In conjunction with Ramadan celebration, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Muslim Societies in Asia and the Pacific, School of the Pacific and Asian Studies and the University of Hawaiʻi’s Multicultural Student Services (OMSS/UHM) is sponsoring storytelling with Aman Ali.

CNN ranked it as one of the top stories of 2010. During Ramadan 2010, Islam’s holy month of fasting and reflection, New Yorkers Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq took a roadtrip across America, stopping each evening to break their fasts at a different mosque in a different state. The two drove over 13,000 miles during the trip and blogged about it daily on their site, http://30mosques.com/. During the trip they prayed inside the infamous “Ground Zero Mosque” in Manhattan, got pulled over by a cop in Mississippi, and visited the first mosque ever built in the U.S. in Ross, North Dakota – a town with only 48 people in it. Along the way they met the protagonists of Dave Eggers’ bestselling Zeitoun, Cambodian Muslim victims of the Khmer Rouge, a Pakistani-Mormon couple, and many, many others, all of whom are part of the diverse Muslim-American community. Their journey explores what it means to be Muslim in America today, and serves as a powerful counter-narrative to the media’s image of a monolithic Islam, receiving coverage on ABC News, CNN, Time, NPR, Fox News, the Huffington Post and Aljazeera English.

Speaker Bio:
Aman Ali is a writer and standup comedian. He lives and works in New York. He and his friend filmmaker and advertising copywriter Bassam Tariq are co-creators of the 30 Mosques in 30 States project.

Co-sponsored by:
Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Muslim Societies in Asia and the Pacific, School of the Pacific and Asian Studies and University of Hawai’i's Office of Multicultural Student Services (OMSS/UHM). Support for this event is made possible in part with funding from the State of Hawai’i Legislature and the U.S. Department of Education.

For further information or disability accommodations, contact MSAP at (808) 956-6316 or email to msap@hawaii.edu. Advance notice requested. An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Institution.

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Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) is an independent center for interdisciplinary research on the history, societies and cultures of the Middle East, Africa, Central, South and Southeast Asia, and Europe. The focus is on influences, perspectives and connections of the south, notably of Muslims and their neighbors. The center currently employs about 35 research fellows, the majority of them historians, students of Islam and anthropologists, from a variety of countries.

Within its research program Muslim Worlds – World of Islam? Concepts, Practices and Crises of the Global, ZMO announces the opening of five research positions for PhD holders who will be expected to reside in Berlin. They should situate their work within the research program of ZMO (see http://www.zmo.de/forschung/projekte_2008/gruppenposter.pdf) and be prepared to contribute actively to the overall program of the Centre in addition to pursuing their personal project.

ZMO wishes to particularly encourage applications with a regional focus on Africa and Southeast Asia. In addition to the disciplines already represented at ZMO, we encourage specialists from other disciplines such as Sociology, Cultural Geography and Economic History/Economic Anthropology to apply. Working language at ZMO is English.

Applications including a CV and a project outline (max. 5 pages) and a letter of recommendation by the PhD adviser should be sent until 15 September to Dr. Silke Nagel at Zentrum Moderner Orient, Kirchweg 33, D-14129 Berlin. Remuneration will be according to Tarif des öffentlichen Dienstes (TvöD, German public sector pay scale), grade 13 (http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tvoed/bund/).

Zentrum Moderner Orient website http://www.zmo.de/

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Lecture: So that You May Know One Another: Islam and Pluralism

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Most of the world’s Muslim population lives in Asia, but to date this important region continues to be underrepresented in studies of contemporary Islam. Contemporary Muslim leaders across Asia confront major changes in their diverse socio-political environments, experiencing varying degrees of democratization, the rise of populist religious movements, and the (re-) assertion of autocratic rule. Within these contexts, Muslim religious leaders face complex questions regarding how to exercise authority in the public sphere. This workshop will develop a nuanced assessment of the developing roles of Muslim religious leaders (ulama) in modern Asia, pursued through contextualized studies of social, legal and political dynamics of Islamic religious leadership in diverse Asian contexts. In doing so, it will address questions including, but not limited to:

* How do ulama and their religious organizations engage with electoral politics?
* What is the involvement of ulama and their religious organizations with political parties, politicians and the state bureaucracy?
* How are political activities undertaken by ulama and their religious organizations regulated by the state?
* What are the public perceptions of religious leaders who participate in politics?
* What are the potential consequences of ulama involvement in politics? How does their involvement in political activities bolster or compromise their spiritual and communal roles?

SUBMISSION DETAILS

We invite those interested in participating in the workshop to submit original paper proposals which should include a title, an abstract of 250 words, a short biography of 100-150 words, and should be submitted using the Paper Proposal Submission Form. Please submit your proposal to Sharon Ong at arios@nus.edu.sg by 1 July 2011. Papers that have been selected will be notified by 1 August 2011. If accepted, the full paper must be submitted by 30 September 2011. Participants are encouraged to seek funding for travel from their home institutions. However, a limited number of travel grants will be available for the participants.

CONTACT DETAILS

Workshop Convenors

Dr Jeremy Kingsley (arijjk@nus.edu.sg)
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Assoc Prof Michael Feener (arifm@nus.edu.sg)
Asia Research Institute and Department of History, National University of Singapore

Secretariat
Miss Sharon Ong
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
#10-01 Tower Block,469A Bukit Timah Road, Singapore 259770
Email: arios@nus.edu.sg
Tel: (65) 6516 8784
Fax: (65) 6779 1428

For more information http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/events_categorydetails.asp?categoryid=6&eventid=1165

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Last year the celebration supported Hawaii Food Bank. This year, a $10 ticket will buy shoes for children in Hawaii. All proceeds go towards the shoes for kids campaign.

Tickets will NOT be available at the Pavilion and have to be purchased in advance. Please visit this facebook invite for information on purchasing tickets!

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Indonesia, 2009 (85 min)
Indonesian with English subtitles
Director: Aditya Gumay
Cast: Atik Kanser, Reza Rahadian, Didi Petet, Niniek L. Karim

Adapted from the work of best-selling author Asma Nadia, this story focuses on Emak (Atik Kanser), a widow who leads a simple life working as a pastry cook and her son, Zein (Reza Rahadian), a struggling painter, who despite his poverty, tries to find ways to raise funds to allow his mother to fulfill her obligation as a Muslim by joining the hajj to the holy city of Makkah. A series of family challenges whittles away Emak’s meager savings as she assists all who need her without passing judgement on them, but causing Zein to consider desperate measures to find money to help her realize her dream. Emak’s wealthy neighbors and shallow local politicians seem to take the hajj for granted presenting us with what Iranian director Gholamreza Ramezani notes is a story that “reflects closely everyday life and social realities…that are easily identified by people in Muslim-majority countries.”

This screening is co-sponsored by the Muslim Societies in Asia and the Pacific (MSAP) program at the University of Hawaii.

IMDB | Facebook Page | Flixter | Download Poster

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[Source: malaysiana1] Yasmin Ahmad (January 07, 1958 – July 25, 2009) was a critically-acclaimed multi-award winning film director, writer and scriptwriter from Malaysia and was also the executive creative director at Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur.

Her television commercials and films are well-known in Malaysia for their humour, heart and love that cross cultural barriers, in particular her ads for Petronas, the national oil and gas company.

Her works have won multiple awards both within Malaysia and internationally.

A graduate in arts majoring in psychology from Newcastle University, she worked as a trainee banker in 1982 for two weeks.

She then joined IBM as a marketing representative.

Yasmin began her career in advertising as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather in the same period.

In 1993 she moved to Leo Burnett as creative director and eventually became executive creative director.

Her first film was Rabun (Failing Sight) in 2002.

Yasmin’s films have won many international awards and praise from critics and public alike.

Most of her films have been screened at the Berlin, San Francisco, Singapore and Cannes international film festivals.

Her films were featured in a special retrospective at the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival 2006.

They were also featured in a 2007 retrospective by the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Yasmin passed away of a stroke at 11.25pm on July 25, 2009.

She fell unconscious in her chair at 3.30pm on July 23 at private television station TV3 in Petaling Jaya.

At that time she was having a meeting with the TV3 management and Malaysian pop queen Datuk Siti Nurhaliza Tarudin for a coming project.

Yasmin was hospitalised at the Damansara Specialist Hospital a short distance from TV3 and underwent neurosurgery on the same day.

She never regained consciousness.

She was buried in Subang Jaya, where she lived.

Yasmin made six films in her short but illustrious career.

They were Rabun (2003), Sepet [Chinese Eyes] (2004), Gubra [Anxiety] (2006), Mukhsin (2007), Muallaf [The Reverter] (2008) and Talentime (2009).

She also acted in the films Rain Dogs and Susuk, among others.

She won several awards for her television commercials that promoted national unity and humanitarian values, in Malaysia and Singapore.

Sepet won best film in the Malaysian Film Festival 2005. Gubra won best film the following year.

Sepet also won the Asian Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2005.

Mukhsin won Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival 2007 and Best Asean (Southeast Asian) Film at the Cinemanila International Film Festival 2007.

Muallaf won the Asian Film Award – Special Mention at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2008.

Yasmin was the eldest of three siblings from Muar, Johor. She was of Malay and Japanese ancestry.

She is survived by her parents, a brother and a sister, and her husband Tan Yew Leong, the creative director of Leo Burnett.

flickr | imdb | 2007 UH Yasmin Ahmad Retrospective (twitch)
yasmin blogs project | yasmin the storyteller | yasmin the filmmaker

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U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to Council on Foreign Relations on “International Engagement Through Education” (26 May 2010)

full speech

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The Center for Southeast Asian Studies would like to recognize the incredible efforts of graduate assistants, Nezia and Effendy, who were instrumental in the building of the Muslim Societies in Asia program.  The quality and success of the current MSIAP is a testament to their hard work and the CSEAS wishes them the best of luck on their future endeavors.

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CURATOR OF ISLAMIC ARTS
DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION FOR ISLAMIC ART at SHANGRI LA
The mission of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art is to promote the study and understanding of Islamic arts and cultures. Shangri La is the Foundation’s center for Islamic arts and cultures, which is housed in the former Honolulu residence of philanthropist and collector Doris Duke (1912 – 1993).

The Collection
Shangri La was built between 1936 – 1938 as Doris Duke’s private estate and to house her growing collection of Islamic art. The collection is comprised of approximately 3,500 objects ranging from pre-Islamic material to early 20th century commissions, in a wide variety of media. The collection is particularly strong in material from the 17th through 20th centuries, and in ceramic tiles and vessels. It additionally includes household furnishings, clothing, archives, and a small working library. A significant portion of the collection is integrated into the historic architecture.

The Position
The Curator of Islamic Arts has primary responsibility for the research and interpretation of the collection, and will provide the vision for and manage collections-based activities that support the organization’s mission, including:
On-site, travelling and Web-based exhibitions
Print and Web-based publications
Collections-based public programs and symposia
Visiting scholar and artist programs
Conservation of Shangri La’s art and architecture

The Curator will work closely with the Programs Manager and Collections Manager, conservators and a variety of consultants; participate in meetings of the DDFIA Board and Advisory Council; and develop strong relationships with other museums and academic institutions. S/he will be active in the field of Islamic arts and culture, represent the Foundation at conferences and symposia, and stay abreast of and contribute to current research and developments in the field.

Qualifications
The successful candidate will hold a PhD in Islamic Art, or have equivalent work experience. S/he will exhibit the capacity to employ an interdisciplinary approach to his/her work and to develop innovative programs that reflect current research and engage diverse audiences. Proven success at providing leadership, building supportive relationships and working as a team player is essential. S/he must demonstrate curatorial and conservation knowledge as well as advanced research and computer skills; familiarity with The Museum System (TMS) is desired. A working knowledge of Arabic and/or Persian is also desired.

Candidates at various levels of experience and expertise will be considered; compensation will be commensurate with experience.

While the position is envisioned as full-time, more flexible part-time or seasonal schedules may be feasible.

The Curator will report to the Executive Director of Shangri La and be a member of the leadership team charged with implementing the strategic plan to strengthen Shangri La as a center for Islamic arts and cultures.

For further information on Shangri La and its Collections, visit: www.shangrilahawaii.org.

How to Apply
To be considered for this position, forward your resume and cover letter via e-mail to SLCurator.hr@ddcf.org. Indicate your interest in this position, your salary requirements, and whether or not you are currently eligible to work in the United States.

Applications will be accepted beginning May 1, 2010, and ending June 7, 2010.
All candidates will receive a response.

No Phone Calls Please
Do Not Apply in Person

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