Abstracts and Biographies

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Mehrdad Arabi

+Bio
Mehrdad Arabi is an internationally acclaimed Master of Persian music and has received numerous awards, for his work from the likes of Daytona Symphony Society, the University of Borneo , the City of Madrid and the City of Nicosia in Cypress . He was recently awarded the prestigious Master Musician Fellowship from the Durfee Foundation in Los Angeles Arabi began studying Tombak as a teenager with the renowned Morteza Ayan & Nasser Eftetaah. In addition, he is proficient in the Kemancheh and Violin, which he studied with Mohammad Moghadassi and Reza Rahimi Jafari. He is currently completing his training in Western Classical violin with Master Ovsep Ketendjian, a faculty member at the Julliard School of Music. Arabi is one of a handful of musicians who have studied both the traditional and the contemporary approaches to the Tombak; he utilizes both in his compositions as a soloist as well as an accompanist. His signature style of Tombak playing is clear and crisp. Arabi has participated in more than 20 recordings as a performer, composer and arranger. The highlights of this collection are his recordings with two of the legends of Persian music, Hassan Kasaie and Jalil Shahnaz, with whom he has also appeared in concert. He has also recorded soundtracks for Hollywood films including The Passion of the Christ, Hidalgo and Helen of Troy. He has composed the score and played a full orchestra for the first Iranian American cartoon in the United States, Babak's First Norooz. For more information please visit [www.persiandrums.com]

Daryoush Ashouri

+Bio
Daryoush Ashouri, a prominent Iranian thinker, author, translator, researcher, and public intellectual, was born in Tehran in 1938 and studied law, political Science and Economics at Tehran University. He has been professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Oxford University, as well as Tehran University. He was a member of the Iranian Academy of Language from 1970 to 1978. Ashouri is a prolific writer in several fields and is considered an influential figure in contemporary literary circles of Iran. Above all, he has made lasting contributions to the development of modern Persian vocabulary and terminology in the domains of human sciences and philosophy by coining new words and modifying existing ones. As a superb stylist, he has elevated modern Persian prose to new standards. His latest major work in literary hermeneutics is an intertextual study of the Divan of Hafez titled Erf?n o rendi dar she'r-e Hafez which introduces new approaches to the understanding of the 14th century Persian lyricist.
+Abstract
Transformation of the Poetical Discourse in Persian, from Rumi to Hafez

IIn this presentation, I will discuss briefly the three basic transformational stages in the Persian Sufi discourse. The first consists of the harshly ascetic views of life, dominated in the Sufi culture of early Islamic centuries. The second modifies the uncompromising asceticism of the earlier articulations through a new and highly innovative hermeneutics of the Myth of Creation in Qur`an. This stage is still dominated by a milder ascetic view, but developing a strongly enthusiastic poetic spirit: This stage is mainly represented by 'Attar and Rumi. The third stage contains radically anti-ascetic critical poetic views, mainly represented by S`adi and Hafiz. The last stage was finally formulated as the aay of Rendi by Hafiz, as the greatest representative of this mystic trend in Persian Sufism. By concentrating on Rumi and Hafiz in this context, I support this argument through comparative references to certain common symbolic elements in the poetry of the latter poets.

Amin Banani

+Bio
Amin Banani was born in Persia on 23 September 1926. He received his B.A. in 1947, his M.A. in 1948 from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in 1959 from Stanford University. He is married to Sheila Wolcott and is the father of two daughters, Susanne and Laila. He then taught at the University of Maryland Overseas Program, at Stanford University, and at Reed College and Harvard University before joining the UCLA in 1963 as an assistant professor of Persian history and literature. He has since been appointed Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Acting Director of the Von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA. Professor Banani is the author, contributing author or editor of at least twelve books, including The Modernization of Iran (Stanford University Press, 1961), Iran Faces the Seventies (New York, 1971), Individualism and Conformity in Classical Islam (Harassowitz, 1977), The Bride of Acacias (Translated Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad, New York, 1982), and Poetry and Mysticism in Islam: The Heritage of Rumi (Cambridge 1994). He has also written numerous articles and reviews on the history and culture of Persia. Amin Banani has served on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, The Executive Council of the Society for Iranian Studies, and as Vice President of the American Association of Iranian Studies. Now an emeritus professor at the UCLA, he divides his time between reading and writing and listening to music, eastern and western.
+Abstract
The Reluctant Poet

Dimly perceived and grossly debased in the contemporary New Age market place, Rumi has suffered an imbalanced public image for 800 years. While prodigious and invaluable attention has been focused on the philosophical, doctrinal and dogmatic underpinnings of his thought, very little has been said about the medium, mode and manner of expression of those thoughts. As the body of his works happens to be in Persian verse, it is necessarily perceived with the complex of critical faculties developed and articulated in the context of the long and venerable Persian poetic traditions. Even Nicholson, the scholar who has so far done more than anyone to help us gain systematic access to Rumi, repeats the bias that as a poet he falls short of the highest standards of chaste and elegant Persian poetry. This bias is partly helped by Rumi’s own occasional outbursts against the purpose and practice of “professional poets.” In this paper I suggest that the unique profundity and true poetic beauty of the best of Rumi’s work is the inevitable and coequal result of his mystic thought process which was a reliance upon imagination rather than reason. The engine that provides the dynamism of his thought is the same that produces the volcanic outburst of passionate poetry—the magnetic power of love.
Amin Banani

Michael Beard

+Bio
Michael Beard is a co-editor of the journal Middle Eastern Literatures, (formerly Edebiyat). He writes frequently on Persian and Arabic literature. His book Hedayat's Blind Owl as a Western Novel appeared in 1984. He and Adnan Haydar have collaborated frequently on translations from Arabic (notably poems of Khalil Hawi, Henri Zoghaib and Adonis [Ali Ahmad Said]). Together in 1993 they co-edited Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition. Together, they co-edit the series Middle East Literature in Translation for Syracuse University Press. In collaboration with Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, Beard has published translations from contemporary Iranian poets Esmail Khoi and the film-maker Abbas Kiarostami. Walking with the Wind (Harvard Film Archives, 2001); more recently, in collaboration with Karim Emami, he has published a second collection of poems by Kiarostami, A Wolf Lying in Wait (Sokhan, Tehran: 2004). Since 1979 he has taught in the English Department at the University of North Dakota.
+Abstract
Rumi, Best Seller<

The sheer economic fact is reassuring that the best-selling poet in the Anglophone world is Jall al-Dn Rm. We know at least one reason: it has to do with the style Coleman Barks devised to forge a Rumian voice in English. It seems to me that approaching specific texts of Rumi through a relationship between texts, that implicit dialogue between the Persian originals (as close as we can come to them) and the English, is a good starting place, particularly if it allows us to get beyond the common question, is the translation accurate? The inquiry I value takes place in two related dialogues: the esthetic relation between the poem in Persian and the highly stylized traditions of Persian poetry which lie behind it, but also the theological relation between Rumi's Sufism and its precedents not just exoteric Islam and its mystical variants, but its relation with, themselves variations. It is my guess that a close look at the relation of the English with the Persian texts makes the other two aspects audible.

Mohammad Borghei

+Bio
Mohammad Borghei was born in the city of Qom in 1942 and was raised in a Sufi family where he received his early education in Islamic mysticism and Rumi's poetry. He received his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Manchester University in 1983. He has published six books, the first being an anthropological overview of Iran's most deprived region; it is titled A View on Baluchistan (Nazari beh Baluchistan), published in 1973. His most recent published work is titled Secularism from Theory to Practice (Sekularizm az Nazar ta `Amal). He has also published around one hundred articles, most focused on religious issues in Iran. His lectures and presentations on Sufism, particularly in its modern manifestations, are being prepared for [publication. He has also prepared an exclusive study of the complex relationship between Shams and Rumi for publication.
+Abstract
Rumi and Shams: It Takes Two Wings to Fly

It is inconceivable to comprehend Rumi, the poet and the man, without his partner Shams. Rumi refers to himself as the vessel whose content was filled by Shams, and scholars have long wondered if Shams was merely a muse or if he was in fact an active participant in the poet's creative powers. If Shams was indeed a creative spirit in his own right, why wasn't his work known to the public up until recent years? Rumi claims that without Shams's inspiration and guidance he was not interested even to compose poems. Yet his followers do not seem to give due credit to the role that Shams must have played in Rumi's creativity. Born and raised in a family versed in Sufism, Rumi was well educated and acquainted with some of the renowned Sufis of his time. Despite such strong influences and sources of inspiration, my paper argues, Shams offered Rumi an element that gave rise to profound changes in the poet and compelled him, among other things, to abandon the religious doctrine he had inherited and practiced in his youth, all in favor of Sufism. This question leads to a second inquiry into whether in Rumi's time jurisprudence (shari`a) and Sufism were thought of as two diametrically apposed schools of thoughts and therefore irreconcilable or whether our understanding of them at this time have given rise to this perception. Through an examination of Shams's writings, the presentation will try to find an answer to this question as well.

Nusrat Ul-Ghani

+Bio
Nusrat Ul-Ghani was born in Kashmir into a family culture of reciting poetry - Rumi was often top of the list. Her passion for Rumi stems from that early introduction to the poet and from her childhood memories of verses on opening up the heart and feeling sacred, on freedom and self-knowledge and, most particularly, on self-expression. Nusrat has recently been appointed as Director of Jadid Media. Her skills as a communications professional range from experiences in private and public sectors, most recently managing communications and fundraising for the BBC's international development NGO for over 5 years. She has worked across media development projects to development policy initiatives all over the world and more recently in Pakistan, Iran, Burma, India, the Middle East and Afghanistan, where she produced and broadcast the first live simultaneous drama production as well as staging the first broadcast of female singers, post Taliban.

Bahram Grami

+Bio
Dr. Bahram Grami was born and raised in Tehran; he received his B.S. in agricultural sciences from University of Tehran, his M.S. in plant science from American University of Beirut, and his Ph.D in plant science and genetics from University of Manitoba, Canada. As a researcher at the agricultural research organization, Tehran, he has compiled and edited the synopses of agricultural research in Iran in five volumes. He was also an assistant professor at the college of agriculture, Esfahan University of Technology, and the compiler and editor of a bibliography of the Iranian agricultural colleges, since their establishment. Dr. Grami left Iran for USA in 1985 on a sabbatical leave, but stayed on to become a researcher at the University of California, Davis for ten years. He has also served as a visiting professor to University of Hong Kong and a scientific editor in American Association of Cereal Chemists and American Phytopathological Society. In recent years, he has been an educational consultant to the President of the University of Qatar. Grami is the author of Flowers and Plants in a Thousand Years of the Persian Poetry, with an introduction by Iraj Afshar (in Press, Sokhan Publishing Co., Tehran), and of more than 100 articles in English and Persian.
+Abstract
SIMILES AND METAPHORS IN RUMI'S POETRY: FLOWERS AND PLANTS

In an extensive survey of plant similes and metaphors in the Old Persian poetry, over seventy plant species were identified in Rumi's poems, among which sonbol, susan and ney have been tackled uniquely. While sonbol (hyacinth), as a flower name, is the simile of locks and hair in the Persian poetry, it means the ear of wheat in Rumi's poems: "thousands of sonbols from one grain", and only in Rumi's poetry it is the simile of eyebrow: "The garden of your beauty is immune to cold winter and the sonbol of your eyebrow is secure from harvest", "Your lovers, like ants and locusts, gather around your sonbol, to get a deserved share from the heap of your beauty" and "With the flower of His face, I found my garden in full bloom, and with the sonbol of His eyebrow, I found my breads all baked". Petals of lily (susan) resemble tongue, and Rumi refers to the 100-tongued susan as the sufi who remains the confidant and acts dumb, while hearing the secrets of God. The hollow reed flute (ney) has also profound meaning in the opening of mathnavi, where Rumi sees himself as a reed having been cut off from its habitat, and complains of separation and loneliness. Some other plant species in Rumi's poetry will be discussed, including: viola (banafsheh), plane (chenar), willow (bid), narcissus (nargess), tulip (laleh), squash (kadu), and pomegranates (anar).

Ahmet Targon Karamustafa

+Bio
His expertise is in social and intellectual history of pre-modern Islam as well as in theory and method in the study of religion. He earned his BA in philosophy at Hamilton College and MA and PhD in Islamic studies at McGill University. He is the author of God's unruly friends (1994), a book on ascetic movements in medieval Islam, and Vahidi's menakib-i hvoca-i cihan ve netice-i can (1993), a study of a sixteenth-century mystical text. He also served as an editor for, and wrote several articles in, Cartography in the traditional Islamic and south Asian societies (1992). More recently, he completed a comprehensive historical overview of early Islamic mysticism titled Sufism: The formative period (2007). He has held several administrative positions in Washington University, including a five-year term as Director of the Religious Studies Program. Currently he is the vice-president of the American Research Institute in Turkey and a member of the Steering Committee of the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion.
+Abstract
Speaker, Voice and Audience in the Qur'an and the Masnavi

In this paper, I examine the special relationship between Rumi's Masnav? and the Qur'?n using the particular prisms of speaker, voice and audience. I will argue that the most striking characteristic of the Qur'?nic event as viewed through the prism of the issues of speaker, voice and audience is the dynamic interactive quality between the speaker and the audience as mediated by their different and multiple voices. Remarkably, this dynamic interrelation sometimes even leads to a kaleidoscopic blending of identities, especially since ultimately God only speaks through the voice of a human messenger or a human reciter, whose voices are added to the divine voice as overtones. It is, I believe, this highly charged relational quality of the Qur'?n that is reproduced in the Masnav?. As in the Qur' ?n, in the Masnav? as well the speaker and the audience (the reciter, the auditor, the reader) are transformed into partners in an endless game of self-discovery in the form of mutual borrowing and lending of identities through the intricate imbrication of multiple voices. Such interaction between the speaker and the audience on the canvas of voice is, I propose, the primary reason why the claim that the Masnav? is the Qur'?n in Persian ultimately rings true.

Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi

+Bio
Ahmad Kazemi Moussavi is professor of Islamic law and modern developments in the Islamic world, currently lecturing two courses: 'Modern Iran' at the University of Maryland, and 'Islam and democracy in the modern age' in University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He was born and educated law in Iran. He served 18 years as a lawyer and diplomat in the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs before 1980. He received his Ph.D. in "Islamic Studies" from McGill University in 1991. Dr. Moussavi taught at McGill and Tehran Universities before joining the International Islamic University of Malaysia in 1992, where he taught Islamic legal institutions and modern developments till 2005. He published three books entitled Religious Authority in Shi'ite Islam, Shi'ite Ulama and Political Power and Facing One Qiblah, and more than 50 articles in academic journals.
+Abstract
Rumi's influence on the Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal

The twentieth century Muslim poet-philosopher Dr. Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) was influenced by Rumi particularly in his approach to 'human development.' As a Hegelian student of Cambridge and Munich universities, Iqbal was well aware of the role of human development in the modern thought. He proposed his theory of 'human progress' not only to inspire a new spirit of religiosity among Muslims, but also to warn them where Western modernism had scarcity in meeting the human spiritual needs. He put forward the development of ego (khudi) as a 'constant becoming' and 'self-realization' based on eternal love and quest ('ishq and shawq). The development of ego requires its freedom as well as its possible faults, both of which Iqbal found in the Mathnavi of Rumi. Following Rumi, Iqbal maintains that the main purpose of the Qur'an is to awaken in man the higher consciousness of his relation with God. He wrote: Three things are perfectly clear from the Qur'an: i)That man is the chosen of God. ii)That man with all his faults, is meant to be the representative of God on earth. iii)That man is the trustee of a free personality which he accepted at his peril. The two notions of 'human faults' and 'free personality' markedly distinguish Iqbal's thought from those of Muslim traditional ideas on the human spiritual perfection as depicted in the writings of Rumi. Iqbal's idea of free personality stems from his theory of perpetual change and movement in both nature and human history which are characteristics of Rumi thought. This paper concerns itself to trace Rumi's influence in both the language and thought of Muhammad Iqbal.

Jessika Kenney

+Bio
Jessika Kenney (vocals) is a gifted vocalist based in the Pacific Northwest. She has trained extensively in he vocal arts, particularly Central Javanese sindhenan, as a student of Nyi Supadmi and Nyi Madularas in Indonesia from 1997-2000, a Bachelor's Degree in Music at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and in classical Persian music as a student of Ostad Hossein Omoumi from 2003 until the present. She has performed compositions for voice in various venues in the U.S., Europe, and Indonesia, and frequently appears with Seattle's own Gamelan Pacifica, directed by Jarred Powell. She has recorded several CDs, including "Aestuarium" with Eyvind Kang (2005), and "The Stonehouse Songs", with Jarrad Powell (2007).

Fatemeh Keshavarz

+Bio
Fatemeh Keshavarz is the professor of Persian Language and Comparative Literature and chair of the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds a B.A. in Persian Language and Literature from Shiraz University, and an M.A. (1981) and a Ph.D. (1985) in Near Eastern Studies from School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Professor Keshavarz has taught at Washington University since 1990. She has served as Director of the Graduate Program in Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Studies, Director of the Center for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations, and President of the Association of Women Faculty. She currently chairs the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. Among Keshavarz's works is her book Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran. The book offers ideas in contrast to Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Random House, 2003) that explores the relationship between literature and society in the post-revolutionary Iran. Keshavarz believes that Nafisi's book presents "many damaging misrepresentations" of Iran and its people, relying more on stereotypes and easy comparisons than on an accurate portrayal of the country and its people.
+Abstract
Empowering the Self to Converse with God: Munajat in Rumi's Masnavi

Rumi's perception of speaking is broad, unconventional, and complex. His understanding of silence is equally heterogynous and multifunctional. Certain varieties of silence are desirable even essential for enabling the inner sacred self to speak. Others are "cotton balls of temptation" blocking the "celestial voices" that would awaken the self. Rumi identifies many such cotton balls including the loud cry of the ego seeking public approval, and the allegorical noise of daily strife for consumption. In this presentation, I explore Rumi's role as a thinker and a practical guide working to help the sacred self recover its lost voice. The process is complicated by irony and requires poetic negotiation (starting with the fundamental irony that unsilencing of the self begins with listening). The Masnavi therefore opens with the imperative "listen." I provide examples of the process of unsilencing the self in the Masnavi through the episodic moments of munajat or conversations with God. These moments are tangible, fresh and poetically dynamic.

Amir Koushkani

+Bio
Amir Koushkani has a passion for Persian music that began at home when he was introduced to the classical Persian themes. At age thirteen, he began formal musical training in tar and setar, and after completing his program under the tutelage of Master Darioush Pirniakan, he became an instructor of tar at the Center for Preservation of Music at the age of nineteen. In 1991 Koushkani emigrated to Canada, where he continues to explore traditional music through composition and improvisation. Meanwhile, he has completed a Bachelor's Degree in modern European composition at Simon Fraser University. He has composed works for theater, orchestra, solo performers, and chamber groups, including the Vancouver Ensemble Safa as well as commissions from the Pacific Baroque Ensemble, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, CBC Chamber Orchestra, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Hajnalka Kovacs

+Bio
Hajnalka Kovacs studied Indian languages and literature (Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu) as well as Iranian languages and literature (Classical and Modern Persian, with an introduction into Old and Middle Persian) at the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary, and was awarded with an M.A. degree in both fields. She received three fellowships to study in India, in the course of which she obtained an M.A. degree in Urdu literature from the Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India. At present she is a Ph. D. student at the University of Chicago, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her current research focuses on the literary culture of North India around the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, with particular emphasis on Indo-Persian and early Urdu ghazal. Hajnalka's areas of interest include Persian and Urdu literature, especially pre-modern, intertextuality, and Sufi literature. She is particularly interested in the expression of mystic thought in poetic form. A few years ago Hajnalka, with her two friends Dr. Balazs Sudar (The History Institute, Academy of Sciences of Hungary) and Ferenc Peter Csirkes (Ph. D. student, NELC, The University of Chicago) undertook the long-term project of translating Maulana Rumi's Masnawi into Hungarian.
+Abstract
Sufi Discourse and Narrative Appropriation: The Lion and the Hare

The Tale of the Lion and the Hare is the first of the stories in the Masnavi (I: 900-1399) that Rumi borrowed from the Kalilah wa Dimnah, a collection of fables of Indian origin known in his time from Ibn Muqaffa's Arabic and Nasr Allah's Persian translation. In this paper I examine how Rumi reworked the tale in order to fit it in the larger framework of his Masnavi. The fact that he took it out of its original context, that of a "Mirror for Princes", and set it into a different one, a Sufi discourse, resulted in major structural and thematic changes. The tight structure of the original broke up, the plot almost disappearing in the midst of sub-stories and lengthy expositions of the issues of Sufi thought and practice. I identify three main themes or leitmotifs (deception, exertion versus reliance on fate, and fighting the nafs 'the carnal soul') that link not only the seemingly unconnected discussions, but also the tale as a whole with the surrounding stories of the Masnavi. I also examine the features of the original tale that, notwithstanding its pragmatic, "Machiavellian" character, made it suitable for Rumi's mystical discourse.

Franklin Lewis

+Bio
Franklin Lewis currently works in Persian languages and literatures, mediaeval Islamic mysticism, Arabic literature, Sufism, and Iranian religion. He was previously Associate Professor of Persian and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Dr. Lewis completed his PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 1995 with a dissertation on the twelfth century mystical poet Sana'i and the formation of the ghazal genre in Persian literature, which won the Foundation of Iranian Studies best dissertation prize. His translations from modern Persian literature include In a voice of their own: A collection of stories by Iranian women written since the revolution of 1979 (1996). In 2001, his book Rumi: Past and present, east and west (2000) received the British-Kuwaiti award for the best work published in the United Kingdom in the field of Middle Eastern Studies. He is also the founder and moderator of Adabiyat, an international electronic discussion forum for Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Urdu literature.
+Abstract
Periodization of the Literary Ouevre of Mowln Jall al-Din Rumi : a Prolegomena

A vague periodization of Mowln Jall al-Din Rumi's oeuvre, based upon a division of his life into three significant phases, has been postulated by modern scholarly and popular biographers of the poet. This tri-partite division of his life corresponds to: first, the years prior to 1244, when Shams-e Tabrizi came to Konya; then, the ecstasy/frenzy of companionship with and loss of Shams (1244-c. 1251); and, finally, a cathartic gestalt in which the poet internalized the voice of Shams. To the extent that any evolution or development in Rumi's writing has been assumed, these three periods are generally thought to correspond to different literary genres and stages in his religious/intellectual temperament, represented by 1) a largely homiletic and pedagogical (va?? and feqh) attitude reflected in the formal sermons of his Majles-e sab?e; 2) the composition of ecstatic ghazals and the performance of sam?; 3) the more thoughtful composition of the Masnavi. A more nuanced sense of the chronology of Rumi's oeuvre might emerge as a result, making it possible to trace specific developments in his thought or style, as well as the thematic and theological foci of his work. Although Aflki's Manqeb al-?refin provides the purported circumstances of composition of many specific poems, the hagiographical tradition which this represents is not historically reliable. Schimmel and Glp?narl?, among others, have pointed to a handful of individual poems that might be dated to a specific time or incident, but no attempt has yet been undertaken to mine the many poems of the Divn, or indeed passages of the Masnavi, for chronological information that would allow us to begin provisionally dating them to specific decades, or even years, in the life of Rumi. This paper will focus on poems in the Divn which make explicit mention of particular dates, including ghazals associated with particular individuals (Shams, ?al? al-Din Zarkub or ?osm al-Din Chelebi), and will also consider various internal traces of the composition history of the Masnavi. After proposing a chronological schema for some of these poems, the paper will then consider whether this method of temporal reading of individual poems can provide a schema for the elaboration of a more precise, and simultaneously more dynamic, picture of Rumi's literary, stylistic, intellectual or religious development.
Franklin Lewis

Paul Losensky

+Bio
Losensky received his PhD from the University of Chicago in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He is currently Associate Professor at Indiana University with a joint appointment in the departments of Central Eurasian Studies and Comparative Literature. He specializes in Persian literature with an emphasis on the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His published works include: A translation of Attar's Tazkerat al-owliya (2007), Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and poetic individuality in the Safavid-Mughal ghazal (1998), The palace of praise and the melons of time: Descriptive patterns in 'Abdi Shirazi's Garden of Eden (in Eurasian Studies, 2003), Linguistic and rhetorical aspects of the signature verse (takhallus) in the Persian ghazal (in Edebiyat, 1997), and The equal of heaven's vault: The design, ceremony, and poetry of the Hasanabad bridge (in Writers and rulers: Perspectives on their relationship from Abbasid to Safavid times, 2004).
+Abstract
To Revere, Revise, and Renew: Sa'eb of Tabriz Reads the Ghazals of Rumi

Few later poets have understood and mastered Rumi's poetics of process more fully than Sa'eb of Tabriz (1592-1676). As the foremost representative of the "fresh style," which dominated Persian literature in the seventeenth century, Sa'eb's poetry is notorious for its deviations from classical norms of diction, imagery, and metaphor. For all his originality, however, Sa'eb was remarkably open and generous in acknowledging his debt to his literary contemporaries and predecessors. In his massive divan, Sa'eb mentions over seventy poets by name, often in the course of responding to their ghazals with matching poems using the same rhyme and meter. Sa'eb, however, singles out Rumi for special attention. He refers to Rumi over sixty times in his divan and devotes more pages of his literary anthology to Rumi's work than that of any other poet. A comparative analysis of several poems that Sa'eb wrote based on models from the Divan-e Shams will show the various ways in which he read, assimilated, and recreated the work of his admired predecessor. For all his reverence for Rumi's achievement, Sa'eb recognized that slavish mimicry would betray the creative spirit that informs his models. Only by refiguring, transforming, and rewriting Rumi's poetry could Sa'eb partake in the poetics of process and translate Rumi's spiritual and experiential insights from the Sufi cloisters of thirteenth-century Konya to the streets and coffeehouses of seventeenth-century Isfahan. The poetic dialogue between these literary masters constitutes one of the most significant and illuminating chapters in the history of Rumi's reception by later generations of readers and writers.

Jawid Mojaddedi

+Bio
Jawid Mojaddedi a native of Afghanistan, was raised in Great Britain where he completed his education. He moved to New Jersey shortly after completing his doctoral studies at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Manchester. He served for two years as assistant editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica at Columbia University, before taking up his present position at the Department of Religion of Rutgers University, where he teaches courses on Sufism, Rumi, and Islamic thought. Dr. Mojaddedi specializes in early and medieval Sufi texts and traditions, and is currently preparing a monograph on Rumi's understanding of friendship with God, or 'sainthood' (walaya). His most recent book is his verse translation of Rumi's Masnavi. The first volume was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press as an Oxford World's Classics edition and was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies, the second volume was published in 2007. His previous books include The biographical tradition in Sufism (2001) and Classical Islam: A sourcebook of religious literature (2003).
+Abstract
Prophets and Saints in Mawlana's Didactic Writings

One of the most controversial early debates among Sufis concerned the status of sainthood (vilaya) in relation to prophethood (nobovva). This is because of the central importance of the contemporary representative of God, the saint (vali), for followers of Sufism. Mawlana is famously associated with an emphatic devotion to the saint and a close identification of him with the divine, due mainly to references in his lyrical poetry to Shams-e Tabrizi, as well as hagiographical accounts of their relationship. In this paper, I will examine Mawlana's didactic writings, his Masnavi and the Fihe ma fihe, in order to discover what he teaches his own disciples about prophethood and sainthood. His teachings will then be considered in light of earlier Sufi discourse about this key issue, and it will be possible to assess the appropriateness of the hagiographical stories relating him to this issue

Baqer Moin

+Bio
Baqer Moin grew up in Nishabur where he was encouraged early on to memorize as much of Rumi's poetry as he could; later in life he wrote and translated several articles and books on Persian literature and Arab and English mysticism. The founding Director of Jadid Media, he is a well-known and highly respected commentator and journalist tackling issues related to Islam and the West and a regular contributor to www.jadidonline.com. A former head of the BBC Persian and Pashto Service (which broadcasts to Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan), Baqer studied Arabic, Persian and Islamic Jurisprudence in the city of Mashhad, and pursued modern Arabic at Tehran University. He has written and translated a number of books on the Iranian revolution, including Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. In 2002 the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association awarded him the Elizabeth R Award for his contribution to public service broadcasting.

Safoura Nourbakhsh

+Bio
Safoura Nourbakhsh completed her BA and MA in English Literature at San Francisco State University. She taught English literature courses at Allameh University in Tehran from 1998-2003. She has published numerous articles on the issue of gender in Iranian feminist journals like Zanan, Jens-e Dovvom, and Zanestan. She is currently a PhD student of Women's Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. At present her research is focused on the construction of gender in Sufi discourses.
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Sexual Difference and Spiritual Knowledge: The Bedouin and His Wife in Rumi's Masnavi

How do Persian Sufi texts construct sexual difference in relation to the spiritual path of truth? This paper attempts to answer this question via a feminist poststructuralist reading of the parable of the Bedouin and his wife in Rumi's Masnavi. In his retelling Rumi places sexual difference at the center of the narrative and opens it up to interpretations concerning the role of gender in the quest for truth and the gendering of Sufi concepts like nafs (ego) and aghl (reason). In his interpretation Rumi tries to maintain the traditional binary between the sensible (the material world and its concerns) and the transcendental (the intangible world of ideas and ideals), by overvaluing the transcendence as the masculine at the expense of devaluing the sensible as the feminine. However, in the construction of the narrative, the boundaries between the sensible and the transcendental collapse, giving way to an alternative concept that the feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray calls "sensible transcendental"

Hossein Omoumi

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Hossein Omoumi was born in 1944 in Isfahn, Iran, and received his first musical training from his father. At age fourteen, fascinated by the sound of the ney and by the great ney player, Master Hassan Kassaii, he began his own studies of the instrument. He entered the National Conservatory of Music at Tehran in 1962 to study theory and radif. Omoumi is a noted scholar and teacher of Persian music as well as a composer and performer. He has taught at the National Conservatory in Tehran University, the CEMO at the Sorbonne, UCLA, and the University of Washington. He is now Maseeh professor of classical Persian music at the UC Irvine. His performance career spans more than four decades and three continents, including appearances at many of the major concert halls and festivals of Europe, the United States, and Canada. His research on the making of the ney and percussion opened new possibilities and introduced significant innovations to the ney, tombak and daf. Omoumi is also an architect, holding an M.A from the National University of Iran and a doctorate from the University of Florence. For more information please visit at [www.omoumi.com].

Nasrollah Pourjavady

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Nasrollah Pourjavady was born in Tehran and received his early education there. He came to the United States in 1962 to study philosophy and, having obtained his BA in 1967, returned to Iran and earned his MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Tehran. Subsequently, he taught philosophy and mysticism at Sharif (Aryamehr) University of Technology in Tehran, and then at the University of Tehran. Pourjavady founded Iran University Press, the most prestigious academic publishing house in Iran, after the Revolution and continued to be its director until 2004. He is a permanent member of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, from which he received the national award in Persian language and literature in 2004. He was also the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt (Germany) award for research in the field of Islamic Studies in 2005. Pourjavady has edited and written some 30 books as well as over a hundred essays and articles in the fields of Islamic mysticism, philosophy, and Persian literature. These include: a critical edition of Ahmad Ghazzali's Sawaneh (1980) and its English translation (1986), Buy-e jan (1993), Ro'yat-e mah dar asman (1996), Eshraq o erfan (Philosophy of Illumination and Mysticism) (2001), Do mojadded (Two Renewers of Faith) (2002), Nasim-e ons (2004), Padjuhesh-ha-ye erfani( 2005) and recently Zaban-e hal ( 2007), which is a survey of Persian literature from the point of view of a particular literary technique. He was also the general editor of a monumental three-volume book on Persian art and culture, The Splendour of Iran (2001) as well as two journals that were published by Iran University Press, Nashr-i Danish and Ma 'arif.
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Philosophy and the Philosophers in Rumis Masnavi.

Like other Persian Sufi poets, such as Sanai and Attar, Rumi was evidently opposed to what was called philosophy and was critical of the so called philosophers. However, his criticism of the philosophers in the Masnavi shows that his notion of philosophy and the people he identified as philosophers was not quite the same as that of Sanai and Attar. While by philosophy other poets generally understood the Muslim Peripatetic metaphysics, which was itself to an extent Neo-platonic, with Ibn Sina as its chief representative, Rumi seems to refer to the Rationalist theologians, particularly the Mutazilites, as philosophers and their rationalism as philosophy. In some places he even thinks particularly of Fakhroddin Razi, who was disliked by Rumis father as well as his master Shams-e Tabrizi, as a philosopher.

Sabohat Qosim

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Sabohat Qosim is an award-winning and honored actress of Tajikistan and a founding member and manager of the acclaimed Ahoroun Theatre Group. She has also worked in the Lohuti Academic Theatre in Dushanbe prior to Ahoroun and has performed leading roles such as Ophelia in Hamlet, Cordelia in King Lear and Maria Antonovna in Revisor by Gogol. Since the formation of Ahoroun, her acting has been at the heart of all Ahoroun productions and a staple in almost every performance staged by the group. The most outstanding examples of her contribution are the roles of Zoleikha in The Lost Joseph, Maria in Anti-Christ, Joker and Cordelia in the newest version of Shakespeare's King Lear, where the Tajik King Lear speaks in 10th century Persian verses). She is married to world-famous Tajik actor, producer and director Farrukh Qosim, Ahoroun's founder.

Munira Shahidi

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Munira Shahidi studied English at the Pedagogical University of Dushanbe in the late 1960s. After trips to India and Switzerland, she decided to study Eastern Literature, and entered post-graduate studies at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. Her doctoral thesis involved critical research of British orientalism and made her aware of the very complicated literary relationship between two different worlds: Persia and England. She has tried to bridge those cultural worlds, defining the common sources of their modern literary thinking. Her comparative study of East-West Poetics, 'Ibn Sina and Dante' (Dushanbe, 1986) is, according to academic Numon Negmatov, a 'classic study of the Tajik-Persian culture'. Her translations from English into Russian (among others 'Muhammad Iqbal: His Art and Thought', as well as Jalaliddin Rumi's Gazals) and numerous articles in a variety of international publications are key contributions to modern intercultural activity. Shahidi is the founding director of the Ziyodullo Shahidi Republican Museum of Musical Culture and Chair of the Ziyodullo Shahidi International Foundation. She has also founded the journal 'Fonus' devoted to culture as a peace-making instrument. During her years of study, research, travel, and teaching, she has become more and more interested in cultural studies, in particular the study of the culture of peace.
+Abstract
The Art of Rumi's Thought: Harmonizing the World (`alam) and Humans (adam)

This presentation will examine three periods of crucial influence of Rumian art of thinking in Central Asia: pre-modern, modern and now, at post-soviet period. Jalal ad-Din Rumi's life and thought have developed within the canons of Persian-Tajik poetry, which he modified drastically in order to harmonize its with the 'other' cultures of his time. His was a time when inward and outward destabilization of Central Asian life impacted physiological state of an ordinary man and invited attention to his inner world. As an ordinary human being and an educator as well as an artist and poet, Rumi perceived that challenge. But did his literary innovations impact the further dynamic of literary thought in the diverse cultures of post-Rumian centuries? How have his ideas been adapted in Central Asia and other relatively closed cultures of the region? Who were the most adept poets in a Rumian style of thinking in Central Asia? In light of the above assumptions and questions, the presentation will discuss such aspects of Rumi's legacy through the diversity of interpretive traditions of his poetry in Central Asia, Asia Minor and Iran. It will examine the formation of modern-day Rumian studies in 20th century. It will conclude by examining certain perspectives on Rumi's thought and imagination in various contemporary cultures of Central Asia.

Abdolkarim Soroush

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Abdolkarim Soroush was born in Tehran in 1945. He studied pharmacology in England and returned to Iran after the Iranian Revolution. There he published his first major book Knowledge and Value (Danesh va Arzesh) and was appointed Director of the newly established Islamic Culture Group at Tehran's Teacher Training College. Over the next two decades, Soroush gradually grew more and more critical of the role of Iranian clergy in politics and began to develop the idea of religious intellectualism. As he found his voice and grew in stature as a Muslim thinker, finding a substantial following among progressive religious thinkers worldwide, the Western press came to nickname him "the Marin Luther of Iran." Since 2000 Soroush has held positions as visiting professor at Harvard and as scholar in residence at Yale. He taught political philosophy at Princeton in the 2002-3 academic year. Soroush's main contribution to Islamic philosophy is his belief that one should distinguish between religion as divinely revealed phenomenon and interpretation of religion or religious knowledge as the handiwork of human beings based in specific socio-historical contexts. Soroush's main interests remain anchored in the philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, philosophical systems, and comparative philosophy.
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Kourosh Taghavi

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Kourosh Taghavi was born in Gorgan, Iran, in 1965. After emigrating to the United States in 1984 he started studying the Setar with Ms. Partow Houshmand-Rad. Soon afterwards, he had the chance to continue his studies of the Setar and classical music of Iran with Ostad Mohammad Reza Lotfi and later on with Ostad Hossein Alizadeh. These studies that are still continuing are the sources of his unique approach to the art musical performance. Taghavi's passionate and melodic approach to music is the foundation of his many collaborations and recordings with numerous artists performing both traditional and modern art music of Iran. He is one of the founding members of Goosheh, Seda and Namaad Ensembles with which he has toured throughout the US. He is also a founding member of "The Sayeh Poetry and Music Society". As a faculty of San Diego State University, he taught the Radiff of classical Persian music and oversaw related theses on the subject. He has been teaching the Setar throughout California to introduce and promote classical music of Iran. Lectures, composion of original music for plays, compositions on contemporary poetry of Iran and passionate solo recordings are only a few of his accomplishments towards his goals of promoting classical Persian Music. For more information, please visit [www.ava-setar.com].

Mahdi Tourage

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Mahdi Tourage is Currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Islam in the Religion Department of Colgate University, and Book Review Editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) in Canada. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2005. His thesis was entitled 'Phallocentric esotericism in Jalal al-Din Rumi's Masnavi-i Ma'navi' and examines the esoteric significance of virtually unexplored bawdy tales and explicit sexual images in Rumi's Masnavi by using relevant features of post-modern theories of gender and semiotics as strategic conceptual tools. It argues that contrary to the common conceptions these passages are used primarily to communicate esoteric knowledge. His areas of interest are Islamic religious thought and mysticism (Sufism), Classical Persian literature, Gender and sexuality. His publications include: The hermeneutics of eroticism in the poetry of Rumi (in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 2005), Phallocentric esotericism in a tale from Jalal al-Din Rumi's Masnavi-i Ma'navi (in Iranian Studies, 2006), Searching for the hidden secret in a marginalized tale in Rumi's Masnavi (in The International Journal of Middle East Studies, forthcoming).
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Language and the Communication of Esoteric Secrets in Rumi's Masnavi

This paper is an examination of the range and effects of the textual strategies employed for the communication of esoteric secrets in Rumis Masnavi. Rumi uses the established mystical imagery of Persian mystical poetry, everyday scenes of the bazaar, the kitchen, and folktales for the communication of the esoteric secrets. It is through these textual strategies that esoteric secrets, which cannot remain absolutely hidden, are disclosed. Because language is culturally constituted, every communication of esoteric secrets and their interpretations remains a variable process dependent upon the contingencies of language. In other words, language itself is a veil that conceals even as it reveals the unrepresentable secrets. Mystical language is simultaneously a veil and means of rending the veil. The content of secrecy is never openly divulged. The traces of it, however, can be mapped out in mystical language and on every page of the Masnavi. Although the content of secrecy remains veiled and essentially unknown, its signifying effects in the form of subjective transformation are discernable. It will be argued that one of the goals of Rumis veiled disclosure of secrets is to effect a continuous inner journey of self-knowledge through subjective transformation.