Della Vida Conference

The 2024 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Conference at UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies, held last spring, brought together scholars to explore the early history and development of Arabic, Arab identity, and early scriptural and legal discourses. Organized by Associate Professors Luke Yarbrough and Asma Sayeed from UCLA’s Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures and the Islamic Studies Program, the conference featured keynote addresses by long-standing colleagues and scholarly collaborators at Princeton, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Michael Cook,  and  Bayard Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Hossein Modarressi, the joint winners of the 2024 Giorgio Levi Della Vida Awards. The two celebrated, prolific scholars have trained generations of students. Continuing the tradition established by CNES Founding Director Gustave E. von Grunebaum, the award winners chose the conference theme and participants.

Participants included Khaled Abou El Fadl (UCLA), Ahmad al-Jallad (Ohio State University), Michael Cooperson (UCLA), Alba Fedeli (University of Hamburg), Mohsen Goudarzi (Harvard University), Maria Mavroudi (UC-Berkeley), Intisar Rabb (Harvard University),  Petra Sjipestejin (Leiden University), Marjin van Putten (Leiden University), Travis Zadeh (Yale University).

PIL faculty director, Professor Intisar Rabb, “explored the interplay between plain meaning canons and ordinary meaning canons when interpreting Islamic law. The first canons indicate that the plain meaning of a text should be adopted unless it is ambiguous, while the second recommend that in the event of ambiguity, a consideration of context may be called for to understand whether a meaning informed by custom or convention is more relevant.”

Read more about the conference  today!