ZMO News

Thursday, 4 October, 2018

Monday, 8 October, 7:30 pm, Katholische Akademie in Berlin, Hannoversche Str. 5, 10115 Berlin
Zwischen Tunis, Teheran und Raqqa: Welche Wege zur Demokratie im Nahen Osten?
Lecture and panel discussion with Anne-Béatrice Clasmann, Daniel Gerlach, Kristin Helberg, Aktham Suliman and Adnan Tabatabai

Vorsichtig formuliert befindet sich der Raum Nordafrika/Naher und Mittlerer Osten im Stadium des Übergangs; besser noch: im Umbruch. Davon sind kein Land und keine politische Ordnung ausgenommen. Die Frage ist allein: Was wird das Ergebnis sein?

Die Epoche des Umbruchs hatte mit Iran (1979) begonnen. Das Ergebnis war eine Islamische Republik; aber niemand kann übersehen, dass im Inneren dieses politischen Systems ein starker Druck wirkt, die säkularen Elemente im Hinblick auf europäische Standards von Bürgerrechten zu stärken...

Um Anmeldung wird gebeten. Eine Kooperationsveranstaltung der Gesellschaft zur Förderung des ZMO, der Katholischen Akademie in Berlin und der HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform.

Die Veranstaltung wird per Live-Stream auf dem YouTube Channel des ZMO übertragen.

Events

11-12 October, ZMO
„Islam“ as an Epistemic Field: Imperial Entanglements and Orientalism in the German-Speaking World since 1870
Workshop organized by Nils Riecken (ZMO), Larissa Schmid (FU Berlin/ Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) and the ZMO Research Area "Trajectories of Lives and Knowledge”

“Islam” is at the center of current societal and academic debates in Germany. These eminently political debates revolve around issues such as the status and rights of refugees, of migrant workers, of women and headscarves, and the question whether “Islam” and “Muslims” belong to a politically and historically constituted entity called “Germany.” They also invoke and put on stage claims about the “Enlightenment,” “secularization” and the historical progress of Christianity and Judaism. Such claims are often contrasted with claims about the inability of Islam to achieve an “Enlightenment,” ”secularization,” or a “Reformation,” that is, to become a full part of the “modern secular” world. Publications and statements about “Islam” that reproduce such historical-political-ethical claims seem to be multiplying daily. “Islam,” so it seems, has become one of the major “problems” in debates about the present and future of German society...

For full text, see the call at H-Soz-Kult.

Tuesday, 16 October, ZMO
Buying Time. Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean
Book presentation by Thomas F. McDow (University of California, San Diego)

In Buying Time, Thomas F. McDow synthesizes Indian Ocean, Middle Eastern, and East African studies as well as economic and social history to explain how, in the nineteenth century, credit, mobility, and kinship knit together a vast interconnected Indian Ocean region. That vibrant and enormously influential swath extended from the desert fringes of Arabia to Zanzibar and the Swahili coast and on to the Congo River watershed.

In the half century before European colonization, Africans and Arabs from coasts and hinterlands used newfound sources of credit to seek out opportunities, establish new outposts in distant places, and maintain families in a rapidly changing economy. They used temporizing strategies to escape drought in Oman, join ivory caravans in the African interior, and build new settlements...

Tuesday, 25 October, ZMO
Köçeks in the "Culture of Beloveds": Gender, Love, and Dance Performance in the Late Ottoman Empire
Lecture by Mustafa Avcı (Altınbaş University, Istanbul) as part of the ZMO Colloquium Performing Gender and Sexuality in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia

The köçek practice, in which cross-dressed boys and men entertain an audi- ence by belly dancing, was widespread in Central Asia, Asia Minor and the Balkans from the fi fteenth to the beginning of the mid-nineteenth century. The dancers were very popular and highly visible in elite and ordinary settings alike. Historical accounts show that this practice was often associated with same-sex love. During the nineteenth century the practice (along with homo- eroticism) became a source of shame for the Ottoman State and a number of proscriptions were issued against it. Köçeks gradually lost their popularity, fi rst among the elites and then among ordinary people of Istanbul...

Tenders & Calls

Position as Janitor
Closing Date: 15 October 2018

ZMO is looking for a janitor in full time. (39h/month, TVöd E3, start of work as soon as possible but not later than 1 January 2019).

Position as Student Assistant
Closing Date: 31 October 2018

Free post for student assistant to support the the vice director (41h/month, Applications can be sent until 31 October 2018).

Call for Applications: Grants and Places in doctoral programme
Closing Date: 5 November 2018

The Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies will admit up to ten PhD students to its doctoral programme, which is to begin on 1 October 2019. The Graduate School is a joint project of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, which brings together scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and area studies...

Research Developments

New Cluster at FU Berlin - Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS): Global Challenges for the Model of Liberal Democracy and Market Economy
SCRIPTS has been apporved as a new cluster at Freie Universität Berlin in the framework of the Excellence Strategy research competition run by the German federal and state governments. ZMO director Ulrike Freitag is principal investigator within the cluster

After the end of the Cold War, liberal democracy seemed to have prevailed for good. Today, 25 years later, however, the liberal model of political and economic order faces a profound crisis. Authoritarian leaders including Russian president Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, as well as non-state fundamentalist groups such as the Islamic State openly operate as antagonists of the liberal model. At the same time, right-wing populist movements like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) gain strength by attacking the very foundations of liberalism within liberal societies...

New Publications

Nora Lafi
Esprit civique et organisation citadine dans l’Empire ottoman (XVe-XXe siècles)

Brill 2018, 360 pp.

Edited by Katrin Bromber, Katharina Lange, Heike Liebau and Anorthe Wetzel
The Long End Of The First World War: Ruptures, Continuities and Memories

Campus Verlag 2018, 296 pp.

Samuli Schielke
Ist Prosadichtung eine Verschwörung gegen den heiligen Koran? Der Vorwurf der Häresie gegen einen gläubigen Dichter im zeitgenössischen Ägypten

In Verfolgter Unglaube: Atheismus und gesellschaftliche Exklusion in historischer Perspektive, ed. by Susan Richter, Campus Verlag, 2018, pp. 349-372. 

Abdoulaye Sounaye
Religion, Morality, and Boko: Students Training for a Good Life

In Ufahamu: a Journal of African Studies, Vol. XL, No. 2 - A special edition on the African University, 2018,  pp. 169-71.

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