Jahānsāzi: Text, Space, and Place in Medieval Islamicate Literary Worlds
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Great Lakes Adiban Society
Organizer Name
Cameron Cross
Organizer Affiliation
Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Presider Name
Nathan L. M. Tabor
Presider Affiliation
Western Michigan Univ.
Paper Title 1
The "Char-takht" of Husayn Abivardi
Presenter 1 Name
Theodore Beers
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of Chicago
Paper Title 2
Learning to Be Sufi, Writing to Make History: Malfuzat in the Chishti Context
Presenter 2 Name
Manpreet Kaur
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Columbia Univ.
Paper Title 3
Distant and Imagined Lands of Fiction
Presenter 3 Name
N. Ipek Huner-Cora
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of Chicago
Paper Title 4
Dangerous Authenticity: What It Means to Be from the Iranian "Otherworld"
Presenter 4 Name
Samuel Lasman
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Chicago
Start Date
11-5-2018 1:30 PM
Session Location
Schneider 1345
Description
This panel will consider the relation of physical environments, real or imagined, to literary production and historiography. As Islam spread to encompass a vast variety of climates and landscapes, both the cultures that it brought in its wake and the indigenous cultures it encountered worked to negotiate the relationships between humans and their environment through literary productions. In later centuries, shifting borders brought narratives of loss, nostalgia, and destruction into play. In literary terms, what did it mean to gain, lose, create or destroy places? How did the lived or perceived conditions of cities, provinces, and wildernesses — both distant and familiar — affect the depiction of those places in literature, or the invention of new places in speculative or fantastical works? How did the spaces through which writers traveled or migrated shape their creations? What role did wider environmental shifts, such as urbanization and climate change, play in the development of literary traditions? By considering perspectives from fields as broad as literary studies, cultural history, geography, and historical ecology, this panel aims to create an interdisciplinary conversation on the building of medieval Islamicate literary worlds.
Cameron Cross
Jahānsāzi: Text, Space, and Place in Medieval Islamicate Literary Worlds
Schneider 1345
This panel will consider the relation of physical environments, real or imagined, to literary production and historiography. As Islam spread to encompass a vast variety of climates and landscapes, both the cultures that it brought in its wake and the indigenous cultures it encountered worked to negotiate the relationships between humans and their environment through literary productions. In later centuries, shifting borders brought narratives of loss, nostalgia, and destruction into play. In literary terms, what did it mean to gain, lose, create or destroy places? How did the lived or perceived conditions of cities, provinces, and wildernesses — both distant and familiar — affect the depiction of those places in literature, or the invention of new places in speculative or fantastical works? How did the spaces through which writers traveled or migrated shape their creations? What role did wider environmental shifts, such as urbanization and climate change, play in the development of literary traditions? By considering perspectives from fields as broad as literary studies, cultural history, geography, and historical ecology, this panel aims to create an interdisciplinary conversation on the building of medieval Islamicate literary worlds.
Cameron Cross