Dr. Carl Ernst, William R. Kenan Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, reported the recent achievements of graduate students in Persian Studies at UNC. Rose Aslan successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation on the topic, “From Body To Shrine: The Construction Of Sacred Space At The Grave Of `Ali ibn Abi Talib In Najaf.” She has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at California Lutheran University. Candace Mixon, the first recipient of Roshan Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies established at UNC in 2013, completed a month-long research trip to Iran this summer, where she studied ritual practices for her Ph.D. dissertation on “Representations of Public Piety in Persian Images and Texts.” In addition, Matthew Lynch has been accepted for a two-week course in advanced Persian at the Sa’di Foundation in Tehran in August.
Earlier this spring, Professor Ernst gave a lecture on bilingual Ottoman/Persian poem by the famous 16th-century Ottoman Sufi, Uftade, in an international conference held in Bursa, Turkey. In August, he is directing an international workshop on “Practice, Performance, and Politics of Sufi Shrines in South Asia and Beyond,” near Aurangabad, India, with the support of the American Institutes of Indian, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, and Sri Lanka Studies, followed by a series of lectures on Sufism at universities in Delhi, Aligarh, and Chennai, sponsored by the US Embassy in New Delhi.
Finally, the Carolina Performing Arts, in collaboration with the UNC Mideast Center, is planning a year of artistic performances and academic conferences connected to themes raised in the classic work of Persian Sufi literature, `Attar’s 13th-century poem, “Canticle of the Birds” (Mantiq al-tayr). It will present specially commissioned works of music and dance that engage with questions such as the self and its relation to the divine, the nature of spiritual love, and the art of narrative. Two academic conferences will be organized (one in North Carolina and one overseas) on academic themes related to the text. More information will be forthcoming.