Madrasa-Midrasha | Poetry and Prayer
Please join the GTU's Madrasa-Midrasha Program for a poetry reading featuring Naomi Seidman and Nargis Ali-Virani.
This session will explore the intersections between poetry and prayer in the Islamic and Jewish traditions, taking poems by Rumi, Ibn 'Arabi, and Yehuda Amichai as our primary examples. In keeping with the vision of the Madrasa-Midrasha Program we will also focus on how poetry enacts encounter, not only between writer and reader, but also between the human and divine realms and between religious traditions.
A light lunch will be provided for those who attend in-person.
Register Here
Click here to register for Zoom if you are unable to attend in-person.
Speakers:
Naomi Seidman is Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts at the University of Toronto in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Her fourth book, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition, won a National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies in 2019. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Professor Seidman is presently completing a study of the Hebrew and Yiddish translations of Freud's writings during his lifetime.
Nargis Ali-Virani is Associate Teaching Professor of Arabic at Emory University and has taught a variety of courses related to Arabic language, literature, Qur’anic and Islamic Studies, Women’s Studies, and Middle Eastern Films at the University of British Columbia, Washington University in St. Louis, and The New School in New York City. She holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University and has studied the Qur’an extensively at Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo.
We would like to thank the Walter & Elise Haas Fund for the generous support of the Madrasa-Midrasha Program at the GTU.
