.

Kevin W. Martin presented his paper, "'The Conquest of the Desert': Global Capitalism, Western Imperialism, Arab Nationalism, and the Reformulation of Boundaries in the Twentieth-Century Arab East," at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif. last November. At MESA, he was awarded the Best Article Prize by the Syrian Studies Association for his work, "Presenting the 'True Face of Syria' to the World: Urban Disorder and
Civilizational Anxieties at the First Damascus International Exposition," in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2010.

David McDonald was recently awarded a New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Fellowship to pursue ethnographic fieldwork within the Palestinian community of Dallas, Texas.

Nazif Shahrani published two chapters on "Afghanistan to 1919" and "Afghanistan from 1919" in The Islamic World in the Age of Western Dominance, Volume 5 of The New Cambridge History of Islam. He wrote a brief op-ed piece on the recent democratic movements in Tunisia, Egypt and the Arab world for CNN. com. He presented a paper on "Afghanistan's Choice of Super Presidency and SNTV Electoral System: Impediments to Democratization?" at a conference on "Electoral Politics and Democratization in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan" at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Nov. 3-4, 2010. He also made presentations on "Islam in Afghanistan" and "Northern Afghanistan" for Leadership Development and Education for Sustainable Peace (LDESP) seminars organized by the Center for Civil-Military Relations, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif. for the US Military officers going
to Afghanistan at Austin, Texas; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Fort Eustes, Va.; and Grafenwoehr, Germany.

Abdulkader Sinno has finished or published five chapters and contributions to academic journals in the last twelve months. He gave invited lectures at, among other institutions, UC Berkeley, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Vanderbilt University, Ohio State University, Illinois State University, and Grand Valley State University.  He also presented papers and chaired panels at the major conferences in the profession, APSA, MPSA and MESA. He also conducted research in Europe on his book project on Muslims who serve in elected office in Western countries, this time in France, Belgium and the United Kingdom.  He continues to serve as Associate Editor of the Review of Middle Eastern Studies.  His recent publications are:

• “The Discourse on Muslims and Welfare across the Atlantic,” in An American Dilemma? Race, Ethnicity and the Welfare State in US and Europe, edited by Sonya Michel, Klaus Pedersen and Pauli Kettunen. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, forthcoming 2012. (with Eren Tatari and Scott Williamson).
• “Les difficultés de la représentation politique des Musulmans Européens,” in Minorités visibles en politique, edited by Esther Benbassa and Katherine Fleming. Paris: Éditions du CNRS, forthcoming October 2011.
• “Toward Electability: Public Office and the Arab Vote,” in Target of Opportunity: Arab Detroit in the Terror Decade, edited by Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2011.  (with Eren Tatari)
• Contribution to a symposium on Jytte Klausen’s book The Cartoons that Shook the World. Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming 2011.
• “The Muslim Within: Challenges to Representation of Muslim-Americans in Elected Office,” in Connections and Ruptures: America and the Middle East, Robert Myers, ed.  The American University of Beirut Press, 2011.

Suzanne Stetkevych gave the lectures "New Trends in U.S. Arabic Pedagogy" and "Learning Language through Literature: Arabic Poetry in the Arabic Language Classroom" at Osaka University. In May, she will present poetry of
the Arabian Peninsula at the NEH Bridging Cultures symposium, Illuminated Verses: Understanding Muslim Cultures Through Poetry, organized by City Lore and Poets House in New York City. She will be a keynote speaker at the
University of Chicago Middle East History & Theory symposium in Chicago on May 13-14. She will again be at the University of Chicago to present her paper,"Al-Akhtal and the Construction of Umayyad Legitimacy" at the Non-Muslims in the Umayyad State symposium.

Two of her conference papers have been recently published. "Qadaya al- Qasidah al-`Arabiyyah: al-Manahij wa al-Manhajiyyah: Tatbiq Nazariyyat al-Ada' `ala Saqt al-Zand wa al-Luzumiyyat: Madkhal fi Shi`r Abi al-`Ala' al-Ma`arri" was
published in the Proceedings of Al-Nadwah al-Duwaliyyah: Qadaya al-Manhaj fi al-Dirasat al-Lughawiyyah wa al-Adabiyyah: al-Nazariyyah wa al-Tatbiq by King Sa`ud, University Press, 2010. The other, titled "Min al-Badi` ila al-Badi`iyyah: Dirasah fi al-Uslub al-Balaghi," was published by the Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Literary Criticism in Cairo, 2006. The paperback edition of her 1993 book, The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual, will appear this spring 2011. Dr. Stetkevych served as head of the organizing committee of the 2nd annual National Poetry Month program, Intersections: Middle Eastern Poetries in/and the Arts. She is the director of the NELC Indiana Poetry Seminar Spring 2011 Workshop on Poetic Creativity and the Poetics of Translation. Moroccan poet Mohamed Bennis will be this year's guest lecturer.

Stephen Vinson has conducted field research in Egypt for his project on “Demotic Graffiti in the Valley of the Kings,” funded by a Franklin Grant from the American Philosophical Society and a travel grant from the IU College Arts and Humanities Institute over the past academic year.  He also conducted archival research in Wuerzburg, Germany and Leiden, the Netherlands, for his forthcoming book on Egyptian literature, “The Craft of a Good Scribe.” 

He delivered papers at the conference “ Disciplinary Measures? Histories of Egyptology in Multi-Disciplinary Context,” sponsored by the Egypt Exploration Society and the University of London, and the conference of the American Research Center in Egypt in Chicago. Additionally, he published an article on philological problems in an important Egyptian literary text in the Festschrift for the German scholar Heinz-J. Thissen, and an article on ancient Egyptian seafaring in the Encyclopedia of Ancient History.

John Walbridge has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2011–12 to translate two Arabic works by the 12th century Muslim philosopher Shihab al-Din al-Tusi. They are comprised of a systematic survey of logic, physics, and metaphysics, and a commentary on the difficulties in the first work. Walbridge has formerly translated the most famous of Suhrawardi's works, The Philosophy of Illumination, with Dr. Hossein Ziai of UCLA. He published a study on the role of reason in Islamic intellectual history and is presently completing editions and translations of three late antique commentaries on works of the philosopher Galen that survive only in Arabic.

He has also recently published a book "God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason" (Cambridge University Press, 2011), a study of the role of reason in Islamic intellectual history.

 

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