We are excited to announce the schedule for this year’s Great Lakes Adiban Workshop, which will take place on Zoom on September 5-6, 2020. The workshop will feature two roundtable discussions and eight presentations by both veterans of our workshops and newcomers, ranging across Arabic, Persian, and Urdu literature, from the 3rd/9th century to the 14th/20th.

Attendance is free and open, but we do ask that all participants register through this link: https://forms.gle/pDV2V59N1Mn9nHmG9. Please register before September 4th, so that we can ensure full participation. If you have any questions, please email us at greatlakesadibansociety@gmail.com.

Saturday, September 5 2020

Note: All times are in Central Time (GMT-6)

  • 9:00–9:50am / Kaveh Hemmat (Benedictine University) – The Other Machin: A Utopia in the Epic of Kush
  • 10:00–10:50am / Jennifer Tobkin (George Washington University) – The Man of Our Times Poems in Kitāb al-Zahra: A Scholar’s Vision of Male Love in the First ‘Abbāsid Era

Coffee Break

  • 11:20–11:40am / Julie Ershadi (University of California, Los Angeles) – Self-Rewriting in 14th Century Ghazal Poetry
  • 11:40–12:00pm / Shiva Mihan (Harvard University): Scribal work rate based on a Timurid Document

Lunch Break

  • 12:30–1:00pm / Roundtable: GLAS Digital Resources for Islamicate Literatures
  • 1:00–1:45pm / GLAS Business meeting

Sunday, September 6 2020

Note: All times are in Central Time (GMT-6)

  • 9:00–9:50am / Thomas Parsa (University of Chicago) – The Land of Speech: Analysis of Munīr Lāhūrī’s (1610-1644 CE) Sharḥ-i qaṣāʾid-i ʿUrfī and Kārnāma
  • 10:00–10:50am / Zahra Sabri (McGill University) – Delhi’s Mastery in Persian and Urdu: Amīr Ḵẖusrau and ‘Standardised’ Speech

Coffee Break

  • 11:20–11:40am / Catherine Ambler (Columbia University) – Beyond Confession and Creed: Shawkat Bukhari’s Unity Amidst Multiplicity
  • 11:40am–12:00pm / Jaideep Pandey (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) – Extra-Temporal Longings: Al-Andalus and Desire in Urdu Safarnāma

Lunch Break

  • 12:30–1:15pm / Open discussion: Non-Elites in Islamicate Literary Cultures
  • 1:15–1:45pm / Conclusion

This workshop was pledged support by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Middle East Studies, and the Global Islamic Studies Center at the University of Michigan. We thank them for their assistance and look forward to physically convening in Ann Arbor when circumstances allow it!