CSMS Year in Review

2020 will be remembered for the dual impacts of the Covid-19 rampage in New York City, with the loss of lives and economic turmoil, and also of the widespread protests and calls for racial justice associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Despite the challenges, CSMS is grateful for the support of the community in coming together for a variety of events and programming. This was most embodied by our virtual concert in May to celebrate Columbia University's 2020 graduating class, and to mark the official launch of the Center for the Study of Muslim Societies. This extraordinary concert brought together a diversity of Muslim musicians who shared their incredible talents from their living rooms across the country. In solidarity with movements in protest of racial inequalities, racism and bigotry, their shared voices transcended boundaries and demonstrated how we can all unite even in these challenging times.

We invite you to read our CSMS Year in Review to learn more about our work over 2020. Thank you all for your continued engagement and support for CSMS and we look forward to many new opportunities and events in the new year.

Special Issue on the Manuscripts of the Muslim World Project

Naunidhi Raʹē. (12611845). Dastūruʹl-ṣibyān. Rare Book, RBML (Non-Circ) 892.84 N225

We are excited to announce the publication of a special issue on the Manuscripts of the Muslim World Project in the November 2020 issue of the  Journal of Philological Encounters. Making a Hidden Collection Visible: Columbia’s Collection of Muslim World Manuscripts, edited by Zeinab Azarbadegan and Mohammad Sadegh Ansari, features six contributions by librarians and scholars on the manuscript collection at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML).

The contributions by Kaoukab Chebaro & Jane Rodgers Siegel, Avinoam Shalem, Alexandre M. Roberts,  A. Tunç Şen,  Trevor Brabyn & Mohammad Sadegh Ansari, and Zeinab Azarbadegan explore the history of the collections as well as themes of authority and originality, transmission of knowledge, and history of science. They offer a variety of methodological approaches to study of manuscripts from across disciplinary, regional, and linguistic specialties. The issue ends with an afterword by Marwa Elshakry.

The special issue is part of the larger project of the scholarly efforts to further publicize the contents and importance of the collections at RBML. This has included the “Rediscovering Words and Worlds: Arabic Script Collections at Columbia University” (February 16-17, 2017), the ongoing cataloging project by the University Libraries, and the digitisation as part of the CLIR-Mellon Hidden Collections grant.

Hisham Aidi awarded a Soros Equality Fellowship

Congratulations to professor Hisham Aidi for being awarded a Soros Equality Fellowship. Professor Aidi is one of a group of 13 remarkable individuals awarded the Soros Equality fellowship in 2020. The program, now in its fourth year, is designed to help incubate innovators and risk-takers striving to create and develop new ways of addressing the systemic causes and symptoms of racial disparity and discrimination.

Hisham Aidi will create a web documentary series and book project to study the rise of Afro-Arab and Amazigh migration and activism in the United States over the last 25 years.

 Aidi is senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is the author of Redeploying the State (Palgrave 2008), a comparative study of market reform and labor movements in Latin America; co-editor, with the late Manning Marable, of Black Routes to Islam (Palgrave 2009); and author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture (Pantheon 2014). As a cultural reporter, his work has appeared in the Atlantic, the Nation, and the New Yorker. 

Aidi is the recipient of the Carnegie Scholar Award (2008), the American Book Award (2015), and Hip Hop Scholar Award (2015). He is currently a scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, working on a project titled “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-Arab World.” His most recent documentary short is titled Malcolm X and the Sudanese. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University.

Columbia University launches a Dual Degree Program with Aga Khan University

Columbia is pleased to announce a new dual MA degree program with Aga Khan University (London) in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures for Fall 2020.
The program brings together over 100 full-time world-class faculty members and twenty language lecturers concerned with various aspects of Muslim societies, including those in South, Southeast and Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Upon completion, graduates receive two Masters degrees, one from each institution.
Spanning five semesters in total, students spend semesters one and two at Columbia University in New York and semesters three and four at the Aga Khan University in London. Semester five is designed for students to remotely carry out empirical research and write their MA theses under the guidance of their faculty supervisors.
For information concerning the curriculum, admissions, and funding please visit the dual degree website.