Perso Indica

 

Call for applications

Summer School

Reading and analysing Indo-Persian documents

Göttingen, 20.8.-31.8.2018

The Department of Iranian Studies at the University of Göttingen, the Maulana Azad University National Urdu University in Hyderabad and Prof. Chander Shekhar (Prof. & former Head, Dept of Persian, Delhi University, Delhi) organise together a summer school devoted to reading and analysing Indo-Persian records.

Indo-Persian documentary sources are available in vast quantities in Indian archives and provide unique information on economic, social, political and religious issues of the Subcontinent. They still remain poorly understudied and are much less taken into consideration than narrative sources like especially historiographies and chronicles. We observe that working on archival material in India poses specific challenges to young researchers, because the reading and deciphering of these documents present many problems difficult to solve on one’s own, especially when they are written in Shekasta. The archival situation in India is also not always so promising, with many collections still uncatalogued and difficult to access.

Our goal is to encourage researchers in tackling these challenges by working together in several archives of Hyderabad. The most prominent of these archives are the Telangana State Archives which have a unique collection of records from Mughal times, especially from the time of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, with more than 150.000 records going back to this period. But some private collections are also situated in Hyderabad.

During the two-week program we will have teaching courses in MANUU as well as in different archives. A special focus is given to working with original records. After an initial stage during which we will introduce the participants to deciphering Nastaliq and Shekasta and to dealing with original material, we will turn to reading and analysing different types of documents from various periods, and will visit different archives in Hyderabad to work on their records. Some of the teaching units will be organized as group work. Although the course is to some extent a follow-up course of the summerschool which took place in 2018 in Göttingen, we do not expect participants to be fluent in reading records. New-comers with no knowledge of reading Nastaliq and Shekasta and with no experience in working on records are therefore welcome to join.

Programme: the workshop comprises 4hrs/day of teaching. The afternoon is reserved for homework and exercises.

Costs: the course fee is 150 €. The fee has to be paid after acceptance for the course until April 20th.

Requirements: we accept PhD and postdoc students as well as MA students with a good knowledge of Persian. They should be familiar with pre-modern Persian, too.

The language of instruction will be English, fluency in English is therefore also required.

Application. in order to be considered, the applications must include:

A curriculum vitae, mentioning language skills

Proof of sufficient knowledge of Persian

The number of participants is limited to 20.

Housing: There are no opportunities to accommodate the participants at the campus, but since the summerschool takes place during the term break, there are many affordable offers to rent a room or apartment in Göttingen for 2 weeks.

Calendar:

The applications must be submitted before April 1st  2018.

The spring school will take place from August 20th to August 31st 2018. Arrival day in Göttingen is August 19th, departure if foreseen for the afternoon of August  31st earliest.

Preliminary list of instructors: Chander Shekhar (Delhi University), Saqib Baburi (British Library), Hamidreza Ghelichkhani (Teheran), Eva Orthmann (Göttingen University), Anna Kollatz (Bonn University)

 

Location and info

Location: The summer school will take place at Göttingen University, Germany.

Contact: Ali Balaielangroudi, Seminar für Iranistik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, 37073 Göttingen, e-Mail: iranist@gwdg.de.