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Winter Symposium 2024 on Ibn Kaldun: Universalising Sciences, Cultural encounters, Empire and Slave trade

Is your research or artistic work related to North Africa or the Middle East? Are you a student or researcher in sociology, political sciences or cultural studies? Would you simultaneously want to be part of a community of students, researchers, artists and activists that want to learn from and with each other how the past and present effect each other? Have you ever thought that many of the current day challenges of sustainability, democracy, racism and economy need a transdisciplinary pool of people to be addressed, but wondered how and when you would have the possibility to meet such teams? This might be the community you are looking for!

“Civilization and its well-being, as well as business prosperity, depend on productivity and people’s efforts in all directions in their own interest and profit”

Ibn Khadun is often described as a forerunner in presenting evolutionary thinking as a pattern for human development. He is praised for his progressive theories on social cohesion, taxation and division of labour in a well functioning society. Simultaneously, both Geraldine Heng and Ibrahim X Kendi have identified the traveller and sociologist Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), as one of the early influential authors who picks up Aristotle’s thinking around climate zone theories with descriptions of character and intelligence. In Khaldun’s Muqaddimah (1377), the author posits that sub-Saharan Africans are prone to excitability, emotionalism and to dance whenever they hear a melody.

Religious scholar David M. Goldenberg further argues in The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2005), that the association between enslavement and blackness which in later scholarship has been called the curse of Ham, was not a theologically rooted idea before the times of Empire. One of the questions we thus ask in this symposium is, how the language of climate zone theories as scientific thought structures, sociological idea of cultural dominion, and the rise and fall of empires link to the development of a racialised social imaginary in medieval Europe? Did “scientific” concepts of races enter into the European continent before the texts and works of Aristotle were re-introduced into European scholarly teaching in 13th century? (Leunissen 2017; Goldenberg, 2009) In this symposium, we investigate Khaldun as a possible source material for cultural expressions and physiognomy, which later began to dominate the European social imaginary.

Who can participate?
The Nordic Summer University (NSU) is open to all who want to engage in transdisciplinary and mutual learning under the values of equality and openness. You can be a student at bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral level, and you can be a researcher, a scientist, an artist or work in a cultural or other third sector organisation. Our study circle is explicitly open to people of all faiths. As a community investigating historical and living cosmologies, we are welcoming to Indigenous and artistic research with spiritual dimensions.

What do we offer?
First and foremost, we offer a platform for learning and collaboration.
For students, we can also offer study credits for active participation. These can be gained in two different ways. Either the Nordic Summer University offers you a certificate for ECTS points upon active participation in the whole event. With this option you will have to negotiate with your home institution how these points are brought into your study plan. The other option is that you enrol to the course at Åbo Akademi which is linked to these symposia. As a student at Åbo Akademi University (or Turku University or any other university under the JOO sopimus) this event will be accounted for as the following course (TE00CL12 Medieval Cosmologies and the Art of Sustainability for the Future, 5 sp) in the minor-subject Social Justice and Sustainability which can be taken through Åbo Akademi University. In order to be eligible for this course you need to be a MA or PhD student and sign up in Peppi and at the Moodle platform where further instructions are given.

For scholars, we plan for joint publications in open-access peer reviewed journals. The next publication is planned as a MDPI Open Access special issue with the following schedule:
Article submission 05.04.2024
Feedback from reviewers by 05.06.2024
Resubmission 05.07.2024
Publishing 05.09.2024

And for artists and academics who want to collaborate, we will organise events to disseminate your works to the public. We have partnered up with forums like aboagora for presenting arts and science collaborations.

We further offer the chance to learn Digital Humanities methods of working with and annotating historical texts, as well as the opportunity to connect with the vibrant Nordic Summer University; a one-of-a-kind, radically non-hierarchical, democratic, and community oriented institution of education and research. Finally, we endeavour to make the study circle accessible to all, including financially. We can provide some financial aid and continue to pursue avenues through which to offer as much financial aid as needed to those who reach out to us to request it.

How can I participate?
Send us a short bio with your name, information about yourself, your home institution/organisation, your artform or area of research and a short motivational letter as to why you want to participate.
As a student or doctoral researcher at Åbo Akademi, sign up for the course!
Please also let us know if you will have institutional support for participation, accommodation and travel costs or if you would want to be granted a scholarship. The earlier you send in your request, the better the chances will be able to work with you to secure scholarships! People in the Nordic/Baltic region are given priority in scholarships as we partner with Nordplus for this event.

Our final call for applications is November 30th 2023.