[Andalusi Studies] CFP 1001 Nights Conference Harvard April 2015

[David Wacks]

A Call for Papers

Conference

The Thousand and One Nights: Sources, Transformations, and Relationship
with Literature, the Arts and the Sciences

Harvard University (CMES)  ~ Institut National des Langues et Civilisations
Orientales (CERMOM, ANR MSFIMA)

Cambridge (Boston) - April 15-17, 2015


Organizing Committee:

-       Sandra Naddaff (Havard U.)
-       Aboubakr Chraïbi (Inalco, Paris)
-       William Granara (Havard U.)


        Literary works with many textual sources, having been transformed,
much translated, and exercising wide influences, such as the Thousand and
One Nights, create dense and fluid textual networks. What must we have
read, seen or heard to claim to know the Nights? The oldest and most
comprehensive Arabic manuscript? The Bulaq or Mahdi edition? Burton or
Haddawy’s translations? Poe’s short story? Rabaud’s opera? Mahfouz’s novel?
Borges’s essays? Pasolini’s film? Materials related to the Nights continue
to emerge from many arts, countries, periods, disciplines, and languages,
and their scope continues to widen, making the Nights a universal work from
all points of view.

        Antoine Galland’s French translation published in 1706 had a
tremendous impact and was much imitated in French literature, even
 contributing to the creation of a new literary genre (the oriental tale).
It can be argued, by analogy, that the arrival of the Thousand and One
Nights in the Arabic-speaking world in the mid-8th century had a similar
effect on Arabic literature of the period, and that of following centuries.
The book’s interactions with the wider culture would last a thousand years,
the longest period in the text’s history. The testimonies of Ibn al-Nadîm
and Abu ’Abd Allâh al-Yamanî, who explicitly mention Arabic imitations of
the Nights, strongly support this hypothesis. Similarly, the existence of
numerous books closely related to the Nights in terms of content, such as
Kitâb al-Hikâyât al-’Ajîba wa-l-Akhbâr al-Gharîba and the Hundred and One
Nights, shows that this is not a single text but rather a set of texts of a
particular genre, which can be called middle literature and which
circulated in the Arabic-speaking world at the same time as the Nights.

        The simultaneous transformations of the Thousand and One Nights and
their environment often introduce new forms of interaction and promote the
creation of new cultural objects and new research perspectives. From the
19th century, short stories and novels would gradually dominate the various
forms of literary production, while the Nights would also be revitalized
with new editions (Bûlâq, Calcutta I and II, Breslau, etc.) and new
translations (Lane, Burton, Mardrus, etc.). Always a publishing staple, the
Nights would gradually enter world literature through the great novelists
of the day, from Argentina to Japan, but also other arts, such as music and
cinema from its earliest days (Méliès, 1905; Reiniger, 1926).  Another
remarkable transformation relates to contemporary society, namely the birth
of several scientific disciplines, the revival of research tools, and the
richness of interdisciplinary approaches such as sociology, history,
anthropology, psychoanalysis and political philosophy, which have adopted
the Nights as a reference corpus.

        In light of the above, we ask the following questions:

First panel: The manuscripts of the Nights and middle Arabic literature:

What could Arabic manuscripts of the Nights represent when compared to
their lost Persian model? What changes have taken place? Have they been
imitated, and by what? Do other texts of Arabic literature resemble the
Nights? What criteria can be used to identify similarities? How do they
differ from other genres, such as the sîra, the folktale or the khabar? In
what ways might they constitute a middle literature?

Second panel: Galland’s translation and the 18th century:

How and why were the Nights transformed when they were published in France?
What type of literature did they represent in the eyes of French readers?
What was their impact on the concept of the “tale”? How was the “oriental
tale” constructed? What were the consequences on French literature, or even
thought and philosophy, of the time?

Third panel: The Nights, world literature and the arts:

Do the Nights, which exploit a series of embedded frame stories to act out
a drama of literary creation, represent a model for the writer and the
artist? Among the Nights’ hundreds of stories which are the most used? Why
and how were these stories selected and transformed ? What is the effect,
in turn, on their original texts?

Fourth panel: The Nights, the humanities and the sciences:

How can the Nights be used in other disciplines? How can issues concerning
medieval societies, religions, or political governance be explored through
the Nights? For example, is it possible, in the context of
interdisciplinary research, to use the therapeutic aspects of Shahrazad’s
stories in medicine?



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The Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ Working Group on Middle Eastern
Literatures, The Department of Comparative Literature, The Department of
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, in
conjunction with Centre de Recherche Moyen-Orient Méditérranée de l'INALCO
(ANR MSFIMA : Les Mille et une nuits : Sources et Fonctions dans l’Islam
Médiéval Arabe), welcomes proposals for papers that fall within one of the
four panel topics outlined above.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should be sent to Professor
Aboubakr Chraïbi at: aboubakr.chraibi at inalco.fr by October 15, 2014. Papers
maybe presented in Arabic, English or French. Email submissions should be
sent in Word format only. Successful proposals should present a compelling
case for the paper and its relation to the conference topic[s]. We ask that
all participants stick to a strict twenty minute time period to allow time
for discussion. Please do not send your entire paper and do not include
your personal details on the abstract but rather in a separate cover
letter. All papers will be peer-reviewed and evaluated anonymously. The
Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, does not require any
conference registration fees, and will provide participants with food and
accommodation while in Cambridge (Boston) USA during the conference, it
expects participants to arrange and pay for their own travel to and from
Boston. For any further information please contact Elizabeth Flanagan:
elizabethflanagan at fas.harvard.edu.
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