Following the success of the IQSA 2015 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, we were pleased to make available the Meeting’s presidential keynote paper by Professor Reuven Firestone, entitled “The Problematic of Prophecy.” Now available on our website is the response of Professor Ebrahim Moosa, who poses further questions about religious emergence: How does religion emerge from an environment or a substrate? How does a religion become known in the world? One key element in religious emergence is what we call prophecy. In part, prophecy is an ontological phenomenon: it is about becoming, emergence, proceeding in time. The phenomenon of prophecy plays a direct role in the formation and valorization of scriptures like the Qur’an. You can access the full text of Professor Moosa’s response paper HERE.
Following the success of the IQSA 2015 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, we are pleased to make available on our website the Meeting’s keynote paper by Professor Reuven Firestone, entitled “The Problematic of Prophecy.” Based on qur’anic discourse in relation to preceding and subsequent scriptures and tradition, Professor Firestone offers a theory of religious emergence and the revolutionary challenge it represents to the authority of established religions. In the process, he demonstrates how our awareness of the natural tension between scriptural canonization and competing prophetic claims has value for the critical study of the Qur’an. You can access the paper HERE.
The IQSA Annual Meeting held last week in Atlanta, Georgia, was a great success, thanks to cutting-edge research presentations and record-breaking attendance. Held in conjunction with the Annual Meetings of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL)—the largest gathering of religious studies scholars in the world, our meeting brought together an international community of scholars to exchange fresh ideas on the interdisciplinary study of the Qur’an and to forge collaborations for advancing Qur’anic studies in the years to come.
The 2015 meeting showcased the diversity of scholarly interests and approaches to the Qur’an, featuring papers on a variety of issues including rhyme in the Qur’anic text, violence in the Qur’anic milieu, and reader interactions with Qur’an manuscripts. In addition to the excellent research presentations and lively discussion, we also featured a roundtable discussion on “The Current State of Qur’anic Studies and Its Future,” in which leading experts addressed a range of key questions in the field, from sources and methods in Qur’anic scholarship to diversity and inclusion in the scholarly community. With over one hundred people in attendance, this discussion session truly reflected the importance and vitality of Qur’anic studies today.
IQSA is grateful to all the participants and attendees who contributed to the success of this year’s meeting. Please stay tuned for publication of the Presidential Address and Response papers, and keep an eye out for our Call for Papers for next year’s meeting in San Antonio!
IQSA remains committed to providing resources and opportunities for continued collaboration among Qur’an scholars. To that end, we invite you to stay in touch with colleagues and friends by becoming a member of IQSA. Members enjoy a variety of benefits including access to the Review of Qur’anic Research, the Qur’an Seminar, and our member directory.
Plan your Trip to Atlanta! IQSA Annual Meeting Program Highlights
The IQSA Annual Meeting in Atlanta is just a few weeks away! As you plan your trip, please note the following special events on the program, which starts Friday 20 November:
Presidential Address – Free and Open to the Public!
Reuven Firestone, Hebrew Union College: The Problematic of Prophecy Ebrahim Moosa, University of Notre Dame, Respondent
All students in Qur’anic and Islamic Studies attending the IQSA sessions are welcome to join. Food/drink will be served. A number of senior professors in Qur’anic Studies will be in attendance for informal conversation/mentorship. You can RSVP to contact@iqsaweb.org.
We hope to see you at these important events! Thank you!
A Special Welcome for Students at Annual Meeting in Atlanta
An Abbasid-era illustration of students studying with a faqih; image from Wikimedia Commons.
NOTE: TIME & DATE CHANGED
As we gear up for our Annual Meeting in Atlanta next month, IQSA is especially excited to welcome students and emerging scholars to our growing community. We warmly encourage all students who are planning to attend the Annual Meeting to RSVP for our Student Reception:
There will be plenty of food and refreshments, and plenty of friendly conversation with established scholars of Qur’anic studies, including Farid Esack, Reuven Firestone, Daniel Madigan, Gabriel Said Reynolds, Vanessa De Gifis, and Nicolai Sinai.
IQSA is committed to fostering community in Qur’anic studies by supporting students on their path to professional success and encouraging collaboration across generations, all of which are vital to the advancement of knowledge in our field.
If you are interested in attending the Student Reception, please simply RSVP to IQSA at contact@iqsaweb.org.
This will be a valuable opportunity for emerging scholars to mingle with established experts in Qur’anic studies in a more relaxed setting–with light refreshments and finger food!
IQSA is committed to fostering community in Qur’anic studies by supporting students on their path to professional success and encouraging collaboration across generations, all of which are vital to the advancement of knowledge in our field.
The IQSA Annual Meeting in Atlanta is scheduled to take place 20-23 November 2015, in conjunction with the SBL/AAR Annual Meetings. Registration is open at the SBL page HERE. You can save up to $70 by joining IQSA and registering for the Annual Meetings as an Affiliate Member. If you are not yet an IQSA member, we encourage you to please join us HERE.
We look forward to an exciting meeting of members and friends in Atlanta!
There are just a few days left to take advantage of the “super saver” discount registration rate for the IQSA Annual Meeting in Atlanta! The Annual Meeting, held in conjunction with the SBL/AAR Annual Meetings, 20-23 November, is a valuable opportunity to connect with scholars from around the world and explore the latest in Qur’anic research. The “super saver” rate is available now through Thursday 21 May. Please register through the SBL website here.
Members of IQSA could save up to $70 by registering for the Annual Meetings as an Affiliate Member! Not an IQSA member? Please join IQSA today! We hope you’ll join us and meet us in Atlanta!
Join IQSA and Save on Meeting Registration Rates! عضوية الجمعية مفتوحة الآن
The IQSA Annual Meeting in Atlanta, 20-23 November, will be held in conjunction with the SBL/AAR Annual Meetings. You could save up to $70 by joining IQSA and registering for the Annual Meetings as an Affiliate Member! Registration is now open on the SBL website here. Take advantage of an additional “super saver” discount by registering now through 21 May. We hope you’ll join us and meet us in Atlanta!
** PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING **
(1) العضوية مجانية – To join our academic community today (for free!) simply submit a Membership Form here: http://members.iqsaweb.org/Join-Us
(2) التسجيل بسعر مخفض إلى ٢٢/٥/٢٠١٥ – Annual Meeting Registration (Discounted until May 22, 2015) :
CFP Highlight: Qur’an Manuscripts and Material Culture
For the IQSA 2015 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, the Qur’an: Manuscripts and Material Culture program unit will host two panels. For the first panel, we invite papers that deal with all eras and regions of the Qur’an’s manuscript tradition, as well as the variety of palaeographic, art historical, codicological, and historical issues one encounters in the discipline.
MS Mingana Islamic Arabic 1563, f.26v, l.2
For example, a paper topic may focus on a particular manuscript or group of manuscripts, a feature of orthographic development, a particular script style, the dating of manuscripts, issues of textual criticism, systems of qira’at, the Qur’anic arts of the book, or another feature of Qur’anic manuscript studies not listed here but that fits the general parameters of the program unit.
For the second panel, we invite contributions on any aspect of the Qur’an’s history and pre-history that lies outside the manuscript tradition. The second panel aims to provide a forum for the study of the Qur’an as it was applied to objects of daily use as well as elite artifacts and buildings, and for the investigation of scholarly reactions to these developments in hadith collections and other textual sources. For example, topics relating to Qur’anic citation in the epigraphic (including graffiti as well as formal inscriptions), architectural, ceramic, numismatic and papyrological records and the use of the Qur’an in funerary, apotropaic, and prophylactic contexts would be most welcome. Topics concerning pre-Islamic inscriptions that might have a bearing on the later formulation of the text of the Qur’an are also welcome.
Proposals should include a title and an abstract of approximately 400 words. Click here to submit a proposal to the Qur’an: Manuscripts and Material Culture program unit.
New Program Unit for the 2015 Annual Meeting: The Qur’an and Late Antiquity
by Greg Fisher and Michael Pregill
Over the past fifteen years, there has been a tremendous upsurge of interest in the historiography of late antique Arabia. This has happened as a result both of targeted studies as well as developments in late antique historiography more broadly. New studies authored or edited by Glen Bowersock, Averil Cameron, Greg Fisher (including work with Jitse Dijkstra), Robert Hoyland, and Christian Robin have contributed to a better understanding of a number of historical issues. These include the relationship of Arabia to its neighbors; the archaeology and history of different groups of people in the Arabian Peninsula; links between different communities, especially religious communities; alliances managed by Romans, Persians, and Himyarites with Arab clients; and the development of Arab “identity” prior to the seventh century.
Votive stele of alabaster with Sabaean inscription adressed to the moon-god Almaqah, ca. 700 BC, Yemen; held in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, Louvre Museum, Paris. Image accessed from Wikimedia Commons.
Over the same period, Qur’anic studies has developed in significant ways as well, particularly regarding the investigation of the literary compositions and religious discourses that may have provided the horizons and context of the emergence of the Qur’anic revelation. The Qur’an and Late Antiquity program unit, the newest in IQSA’s Annual Meeting lineup, seeks to promote knowledge of developments in Late Antique studies among scholars of the Qur’an and developments in Qur’anic studies among scholars of Late Antiquity, particularly in order to encourage better integration of these fields in the future. Our remit includes not only pre-Islamic Arabia and its immediate environs, but also the larger frame of late antique history, culture, religion, society, and politics in the Near East and Mediterranean regions as it may illuminate the background to the rise of Islam and its broad, long-term consequences.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
Chairs:
Greg Fisher, Department of History, Carleton University
Michael Pregill, Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, Boston University
The Qur’an and Late Antiquity program unit focuses on investigation of and critical reflection on the historical context in which the Qur’an was revealed. We seek papers that illustrate significant textual parallels between the Qur’an and other literatures of Late Antiquity, especially those that contribute to a better understanding of the Qur’an’s place in its cultural, political, social, and religious environment. We also seek papers that interpret the rise of the Qur’anic community in a broader phenomenological, sociological, or historiographic context, whether that of pre-Islamic Arabian society or the Roman and Sasanian Empires that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Near East in this period. Particular attention will be paid to such questions as processes of political consolidation and legitimation, construction of communal boundaries, and relationships between communities and polities.
For the 2015 IQSA Annual Meeting in Atlanta (November 20-23), we will sponsor two panels. First, we invite paper proposals for a panel on recent developments in the historiography of Late Antiquity as it pertains to the Qur’anic milieu in pre-Islamic Arabia or the wider context of the Roman and Sasanian dominions. This panel will be co-sponsored by the AAR Traditions of Eastern Late Antiquity group. We especially encourage submissions that attempt to achieve a broader synthesis of cultural, political, and religious trends beyond the analysis and comparison of textual corpora.
We also invite paper proposals for a panel to be co-sponsored with the SBL Religious World of Late Antiquity program unit. This panel, the first of two to be presented in consecutive years, will feature papers on the intersection of religion and violence in Late Antiquity as it pertains specifically to the Qur’an and the Qur’anic milieu. The panel takes as its inspiration Thomas Sizgorich’s groundbreaking work Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam. We especially encourage proposals that engage Sizgorich’s work directly and explicitly, whether on a historical, thematic, or methodological level.
The International Qur’anic Studies Association announces the call for papers for the 2015 Annual Meeting to be held in Atlanta, Georgia. The Annual Meeting dates are November 20-23, 2015.
Each of IQSA’s six program units provides a detailed call for papers; all are available on the complete AM 2015 CFP page HERE. From the CFP page, you can click on the title of a program unit to be directed to an external link for further instructions on submission of proposals. For additional information about a specific program unit, you may contact the unit chairs.
The paper proposal submission deadline is March 5, 2015. IQSA welcomes your submission and looks forward to an exciting program in Atlanta!
Following the success of the IQSA 2015 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, we were pleased to make available the Meeting’s presidential keynote paper by Professor Reuven Firestone, entitled “The Problematic of Prophecy.” Now available on our website is the response of Professor Ebrahim Moosa, who poses further questions about religious emergence: How does religion emerge from an environment or a substrate? How does a religion become known in the world? One key element in religious emergence is what we call prophecy. In part, prophecy is an ontological phenomenon: it is about becoming, emergence, proceeding in time. The phenomenon of prophecy plays a direct role in the formation and valorization of scriptures like the Qur’an. You can access the full text of Professor Moosa’s response paper HERE.
The 2015 meeting showcased the diversity of scholarly interests and approaches to the Qur’an, featuring papers on a variety of issues including rhyme in the Qur’anic text, violence in the Qur’anic milieu, and reader interactions with Qur’an manuscripts. In addition to the excellent research presentations and lively discussion, we also featured a roundtable discussion on “The Current State of Qur’anic Studies and Its Future,” in which leading experts addressed a range of key questions in the field, from sources and methods in Qur’anic scholarship to diversity and inclusion in the scholarly community. With over one hundred people in attendance, this discussion session truly reflected the importance and vitality of Qur’anic studies today.
