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Talk: “Matriarchal Islam: Gendering Sharia in the Early Modern Indian Ocean” with Mahmood Kooria, Harvard University, November 4, 2024 @ 6:00 – 7:30pm

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Location: S153, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA
Sponsors: Southeast Asia Initiative, Harvard Asia Center

Mahmood KooriaSchool of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, UK

“Millions of Muslims from Mozambique to Indonesia historically followed a social system in which women held significant influence over family, community, and broader cultural traditions. Beginning in the nineteenth century, many Arabian and European jurists critiqued them as un-Islamic or unnatural, contending that women heading families contradicted what they saw as Islamic or natural laws. Yet, diverse forms of matrilineal, matrifocal, and matriarchal systems flourished among Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, the Comoros, and Mozambique. Despite their geographical distances, they were bound together by the Indian Ocean world. This system also served as a practical structure for engaging in maritime commerce, enabling men to go on voyages as merchants, sailors, and itinerants, while women managed property, households, and social affairs. Such economic and social stability empowered women with decision-making in personal and economic matters. This talk explores this matriarchal-maritime continuum, examining its role in family, community, and economic life from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, prior to the widespread challenges to these practices. It further investigates how this system supported the mercantile networks of the Indian Ocean and contributed to the spread of Islam, offering a different perspective to interpretations of its societies as patriarchal and patrilineal.”

Mahmood Kooria is a Lecturer in the History of the Indian Ocean World at the University of Edinburgh’s Department of History, Scotland. Previously, he has held teaching and research positions at Leiden University (the Netherlands), University of Bergen (Norway), Ashoka University (India), National Islamic University Jakarta (Indonesia), International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASCL), and the Dutch Institute in Morocco (NIMAR). His research focuses on the premodern Indian Ocean world, Afro-Asian connections, matriarchal and matrilineal Muslim societies, and Islamic legal history. He has authored Islamic Law in Circulation: Shafi`i Texts across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean (Cambridge, 2022), and co-edited Malabar in the Indian Ocean World: Cosmopolitanism in a Maritime Historical Region (Oxford, 2018) and Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean: Texts, Ideas, and Practices (Routledge, 2022).

For more information, including on how to RSVP (not required), please see here.

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Call for Applications: Harvard Medieval Studies Undergraduate Research Fellows Program, June 20, 2024

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The Committee on Medieval Studies invites applications for its Undergraduate Research Fellows Program, which offers qualified students in Harvard College the opportunity to work closely with scholars across the disciplines on research projects and initiatives. Unlike research assistants in most other departments, Research Fellows are employed directly by the Committee on Medieval Studies, and work with different faculty members throughout the year on a variety of short- and longer-term initiatives. This allows the Fellows the opportunity to develop relationships with an interdisciplinary group of scholars, and to participate in a range of research tasks within the broad field of Medieval Studies. Fellows should expect to work a maximum of six hours each week during the 2024-25 academic year; a stipend of $1500 per semester will be paid to each Fellow.

All current second- and third-year students in any discipline whose work focuses on Medieval Studies are eligible to apply for the Fellows Program. In addition to a cover letter detailing their interest in the program and their academic background in Medieval Studies, and a resumé indicating their research skills (e.g. database, web design, language knowledge, training with manuscripts, etc.), applicants also should arrange for a letter of recommendation to be submitted under separate cover from a faculty member, attesting to their academic and research potential.

Completed applications may be sent to: Undergraduate Research Fellows, Harvard University Committee on Medieval Studies, Barker Center 120, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA 02138. Electronic submissions (in PDF format) can be sent to Sean Gilsdorf ([email protected]). All materials must be received by Friday, 20 June 2024 for full consideration.

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Talk: “Palestinian Women in Gaza: War, Health, and Feminist Solidarity,” Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, March 6, 2024

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Palestinian Women in Gaza: War, Health, and Feminist Solidarity
Date: Wednesday, March 6, 2024, 11:00am to 12:30pm
Location: Online webinar.

For more information, see here.