Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is pleased to announce the two-day conference, “Translating Islam: A Conference in Honor of Carl Ernst,” that will take place on October 6-7, 2017, at UNC Chapel Hill. Carl W. Ernst is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Islamic studies at the Department of Religious Studies and Director of the Persian Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has devoted his academic life to the study of three areas: general and critical issues of Islamic studies, pre-modern and contemporary Sufism, and Indo-Muslim culture. From his first book, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (1985), to his most recent book, co-edited with Fabrizio Speziale, Perso-Indica: An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions (2017), he has focused on how Islamic concepts have traveled across time and space.
This conference, organized around themes in Islamic studies that Professor Ernst’s work has addressed, evokes and expands on the major contributions of this fertile, creative translator of texts, ideas, and traditions within the orb of Islam. Topics of the panels include: Islam at large, Indo-Muslim ventures, Translations issues, Sufi studies, and Islamic studies. A Persian Classical Music concert by the Rohab Ensemble will take place on Friday night, at the UNC Stone Center Auditorium. The Rohab Ensemble brings three acclaimed maestros from the celebrated Dastan Ensemble – Hossein Behroozinia (barbat – lute), Saeed Farajpoori (kamancheh – spike fiddle), and Behnam Samani (tombak – goblet drum), together with Hamid Behrouzinia (tar – lute) and will be accompanied by the lilting voice of Sepideh Raissadat (Roshan Institute Fellow, 2016).
Organized by the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East, the conference is free and open to the public; however, registration is requested.
