On the occasion of the seventieth birthday of the Arabist and Qur’an scholar Angelika Neuwirth, friends and colleagues gather together to celebrate a scholarly career that has left its impressions on various fields of scholarship, ranging from her efforts to integrate Arabic literature into comparative literary studies in European universities to her pursuit of a European reading of the Qur’an, which dispels long-held notions of alterity and foreignness and explores the potential for a collective reading of sacred scripture. Dwelling throughout her scholarly life on the cultural and intellectual thresholds between the Islamic-Jewish-Christian worlds of Europe and the Middle East, Angelika Neuwirth’s intellectual career serves as an emblem of a scholarship that binds together the pursuit of knowledge with ethical commitment.
Organisation:
Islam Dayeh, Christian Junge, Georges Khalil, Barbara Winckler
Schedule:
10 am
Welcome: Georges Khalil (EUME / Forum Transregionale Studien), Erika Fischer-Lichte (FU Berlin)
10.15 am – 10.45 am
Laudatio: Stefan Wild (Universität Bonn), Notes of a Travelling Companion – A Retrospective View
11 am – 12.30
Moderation: Barbara Winckler (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster)
Daniel Boyarin (University of California, Berkeley), The Task of the Untranslator: Philology and Interpretation in four Maccabees
Klaus von Stosch (Universität Paderborn), Herausforderung Islamische Theologie in Deutschland. Erwartungen an Philologie und Komparative Theologie
Martin Treml (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin), In and Out of Eden in Biblical Traditions
2 pm – 3.30 pm
Moderation: Islam Dayeh (Zukunftsphilologie / Freie Universität Berlin)
Thomas Bauer (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster), Der Baumeister zitiert Koran: Iqtibas bei al-Mi'mar
Nicolai Sinai (University of Oxford), Angelika Neuwirth and Surah Holism: The State of the Question
Ridwan al-Sayyid (Lebanese University, Beirut), Angelika Neuwirth and the Study of the Qur'an
4 pm – 5.30 pm
Moderation: Christian Junge (Freie Universität Berlin)
Beatrice Gruendler (Yale University), Fraud by the Book
Nadia Al-Bagdadi (Central European University, Budapest), Here or There? - An Essay in the Ambiguities of Aesthetics
Ken Seigneurie (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Angelika Neuwirth’s Deep Commitment to Modern Levantine Culture
5.30 pm – 6 pm
Response by Angelika Neuwirth
7 pm
Lecture: Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire), Islam and Jewish-German Self Understanding
This conference is organized in the framework of two programs at the Forum Transregionale Studien, “Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME)” and “Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Practice” in cooperation with Corpus Coranicum / Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin, Dahlem Humanities Center und dem Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin
