Conveners:
Gudrun Krämer, Professor of Islamic Studies, Institute for Islamic Studies, Free University, Berlin

Mark R. Cohen, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University

When & Where:
August 8 - 19, 2005, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
July 31 - August 11, 2006, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

For complete details and applications, please visit the web address shown below.

Application Deadline: FEBRUARY 18, 2005

The SIAS Summer Institutes are designed to support the development of scholarly networks and collaborative projects among young scholars from Europe and the United States. The program seeks to explore theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues, promote the integration of approaches and interpretations from various disciplines into the participants’ research, review the state of research in that discipline, and identify promising areas for further research.

Each institute will accommodate twenty participants and will meet twice, once in Europe and once in the United States . Participants will present their research and collaborate on new projects at the seminars and between the two meetings. Participants will be expected to attend both meetings. The program will provide stipends and cover travel and lodging costs for both the European and the American meetings. The institutes are open to Ph.D. candidates and scholars who have received a Ph.D. since 1999.

This program is made possible by grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Hierarchy, Marginality, and Ethnicity in Muslim Societies
(7th Century to the Second World War)

Moving beyond the approach of majority-minority relations, with its focus on tolerance versus intolerance, this Institute will attempt, to understand how Muslim societies, with all their complexity and multiplicity of subgroups, worked, sometimes with conflict, often without. Its premise is that interrelated concepts from anthropology and sociology - hierarchy, marginality, and ethnicity - can be applied to the history of Muslim societies with profitable results.

Within this theoretical framework, the Institute encourages applicants in a variety of fields, including anthropology, history, sociology, legal studies, literature, philosophy, and theology. Themes could include, for example, notions of purity and impurity; intermarriage; dietary laws; dress codes; physical as well as social and economic mobility; spatial patterns of living; conviviality; conflict; inter-communal ties; interaction of laws and courts; presence or absence of corporate organization; cultural embeddedness of non-Muslims; shared or parallel venues for learning; artistic borrowing; impact of modernization; shared or entangled histories.

We would like to extend the geographical and cultural range of our inquiry beyond the historical core region of the Islamic world by including other Muslim societies, notably on the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia. We would also like to include themes dealing with non-Muslims other than Jews and Christians.

Application Procedure:

To apply, send the following, in English, to the appropriate address below:

1. A completed application
   (forms available on the Wissenschaftskolleg’s website)
2. A curriculum vitae
3. A statement of up to 1,000 words (not counting cited references) detailing current research interests and past research and writing related to the institute topic
4. A list of not more than five background readings potentially relevant to all participants of the summer institute
5. One letter of recommendation

Candidates should note that they are applying for two summer workshops: one in Berlin, and another in Research Triangle Park, NC and that successful applicants will be expected to attend both workshops. The working language of the institute is English.

European candidates should address queries and applications to: