February 26: Adab Colloquium with Presenter Maryam Wasif Khan and Discussant Jennifer Dubrow

Friday, February 26, 2021, 1:10 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

In this colloquium, Maryam Wasif Khan will discuss a chapter from her book, Who is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms (Fordham, 2021). The book argues for a new history of Urdu prose fiction, one that takes into account its orientalist pasts and its religio-populist present. Chapter 4, “Mujāhid/Martyr,” suggests that the Progressive Writers’ Movement, though well-known to scholars of Urdu had a relatively minor impact on its literary development when compared to the bestselling, popular novels of writers such as Rashid ul-Kheiri, Nasim Hijazi and Razia Butt. The strident religio-nationalist nature of these novels, then, is what has shaped Urdu prose fiction in our present moment.

Learn more about the Adab Colloquium at MEI here.

If you are interested in attending this event please download the pre-circulated reading.

January 29: Adab Colloquium with Presenter Murat Umut Inan and Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano

Friday, January 29, 2021, 1:10 PM - 3:00 PM

Register for the Zoom webinar here.

In this talk, Murat Umut Inan will discuss his forthcoming article entitled “Poetry, Muhammad, and the Ottomans: Süruri’s Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif and Conceptions of Poetry in the Early Modern Ottoman World”. Focusing on Muslihüddin Süruri’s (d. 1562) celebrated book on the art of poetry, he will explore the question of how poetry was viewed and understood in sixteenth-century Ottoman literary and scholarly circles, both as a form of artistic expression and as a branch of knowledge or scholarly discipline. Despite traditionally being seen simply as a poetry manual, the Bahrü’l-Ma‘arif presents us with a more complex case, in which the poet-scholar Süruri weaves into his work an Islamic defense of poetry and poethood grounded largely in Muhammad’s example.

Learn more about the Adab Colloquium at MEI here.

If you are interested in attending this event please download the pre-circulated reading.

The Adab Colloquium: Workshop with Mana Kia and Sunil Sharma

The Imprint of the Era in the Adab of the Times: Circulation and the Persianate at Empire’s End

Wednesday, September 23, 2020. 4:00-6:00 pm

In this Adab Colloquium, Dr. Mana Kia will discuss her paper examining the relation between material circulation of texts, commemorations of collectives, and transregional social imaginaries at the end of Persianate empires between Iran and India. Beginning with imperial apogee at the end of the seventeenth century, her paper traces imprints of subsequent social and political fragmentation on the form (adab) of tazkirah writing and transregional connections.

This event will take place online over Zoom. To RSVP and receive the link to join and a copy of the pre-circulated paper please contact Katherine von Ofenheim at kev2122@columbia.edu.

The Adab Colloquium in Columbia is a platform for scholars whose work engages with the range of adab practices of reading, writing, and performance from the 6th century down to the 19th century. The colloquium brings together faculty and graduate students from Columbia and other universities in the region for intensive discussions of new research by leading specialists invited from the US and abroad.