Erudition and Commitment

10.00 Welcome
Georges Khalil (EUME / Forum Transregionale Studien)

Erika Fischer-Lichte (Freie Universität Berlin)

10.15–10.45 Laudatio
Stefan Wild (Universität Bonn): Notes of a Travelling Companion – A Retrospective View

11.00–12.30
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 (ZfL): In and Out of Eden in Biblical Traditions

14.00–15.30
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

16.00–17.30
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

17.30–18.00
Response by Angelika Neuwirth

19.00 Lecture
Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College, New Hampshire): Islam and Jewish-German Self Understanding

Reception

In an increasingly connected yet fragmented world, the relationship of scholarly erudition to ethical commitment has never been more relevant. While the notion of erudition may appear outmoded, its various manifestations, such as self-detachment, comprehensiveness and care for difference remain significant strategies in reading texts and the human experiences they embody. Yet this devotion to texts should not be understood as a mode of self-absorption or indifference to societal and political concerns but rather, as Angelika Neuwirth’s impressive oeuvre reminds us, reading is a genuine act of compassion and responsibility to the world in which we live.

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.

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