Student-Led Seminar 2007: Contemporary Graduate Research on the Middle East
25 June, 2007 (University of Manchester)
The CASAW student-led seminar took place from 11:00am to 5:30pm on the 25th June at the University of Manchester.
Twenty two people attended the seminar. Other than the speakers, the seminar was attended by many of the students who will begin the CASAW programme next year and some other students from the Universities of Durham and Manchester.
Dr. Christopher Davidson was the keynote speaker for the seminar. He spoke about the ‘Vulnerability of Dubai’ and a short question and answer session followed. Then Dr. Moshe Behar chaired the first group of student speakers. Katherine Prescott gave a paper on the extent to which Fatima Mernissi supports modernisation theory and Paul Anderson talked about transmission of Islamic knowledge. In the next session, facilitated by Professor Hoda Elsadda, Tom Aplin talked about Abdelrahman Munif, Fatima Patel presented a paper on Shaikh al-Alawi’s Diwan and Afshin Shahi spoke about the conditions of civil society in Egypt and Iran.
Programme:
Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Christopher Davidson (University of Durham): The Vulnerability of Dubai
Session 1 - Facilitator/Chair: Dr. Moshe Behar (University of Manchester)
- Katherine Prescott (University of Manchester): To What Extent does Fatima Mernissi Challenge Modernisation Theory in ‘The Veil and the Male Elite’?
- Paul Anderson (University of Edinburgh) : Modernity and the Transmission of Knowledge in Islam: Can Words be Gifts?
Session 2 - Facilitator/Chair: Prof. Hoda Elsadda (University of Manchester)
- Tom Aplin (University of Edinburgh): Abdelrahman Munif and Rewriting the Nation
- Fatima Patel (University of Edinburgh): Contemplating the Qasida: The Insan al-Kamil in the Diwan of the Sufi, Shaykh al-Alawi (d.1934)
- Afshin Shahi (University of Durham): The Conditions of Civil Society in Egypt
(Abstracts are available for download as a PDF document from here:
20070625_Student-Led_Seminar_Abstracts.pdf)
The seminar generated a lot of interesting discussion. For example Paul received the good suggestion of including Sufi groups in his paper. There were also interesting questions about women’s rights in Islam and the West, translation of Sufi terms from Arabic to English, Pan-Arabism, definitions of civil society and the position of the Muslim Brotherhood with regard to civil society.
The feedback from the seminar was very positive. People particularly commented that they liked the diversity of the papers. Many of the future CASAW students remarked that they were grateful for the opportunity to see the work of current CASAW students and meet future CASAW students. Many people suggested that abstracts of the papers before the seminar would have been useful and many of the future CASAW students commented that they would have liked some more information on next year’s programme. As the seminar was so well attended by future CASAW students and was very beneficial to them, I would suggest that next year’s seminar could involve a short presentation on CASAW’s work and there should also be a chance for CASAW future students to ask questions about the course.
Overall the seminar was a success and provided a useful precedent for future CASAW student-led activities.
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