Events
2023
NES seminars meeting from 12:00 to 1:30 pm, West Seminar room.
October 25: NES Lecture, Syriac Christianity and the Holy City of Jerusalem: Entangled Histories in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Catalin-Stefan Popa (Romanian Academy). The lecture introduces the audience to the process of interaction of one of the most important Middle Eastern Church traditions, Syriac Christianity, with the Holy City and the Holy Land. Even if scholars have often argued that the late antique pilgrimage to the holy places was not of interest in Syriac Christianity, the sources have demonstrated the opposite. At the end of Late Antiquity and beginning of the Middle Ages, the Holy City acted in Syriac Christian canon as a matrix for encountering holiness, and a standardized process of pilgrimage became part of a recurrent devotional custom of monks and lay people. To be held in the White-Levy Room (IAS) at 12:00 noon. Registration is required for both in-person or virtual attendance.
November 10, 12:00-3:00 pm: Building an Electronic Syriac Corpus using OCR: Preserving and Digitizing Cultural Heritage—Launch of Simtho III. Sponsored by NES and DS at the Institute for Advanced Study and Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. The digitization of cultural heritage materials plays a crucial role in preserving and making accessible historical and linguistic resources. The Simtho corpus is a result of constructing an electronic Syriac corpus through the application of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and correcting the OCR results in collaboration with young women and men in the Middle East who make up Beth Mardutho's Meltho Lab team. See here for event information and program.
November 15, Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Curating the Past: Coptic Historiography and Memory in late-medieval Egypt, Tamer el-Leithy (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Johns Hopkins University).
November 27, Princeton University Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Ephrem the Syrian and the Emergence of a New Literary Awareness, Alberto Rigolio (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Durham University), 12-1:20 pm Jones Hall room 202, Princeton University.
November 29, Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Ephrem the Syrian and a New Beginning in Syriac Poetry, Alberto Rigolio (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Durham University).
December 6, Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Beyond Bricks and Mortar: The Ashkenazi Synagogue in Cairo as a Living Archive, Yoram Meital (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev).
December 6, Film Screening (5:00 pm Wolfensohn Hall): Galoot (‘Exile’ in Hebrew, 2003). In Galoot, Moroccan-Israeli filmmaker Asher Tlalim finds himself in London. Away from home, he reflects on Israel/Palestine anew. The film is an intimate saga told through compassionate portraits of his loved ones—his wife, his children, and Israeli, Palestinian, and British friends in London.
Galoot touches the seeds of the pain, and the heart of the tragedies that have been and continue to play out on the political stage. An epic yet intimate journey that goes to Poland, Palestine, Morocco and England, Galoot considers the condition of exile: What are its heartbreaks? What are its insights? And perhaps more urgently…does it provide any hope? Register to attend here.
December 15, Princeton University Classics Lunch Talk, Bardaisan and the origins of Syriac versification, Alberto Rigolio (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Durham University). Meeting from 12:00 pm, East Pyne room 161. RSVP by Monday, December 11 to lsoucy@princeton.edu.
2024
NES seminars meeting from 12:00 to 1:30 pm, West Seminar room.
January 17: Near Eastern Studies Lecture, Topic to be announced, Martino Diez (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan). Online event, details to follow at a later time.
January 24: Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Fiscal scribes in the khedivate of Egypt: the Ruznamja, 1800s-1880s, Adam Mestyan (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Duke University).
January 31: Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Topic to be announced, Sarah Davis-Secord (School of Historical Studies, IAS and University of New Mexico).
February 14-15: NES Workshop, Asterisms – the relations among their verbal, numerical, and visual representations across cultures in research and public outreach. Conveners: Sonja Brentjes (IAS School of Historical Studies and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) and Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS). Meeting in the White-Levy Room (IAS). Details to follow at a later time.
February 28: Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Mapmaking in Islamicate societies: Challenges, contradictions, and opportunities, Sonja Brentjes (IAS School of Historical Studies and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin).
March 20: Near Eastern Studies Seminar, Topic to be announced, Thomas Robert Travers (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Cornell University).
March 22: NES Workshop, Scholarly Digital Editions of Arabic-Script Texts. Conveners: Adam Mestyan (School of Historical Studies, IAS and Duke University), Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS) and María Mercedes Tuya (Digital Scholarship @IAS). Meeting in the White-Levy Room (IAS). Details to follow at a later time.
May 16-17: NES Workshop, Misattributions and Forgeries in Middle Eastern Manuscript Traditions. Converners: Grigory Kessel, (Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna), George A. Kiraz (School of Historical Studies, IAS) and Sabine Schmidtke (School of Historical Studies, IAS). Workshop to be held at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna. See Call for Proposals here.