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Download This PDF File Syrian Studies Association Newsletter نشرة رابطة الدراسات السورية Volume XV No. 2 Spring-Summer 2010 Association News... 3 Features……………… 4 Research Notes….. 8 Arts in Syria ……. 21 Members of the Board President Fred Lawson Past President: Peter Sluglett Secretary-Treasurer Geoff Schad Member at Large Elyse Semerdjian Student Member Hilary This issue of our newsletter features articles on the study of Syria in Scotland and Scandinavia and among Scots and Scandinavians. Kalmbach Syria Liaison Beverly From the President Levine June 6, 2010 Prize Committee Peter Dear SSA Members Sluglett and Andrea Stanton Eyjafjallajokull dealt a body-blow to Syrian studies in April. The Webmaster Joshua Landis eruption of the now famous but still unpronounceable Icelandic volcano Newsletter Steve Tamari prevented scholars and journalists from all over the world from gathering Book Reviews Andrea at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University for a major conference on "Bashar al-Asad's First Decade." The meeting has been Stanton rescheduled for early October, and will consist of nine panels, an exhibit of photographs exploring "the secret life of Syrian lingerie" (which I Support the work of the assume builds on a pictorial report that was published on the BBC Syrian Studies website last December), an oud recital featuring Aleppo's Muhammad Association! See inside Qadri Dalal and a performance of folk dancing. for details on how to join, I recognize among the participants several SSA members--including how to contribute articles Paulo Pinto, Thomas Pierret, Cecile Boex, Radwan Ziadeh, Eyal Zisser, and reviews, and how to Samer Abboud, Jonathan Shannon, Ray Hinnebusch, Miriam Ababsa and keep up with our news Joshua Landis. My apologies to any of our colleagues whom I have through our Facebook overlooked. Further information about the page. (Continued on page 2) SYRIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER VOL. XV:2 SPRING-SUMMER 2010 PAGE 2 نشششر ة ر ا بششطشة ا لشد ر ا سشا ت ا لشسشو ر يشة (continued from page 1) From the President conference can be obtained from Jaleh Taheri at the Center. A second bit of bad news came last October, when the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (www.iwpr.net) stopped publishing its monthly round-up of items drawn from the Syrian press. So far, the Institute's program of training local reporters and disseminating their stories on line appears to remain active. One example of such reporting last January traced the impact of US economic sanctions on Syrianair's attempts to upgrade its aging fleet by sending engines from its Airbus A-320s to Germany for refurbishing and buying a pair of ATR 72-900 short-haul aircraft from France. Officials in the Department of Commerce were able to block both initiatives, since they involved components manufactured in the US. As a way around the embargo, Damascus announced plans to lease two passenger jets from the venerable Russian company Tupolev, with the intention of purchasing them later on. These were to be the first new aircraft bought by Syrianair since 1998. The report goes on to say that two different private airlines have started flying in Syria: Sham Wings and Damascus Pearl. This is news to me, as are many topics that IWPR has covered over the past decade. Syria's national airline is not the only entity suffering financial difficulties at the moment. For a number of reasons, including a 100 per cent increase in the fee that MESA charges for us to hold the annual meeting, our Association's treasury is in a precarious state. Please, if you have not already done so, renew your membership while you think of it. And consider telling someone you know about SSA. Steve Tamari has done an outstanding job of keeping the Newsletter vigorous and accessible to readers. Let's not permit the organization to collapse around him. Fred Lawson Oakland, California, USA Join the Syrian Studies Association! Annual dues are $25 for professionals and $10 for students, payable by check. Membership is free for Syrian nationals residing in Syria. Contact our Secretary- Treasurer. Check out the Syrian Studies Association Website at http://www.ou.edu/ssa The Syrian Studies Association has a Facebook page. Join the group! The SSA is an international association organized to encourage and promote research and scholarly understanding of Syria in all periods and in all academic disciplines. The SSA is a non- profit, non-political association affiliated with MESA (the Middle East Studies Association of North America). The SSA defines Syria as the area included in historic Bilad al-Sham until 1918 and Syria following that. We invite scholars who study the peoples and territories of what is today Syria, Jordan, and Palestine before 1918 and those who study Syria after that date to join the SSA. SYRIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER VOL. XV:2 SPRING-SUMMER 2010 PAGE 3 نشششر ة ر ا بششطشة ا لشد ر ا سشا ت ا لشسشو ر يشة News of the Association Andrea Stanton SSA-Sponsored Panels at MESA 2010 ―Histories of Disability in the Middle East‖ (#P2424; Saturday, 11/20/10 05:00pm) 1. Kristina Richardson, ―Drug Overdose, Disability and Male Friendship in Mamluk Cairo‖ 2. Sara Scalenghe, ―From Holy to Impostor: The Majdhub in Early 20th-Century Syria and Lebanon‖ 3. Beverly Levine, ―Treating Minds and Spirits: Psychiatry and Non-Biomedical HealingPractices in 1920s-1960s Syria‖ 4. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, ―The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A History of Disability in Modern Iran‖ ―Themes in the Cultural and Intellectual History of the @ Ottoman Arab Provinces‖ (#P2382; Thursday, 11/18/10 05:00pm) 1. Dina Le Gall, ―Naqshbandi and Shattari Shaykhs and the 17th-Century Haramayn as a Religious and Intellectual Hub‖ 2. Steve Tamari, ―The Concept of Injustice among Intellectuals of Pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Syria‖ 3. Charles Wilkins, ―The Intellectual Horizons of the Tahazade Family of Aleppo, 17th-18th Centuries‖ 4. Dana Sajdi, ―Proverbial Laughter and the Chronicle of the Commoner in 18th-Century Levant‖ More Syria-Related Panels at MESA 2010 Page 10 SSA Dissertation and Journal Article / Book Chapter The Syrian Studies Association (SSA) invites submissions for two prizes: its bi-annual article/book chapter and dissertation prizes. Dissertations filed from July 2008 through August 2010, and journal articles or book chapters published in edited collections published from July 2008 through August 2010 are eligible. Submissions in languages other than English are welcomed; all submissions should be sent (Continued on page 12) SYRIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER VOL. XV:2 SPRING-SUMMER 2010 PAGE 4 نشششر ة ر ا بششطشة ا لشد ر ا سشا ت ا لشسشو ر يشة Syria Studies in Scotland and Scandinavia Syrian Studies in Sweden Annika Rabo Sweden cannot boast of a long a glorious tradition of studies in or on Syria. In fact, we have very little research on contemporary Syria. As in many other European countries there has been a long university tradition of linking theology (in our case the Lutheran variety) to studies in Semitic languages. Arabic thus typically came to be developed in faculties of theology at the old universities in Uppsala and Lund. Historically, studies in Arabic have focused on classical texts, but a number of scholars in Sweden have developed a strong interest in Arabic dialects. The current professor in Semitic languages at Uppsala University, Bo Isaksson, for example, has worked on contact linguistics and Arabic dialects in northern Syria and in southeast Turkey. With Ablahad Lahdo, one of his doctoral students, he has also worked on Arabic and Aramaic dialects along the Turkish-Syrian border areas. Today Arabic is taught not only in the very old universities in Uppsala and Lund – where they are part of the Semitic languages – but also in the more modern universities in Stockholm and Göteborg which have no traditional theological faculties. In Göteborg Tetz Rooke has worked on modern Arabic literature and he is also a translator of the Syrian born author Salim Barakat. Rooke has also worked on a project called Borders, Boundaries and Transgressions (see more below) where he did research on Muhammad Kurd Ali and on Syrian map-making in the early nationalist period as well as in the early Ba‘th period. There is a fairly strong tradition of studies and research in Arabic in Sweden from one point of view. There is historical continuity and a ‗genealogy‘ of well-known scholars working on Arabic in, and on, the Middle East. But today Arabic is not only a language in the Arab world but very much a language in contemporary Sweden. Arabic is our third largest language after Swedish and Finnish. Most of those with Arabic as a native tongue come from Iraq (there are more than 100,000 Iraqis in Sweden) but Syrians, Palestinians and Lebanese also form a large part of this linguistic community. In Stockholm, there is an interest among linguists in research on the way Arabic dialects develop in Sweden, but in general there is very little language research on Arabic speakers in Sweden. Lately, however, the military has employed a few persons with doctorate degrees in Arabic to set up intensive language training for their personnel. The shift from the importance of Russian to Arabic as a ‗military‘ language signals new Swedish interests. Traditionally, as noted above, there has been a close link between theology and Semitic languages. Today much of classical Lutheran theology has developed (sometimes after extreme inter-faculty conflicts) into (at least in theory) non-confessional religious studies. An impressive chunk of contemporary Swedish religious studies (often under the disciplinarian label ‗history of religion‘) is devoted to Islam in the modern world and much of the research done is inspired by anthropological methods.
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