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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220601T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220601T120000
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SUMMARY:*CANCELLED* CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:This session has been cancelled.\nCamilla Miglio (La Sapienza\, Rome)\n“From Medieval Persian Literature to Modernist German Poetry” \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nTuesday\, June 1 at  10:30 am Pacific Time \nImage: Painting from Baysunghur’s manuscript of Sa’di’s Gulistan\, Herat. Chester Beatty Library\, Dublin.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-june1/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/iranian250_400x628.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220526T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220526T103000
DTSTAMP:20220325T035236Z
CREATED:20220325T035236Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220325T035236Z
UID:10000345-1653555600-1653561000@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Shahzad Bashir (Brown University)\n“The Market in Poetry in the Persian World” \nThe discussion will focus on Professor Bashir’s book The Market in Poetry in the Persian World (Cambridge UP\, 2021)\, which treats poetic utterances as objects of material value sought by those with power and resources. The book provides a sense for the texture of the Persian world by discussing what made poetry precious and a carrier of social relations\, political and religious authority\, economic exchange\, and the articulation of gender. At the broadest level\, this work substantiates the interdependency between cultural and material reproduction of society. \nShahzad Bashir is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities and Professor of History and Religious Studies at Brown University in Providence\, Rhode Island. He has published extensively on various topics\, including\, most recently\, the digital book A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press\, 2022). He is an Associate Editor of the journal History and Theory\, edits the book series Islamic Humanities (University of California Press)\, and co-edits the book series Islamicate Intellectual History (Brill). \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nThursday\, May 26 at 9:00 am Pacific Time \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.\nImage: Painting from Baysunghur’s manuscript of Sa’di’s Gulistan\, Herat. Chester Beatty Library\, Dublin.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-may26/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/iranian250_400x628.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220519T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220519T103000
DTSTAMP:20220325T033244Z
CREATED:20220325T033244Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220325T033244Z
UID:10000343-1652950800-1652956200@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Paul Losensky (Indiana University)\n“A Common Thread: Three Literary Careers in Early Modern Persia\, England\, and Spain” \nThe emergence of the concept of the Global Renaissance has brought new attention to the political\, diplomatic\, economic\, and artistic connections between major civilizational centers in the early modern period. For the most part\, however\, literature has remained on the sidelines of this discussion. The talk will consider the stakes and challenges of bringing the vast Persophone literary sphere into conversation with contemporary literatures of Europe. It examines the lives and works of three poets who rose to the heights of literary fame from mercantile and craft families that were involved\, in one way or another\, with cloth and clothing: the Persian poet Mohtasham Kashani (1528-1588)\, the English poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)\, and the Spanish poet Lope de Vega (1562-1635). Following this “common thread\,” I will examine the economic and social circumstances in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that allowed for this kind of social mobility in both Iran and Europe and how they effected literary institutions in three nations separated by religion and language\, resulting in broadly commensurate poetic cultures that can be profitably woven together in comparative dialogue. \nPaul Losensky (Ph.D. University of Chicago\, 1993) is Professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University\, Bloomington\, where he teaches Persian language and literature\, comparative studies of Western and Middle Eastern literatures\, and translation studies. His research focusses on Persian literary historiography\, biographical writing\, and the Fresh-Style poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His publications include Welcoming Fighāni: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the Safavid-Mughal Ghazal (1998)\, Farid ad-Din ‘Attār’s Memorial of God’s Friends: Lives and Sayings of Sufis (2009)\, and In the Bazaar of Love: Selected Poems of Amir Khusrau (2013\, with Sunil Sharma). He has authored numerous articles on Persian literature for journals such as Iranian Studies and contributed to Encyclopedia of Islam and Encyclopaedia Iranica. He is a former fellow at the National Humanities Center. \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nThursday\, May 19 at 9:00 am Pacific Time \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.\nImage: Painting from Baysunghur’s manuscript of Sa’di’s Gulistan\, Herat. Chester Beatty Library\, Dublin.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-may19/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/iranian250_400x628.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220511T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220511T103000
DTSTAMP:20220325T032504Z
CREATED:20220325T032504Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220325T032504Z
UID:10000342-1652259600-1652265000@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Julia Rubanovich (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presents an online lecture titled “The Tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā through the Eyes of a Jewish Poet”. \nThis talk will examine a string of episodes from the tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā embedded into the “Book of Genesis” (Bereshit-nāma)\, a biblical poem composed by the fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian poet Shāhīn. Shāhīn’s work is situated at a convenient juncture for comparative analysis: it is preceded by the poem Yūsif-u Zulaykhā erroneously ascribed to Firdausī (composed at the end of the eleventh century) and followed by Jāmī’s famous mathnavī. While juxtaposing several key episodes of the tale in the three poems\, Dr. Rubanovich will attempt to highlight the peculiar interpretation that the Jewish poet lends to the patently Islamic subject-matter\, maneuvering between his commitment to the biblical source on the one hand\, and the desire to gratify his addressees on the other. \nJulia Rubanovich (PhD 2005) is Senior Lecturer in Persian Language and Literature and Chair of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests center on medieval Persian literature\, including Judeo-Persian; the Alexander-Romance in the Islamic domain; the mechanisms of literary reception\, specifically in connection with Firdausī’s Shāh-nāma; the evolution of literary canon; folk literature\, notably prose dāstāns\, and the problem of medieval orality; the concepts of authorship and the emergence of authorial self-consciousness in medieval Persian literature. She is presently working on the scholarly edition and annotated translation of the Tale of Joseph/Yūsuf and Zulaykhā in a fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian epic poem Bereshīt-nāma (Book of Genesis) by Shāhīn. \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nWednesday\, May 11 at 9:00 am Pacific Time \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.\nImage: Painting from Baysunghur’s manuscript of Sa’di’s Gulistan\, Herat. Chester Beatty Library\, Dublin.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-may11/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/may11_rubanovich.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220503T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220503T103000
DTSTAMP:20220325T013916Z
CREATED:20220325T013916Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220325T013916Z
UID:10000340-1651568400-1651573800@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Justine Landau (Sorbonne)\n“An Epic Tribute to the Lyric Poem” \nPoetry does things with words. In the premodern world\, this fact is perhaps nowhere acknowledged more unanimously than in the Persianate sources. Chief among the arts of language\, lyric poetry is associated with “licit magic\,” after the Arabic saying\, since its mastery is said to conduce to “the accomplishment of great things in the order of the world” (Nezâmi ‘Aruzi\, Chahâr maqâle\, II). The philosophers of the classical period discussed the powers of the poetic art and its unique effect on the imagination. In Arabic and in Persian\, the successors of Fârâbi developed the doctrine of the “poetic syllogism” to account for its workings. Writing in the mid-thirteenth century\, Nasir al-Din Tusi provides a striking account of why “good poems are more effective than sermons” in impressing the minds of the listeners. Yet\, from Beyhaqi and Ghazâli to Jâmi and Mollâ Sadrâ\, poets\, critics\, historians\, theologians and prose writers all pay homage to the art of the poet in some way. Unsurprisingly\, the Shâhnâmeh itself honors the lyric poets. In several instances in his great epic\, Ferdowsi stages episodes of lyric performance\, and their consequences on the narrative. Whether depicting the craft of minstrels at court\, the boasting of heroes or the lament of warriors after a defeat\, these scenes sound a distinctive note within the epic verse in which they are embedded. How can a song inform\, or deflect\, the destiny of kings? And how does Ferdowsi pay tribute to lyric poetry? The philosophers’ perspective might help us elucidate the far-reaching consequences of some remarkable poems in the Book of Kings. \nJustine Landau is Associate Professor (Maître de conférences) of Persian Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and a member of the Centre de Recherche sur le Monde iranien (CeRMI) in Paris. Her research focuses on classical Persian literature\, in particular early Persian court poetry\, poetics and literary theory\, and comparative literature. Before joining the Sorbonne Nouvelle\, she taught at Harvard University and at the University of California in Los Angeles\, and was a researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her publications include various articles\, book chapters\, translations\, and a monograph\, De rythme & de raison. Lecture croisée de deux traités de poétique persans du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle\, 2013). Her next book project explores the aesthetics of occasion and circumstance in early Persian court poetry. \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nTuesday\, May 3 at 9:00 am Pacific Time \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.\nImage: Kay Kavus and the minstrel\, Patna\, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library\, MS H.L. 3787-3788\, 1440\, 067v.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-may3/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/may3_iranian250_landau.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220418T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220418T103000
DTSTAMP:20220325T013108Z
CREATED:20220325T013108Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220325T013108Z
UID:10000339-1650272400-1650277800@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Prashant Keshavmurthy (McGill University) \n“Reading Niẓāmi Ganjavī’s Leylī u Majnūn as a Novel” \nNeither the Byzantines nor the Persians had any generic name for the Greek and Persian novels that were composed in the 12th century. Beholden to older (Attic Greek and Abbasid Arabic) models\, the taxonomies of literary forms in both geographically adjacent literary cultures lagged behind the innovations of literary practice. Neither did Constantinopolitan literary culture\, centered in the courts of the Komnenian dynasty\, produce any theoretical reflection on Theodore Prodromos’s sudden revival of the ancient Greek novel in the 1130s\, nor did Persian-Arabic rhetoric (balāghat) register Niẓāmi of Ganja’s novelistic retelling of an ancient Arab tale in 1188. \nAnd yet\, scholarship on Niẓāmi’s poem has failed to read it as novelistic because it has failed to recognize its parodies and ironizations of multiple genres. This paper sets up a comparison of Theodore Prodromos’s Rhodanthe and Dosikles and Niẓāmī’s Leylī u Majnūn\, arguing that both belong to what Mikhail Bakhtin called “the prehistory of novelistic discourse”. Prodromos ironized the ancient Greek novel to induce laughter at rhetorical artifice\, his ekphrastic episodes working as reflections on the nature of craft. Niẓāmi turned Majnūn\, an Abbasid-Buyid pastoral ideal\, into a barbarian locus of authenticity to induce reflection on the commodification of the qaṣīda or panegyric in Seljuq courts. The paper concludes by remarking on the stakes of reading Niẓāmi’s Leylī u Majnūn as a novel and on divergences and convergences in the subsequent careers of the Greek and Persian novel. \nPrashant Keshavmurthy is Associate Professor of Persian-Iranian Studies in the Institute of Islamic Studies\, McGill University. He is the author of Persian Authorship and Canonicity in Late Mughal Delhi: Building an Ark (Routledge\, 2016) and co-translator of Sohrab Sepehri\, The Eight Books: A Complete English Translation (Brill\, 2022). He is currently at work on a book on the relations between desire and artisanship in the quintet of Nizami of Ganja (d.1209)\, inaugurator of reflection on this relationship in the Persianate world. \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nMonday\, April 18 at 9:00 am Pacific Time \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.\n 
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-apr18/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/apr18_iranian250_keshavmurthy.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220413T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220413T103000
DTSTAMP:20220324T225934Z
CREATED:20220324T225934Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220324T225934Z
UID:10000337-1649840400-1649845800@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Leili Anvar (Sorbonne\, Paris)\n“From the Desert of Arabia to the Gardens of Herat: Wanderings of Majnûn\, the Poet-Lover” \nIn this presentation\, we will follow Majnûn in his journeys from the Arabic poems to the great Persian masnavis (composed by Nezâmi\, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and Jâmi). We shall see how -with the development of sufism and its influence upon Persian literature- the character of Majnûn has been turned into a hero of mystic love and also how Leylâ became Leyli and a real character\, a lover herself and a theophany. The presentation will include the projection and commentary of a number of miniatures illustrating the manuscripts of the masnavis. \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nWednesday\, April 13 at 9:00 am Pacific Time \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-april13/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cegs.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/apr13_iranian250_anvar.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220408T090000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220408T103000
DTSTAMP:20220324T212829Z
CREATED:20220324T212829Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220324T212829Z
UID:10000336-1649408400-1649413800@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
DESCRIPTION:Dominic Brookshaw (Oxford University)\n“Zulaykha’s Redemption: From Lustful Villain to Female Icon” \nThe guile associated with Zulaykha in the Qur’an is largely absent from her depiction in the ghazals of fourteenth-century Iran. The negativity surrounding Zulaykha’s expression (or manifestation) of female sexuality dims in the Persian ghazal where we witness the character’s salvific rehabilitation. On the surface\, Zulaykha represents female-driven sexual desire\, an impulse celebrated infrequently in Persian lyric poetry. That Zulaykha seeks to initiate a sexual liaison with her male love object recalls (albeit in a more aggressive form) Vis’s desire for Ramin\, and Shirin’s for Khusraw. Though ostensibly a demonstration of heteroerotic desire\, Zulaykha’s has been read as homoerotic if we accept that male listeners would partner with Zulaykha in a collective yearning for Joseph. Zulaykha\, an older woman\, finds the young Joseph attractive for the same reasons older men find themselves aroused by him. The beloved’s allure does not acknowledge gender boundaries and his beauty can arouse (and disturb) both men and women alike. This gendered aspect of the story is further complicated in the ghazals of Jahan-Malik Khatun (d. after 1391; the most prolific female poet of medieval Iran)\, who alludes to Zulaykha more frequently than do her male contemporaries. In a reversal of the Qur’anic narrative\, Jahan depicts Joseph tearing his own shirt in exasperation over his frustrated desire for Zulaykha. Through this image\, Jahan transforms Zulaykha into the object of Joseph’s desire\, and reworks the tearing of Joseph’s shirt into a marker of his frustrated longing for sexual union with her\, rather than proof of Zulaykha’s willfully destructive lust. Jahan disrupts the roles of lover and beloved\, desirer and desired one\, and this shift in the erotic dynamic of the story allows Jahan to identify her voice with that of the male protagonist in pursuit of his female beloved. This change in the direction of the desire as depicted in the standard narrative complicates homoerotic readings of the story and demonstrates the malleability of the Joseph-Zulaykha narrative. A sufficiently positive image of Zulaykha emerges in the lyric poetry of the fourteenth century that poets deem it appropriate to draw favourable comparisons in their panegyrics between Zulaykha and some of the most politically powerful women of the day. \nDominic Parviz Brookshaw is Professor of Persian Literature and Iranian Culture at the University of Oxford\, and Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham College. Dominic previously served on the Editorial Board of Middle Eastern Literatures and\, from 2004 to 2014\, he was Assistant Editor for Iranian Studies. He is a former member of both the Board of the International Society for Iranian Studies\, and the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies. His latest book\, Hafiz and His Contemporaries: Poetry\, Performance\, and Patronage in Fourteenth-century Iran (I B Tauris/Bloomsbury\, 2019)\, was awarded the 2020 Saidi-Sirjani Book Award. His current book project is a study of early Qajar poetry in which\, for the first time in any scholarly monograph\, the poetry of women\, provincial litterateurs\, and members of ethno-linguistic and heterodox religious communities will be read alongside that produced by elite men to unpack the gender and center-periphery dynamics at play in the Bazgasht-i adabi\, Iran’s last truly indigenous literary movement. \nClaudia Yaghoobi (University of North Carolina)\n“Queering the Ideal of Islamic Beauty” \nIn Persian cultural productions\, Yusuf is depicted as a feminized\, often androgynous\, object of desire. Although his androgyny matches the standards of pre-modern Islamicate culture\, modern viewers might find such representations disruptive. Furthermore\, while feminized\, Yusuf has been portrayed as a passive (and\, as such\, emasculated) recipient of the female gaze. This representation was also disruptive to the pre-modern (and modern) understandings of male-female\, active-passive gender roles in the Muslim world. In this talk\, using paintings and tile works from the Qajar era (1779-1925)\, and contemporary tableau rugs\, and Iranian TV series\, among other media\, I argue that these works “queer” Yusuf’s masculinity and male beauty\, and in so doing construct gender in a reverse manner\, challenging gender categorizations\, and illustrating the fluidity of sexuality. Through Yusuf’s representation\, these works simultaneously mark the boundaries and initiate the destabilization of masculinity while the same masculinity is constituted and defined vis-à-vis dominant discourses as well. To do so\, I position myself in a discourse similar to European medieval scholarly works and I use the term “queer” to disturb rigid conceptions of sexuality and gender\, to explore non-normative desire\, and to trace the power dynamics of heteronormativity within Iranian cultural discourses. \nDr. Yaghoobi is a Roshan Associate Professor and the inaugural director of Persian Studies at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina\, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Literature and Film (Cambridge UP\, 2020) and Subjectivity in ‘Attar\, Persian Sufism\, and European Mysticism (Purdue UP\, 2017). She is also the editor The #MeToo Movement in Iran: Reporting Sexual Violence and Harassment forthcoming from Bloomsbury/IB Tauris in 2023. Dr. Yaghoobi’s third book titled\, Transnational Culture in Iranian Armenian Diaspora is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press. \nIranian 250\, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives\,”  taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC)\, offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and programs\, including Islamic Studies\, Gender Studies\, History\, Art History\, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies\, English\, and Comparative Literature. All sessions will be held in English\, and students with no prior knowledge of Persian are welcome to enroll. Twice a month\, international scholars will deliver lectures focusing on their current research trajectories. Key topics: epics and ethnic identity\, philosophical poetics and occasion\, mysticism and performative queerness\, Judeo-Islamic literary intersections\, ideals of beauty and lyric performance\, literary modernity from Ottoman Turkey to Moghul India\, German romantic and modernist appropriations of the Persian poetic canon\, etc. In collaboration with the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies. \nFriday\, April 8 at 9:00 am Pacific Time. \nRegister here for online attendance on Zoom.\nImage: Painting from Baysunghur’s manuscript of Sa’di’s Gulistan\, Herat. Chester Beatty Library\, Dublin.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/cmrs-cegs-research-seminar-iranian-250-april8/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220302T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220302T133000
DTSTAMP:20220112T005443Z
CREATED:20220112T005443Z
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UID:10000322-1646222400-1646227800@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Why (and How) Should a Platonist Laugh at Eros? Humor and Love in the "Symposium"
DESCRIPTION:A lecture by Pierre Destrée (Université de Louvain)\, part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar\, Classics 250\, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). \nIn all societies and cultures\, the erotic experience is complex. It is shaped by norms\, habits\, emotions and manners of living the body. Such an experience crosses a variety of discourses and domains of knowledge. We will look at this phenomenon\, the erotic\, as a matter of desire\, pleasure\, bodies\, institutions. We will go beyond the sexual acts\, beyond the controversial notion of “sexuality”\, beyond sex as merely a matter of power\, and will bring to the fore what was truly relevant in the cultures on the ancient world: sensuality. \n“Why (and How) Should a Platonist Laugh at Eros? Humor and Love in the Symposium” \n12:00 – 1:30 pm Pacific Time \nRegister to attend on Zoom.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/sissa-seminar-winter2022-destree/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220223T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220223T153000
DTSTAMP:20220112T003826Z
CREATED:20220112T003826Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220112T003826Z
UID:10000321-1645624800-1645630200@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:A Two-Way Road: Comparative Anthropology of Eros and Sensuality in Latin Elegy and the Greek Novel
DESCRIPTION:A lecture by Romain Brethes (Sciences Politiques\, Paris)\, part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar\, Classics 250\, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). \nOne of the emerging questions facing scholars of the Greek novel\, and imperial Greek literature more generally\, is the question of whether Greek authors were interested in\, and betrayed knowledge of\, Latin literature and culture. The orthodox view has for a long time been (and still partly is) that\, while the Romans engaged with Greek cultural practices\, the Greeks were on the whole indifferent to\, and silent on the subject of\, Latin literature. A paradigm shift is taking place\, and the idea that the Greek novelists were readers of Latin literature is gaining traction. The reception of Latin literature\, and especially Latin poetry\, in the imperial Greek world is therefore coming into focus as a big-ticket issue\, especially within the study of the Greek novels. \nErotic experience and playful exploration lie at the heart of Ovidian erotodidactic poems and Longus and Achilles Tatius’ novels. For instance\, in Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria\, the lover has to learn how to decipher\, through a semiotic and sensual labyrinth\, the reactions provoked by certain stimuli. This lover has also to find inscribed in the beloved’s body the signs of a likely mutual attraction. If the acts of viewing\, gazing or touching play a part in objectifying the desired body as something to conquer and possess\, this sensual activity also expresses a form of subjectivity and self-representation. This process thus stands at the crossroads of knowledge (How to be a good learner and decipher?)\, gender performance (Am I a good actor/actress\, or a good pretender?) and consent (How to consider and to deal with the beloved’s resistance?). \nProfessor Brethes considers in this lecture if these Ovidian protocols can be paralleled and explored especially in Longus and Achilles Tatius’ novels – some texts stemming from the so-called “Second Sophistic” movement –  where issues of erotic experience and knowledge are problematized in contrasting and complementary ways. Daphnis and Chloe displays\, at least partly\, a celebration of innocence. Daphnis and Chloe are indeed unconventional lovers insofar as they are unaware of what love is\, how to name and to satisfy it\, but they try out bodily experiences which challenge the traditional sexual dimorphism. Leucippe and Clitophon targets the convention of reciprocal love and is ironically portrayed as a fiction of impotent knowledge: if Clitophon and even Leucippe try to be good Ovidian pupils by sharing multiple sensual connections\, they are eventually prevented from becoming champions of mutual orgasm by various obstacles. While Longus is pushing to the limits the ignorance of sexual achievement\, Achilles Tatius mocks an excess of bookish expertise since the lovers’ cultural dispositions are nothing but helpful in their erotic quest. Could Longus and Achilles Tatius then be engaged in a dialogic relationship mediated by their own reading of Ovid’s prescriptions? \nRegister to attend on Zoom.\n“A Two-Way Road: Comparative Anthropology of Eros and Sensuality in Latin Elegy and the Greek Novel”\n2:00 – 3:30 pm Pacific Time
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/sissa-seminar-winter2022-brethes/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220216T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220216T133000
DTSTAMP:20220122T002239Z
CREATED:20220122T002239Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220122T002239Z
UID:10000328-1645012800-1645018200@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Green Like a Woman: Gender Expression and Erotic Manners
DESCRIPTION:A lecture by Tommaso Gazzarri (Union College)\, part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar\, Classics 250\, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). \nProfessor Gazzarri’s research explores the ancient association of the color galbinus with the figure of the cinaedus (Martial 3.82.5; Juvenal 2.97). Like Greek chloros\, galbinus corresponds to a hue between yellow and green. Unlike viridis\, galbinus\, when referring to persons\, is utilized mainly to describe women and cinaedi. “Sexuality” or “sexual orientation” as a category of identity is a modern construction\, and the ancient sexual experience is generally understood as hinging on the Foucauldian binomial active/passive (Halperin 1990\, Williams 1999)\, without other explicit markers of sexual or group identity. Yet some scholars have argued in favor of the existence of “minorities” in the ancient world\, such as that of “men desiring to be penetrated by men” (Richlin 1993)\, (Clarke 2005). Membership in such “minorities” is often indicated by shared style of dress\, fashion\, and body language\, which strengthen subculture identity and function as elements conveying a sense of group membership (Hebdige 1979). Analysis of the color galbinus\, as typical both of Roman female cosmetics and gynecological afflictions\, suggests that the specific association of this hue with the so-called cinaedi can be gauged as cultural and anthropological evidence in favor of the existence of ante litteram “erotic orientations” in Rome. \nRegister to attend on Zoom.\n“Green Like a Woman: Gender Expression and Erotic Manners“\n12:00 – 1:30 pm Pacific Time
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/sissa-seminar-winter2022-gazzarri/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220209T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20220209T133000
DTSTAMP:20220128T221423Z
CREATED:20220128T221423Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220128T221423Z
UID:10000329-1644408000-1644413400@cegs.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:A Woman’s Pleasure: Philosophy and Sexuality in the Poetry of Sulpicia
DESCRIPTION:A lecture by Erin McKenna Hanses (Penn State University)\, part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar\, Classics 250\, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). \nIn his diatribe against love in De Rerum Natura Book 4\, Lucretius includes an idea found rarely in male-authored Roman poetry: the Epicurean asserts that there is mutua voluptas between men and women and that both partners can experience pleasure in matters of sex. In this paper\, Dr. Hanses argues that Sulpicia\, the female speaker and possible author of various poems in Corpus Tibullianum 3.8-18\, provides an emphatic endorsement—and vivid illustration—of this notable Lucretian assertion. Through clever use of Lucretian diction\, Sulpicia is able to identify herself as the kind of woman envisioned by the Epicurean in DRN 4\, while providing a fuller illustration of what it is like to be a woman experiencing the often painful voluptas Lucretius warns of. The philosophical nature of Sulpicia’s comments on pleasure are further confirmed by her simultaneous engagement with the epigrams of Philodemus\, an Epicurean contemporary of Lucretius. This female insertion into elegy’s engagement with Epicurean thought is appropriate to a Hellenistic school known to have included women among its members. \nRegister to attend on Zoom.”A Woman’s Pleasure: Philosophy and Sexuality in the Poetry of Sulpicia”\n12:00 – 1:30 pm Pacific Time \nTop image:Wall painting depicting a banquet. A man drinks from a type of drinking vessel with two openings called a rhyton. His female companion wears a sheer garment and a golden net over her hair. A female servant attends to the couple\, proffering a small box. The table in front holds a set of silver vessels for mixing wine. The whole scene represents an idealized Greek drinking party\, a pleasurable sight for the guests of this first century Roman household. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli.
URL:https://cegs.ucla.edu/event/sissa-seminar-winter2022-hanses/
CATEGORIES:Research Seminar
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