Dr Simonetta Calderini

 

Job Title: Reader Qualifications: PhD, Laurea Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3422 Email Address: S.Calderini@roehampton.ac.uk

Personal Profile and Research Interests

Dr Calderini's main areas of teaching and research are Islamic Studies including Shiism and specifically Ismailism, Islam and Gender, Religion and Human Rights. Her doctoral research (SOAS, 1991) was on medieval Ismaili cosmology and authority. She researched further the relationship between cosmology and religious hierarchies and publisehd an article on this topic "Cosmology and authority in medieval Ismailism" which was later republished and translated into Czech (2004) and French (2006). She published with D. Cortese Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2006). She is currently researching into classical and contemporary scholarly arguments in favour and against women imams, Ismailisn and the issue of the veil, as well as women's rights.

Undergraduate teaching interests

Current undergraduate teaching includes:

Islam

The Qur'an

Islam and the West

Women and Islam

Quranic Arabic

The Religions of the World (co-taught with Dr. Lynn Thomas)

The World Religious Texts

Religion and Film (co-taughts with Dr Tina Beattie)

Mysticism, Language and Experience (co-taught with Dr. Tina Beattie)

Postgraduate Teaching Interests

Gender and Human Rights for the MA on Religion and Human Rights
Islam and the media

Selected Bibliography

Recent and forthcoming publications include:
(2006, 2007) (co-authored with Dr. D. Cortese) Women and the Fatimids in the world of Islam, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reprinted by Oxford University Press Pakistan in paperback in 2007 for distribution in Asia ISBN: 9780195474640
Reviewed in Choice, vol 44, 9 (May 2007), p. 1589, by R.A. Miller, University of Massachusetts Boston, who states:
" In this excellent addition to the scholarship of both medieval Islamic history and gender history, Cortese...and Calderini...set out to "reinscribe" women into the "social history of the Fatimid era". Through a careful reading of primary source material, they present a convincing new picture of Ismaili and Fatimid history...their mapping of women's history onto "classical" Fatimid history is compelling... Highly recommended."
Reviewed in Islam and Christian Muslim Relations, vol 18, no 2 (April 2007), pp. 313-4 by Maha Elkaisy-Friemuth, Trinity College, Dublin: “…it is a significant book which thoroughly reflects the life and culture of Muslims in the medieval period.”
(2007) “The portrayal of the Ismaili da‘i and of his roles according to some Ismaili and early Fatimid authors” in U. VERMEULEN & K. D’HULSTER (eds.), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras V. (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 169), Leuven: Peeters, 2007 , in print ISBN: 978-90-429-1945-7
(2007) "Sayyida Rasad: a royal woman as “ gateway to power” during the Fatimid era” in U. VERMEULEN & K. D’HULSTER (eds.), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras V. (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta), Leuven: Peeters, 2007
(2008)“Wealth and women at the Fatimid courts” in K. D’HULSTER & J. VAN STEENBERGEN (eds.), Traditions and Changes in the Realms of Islam. Studies in honour of Professor Urbain Vermeulen (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 171), Leuven: Peeters 2008 in print 978-90-429-1991-4
(2008)"Islam, Gender an Human Rights", in the edited book by A. Rippin, The Islamic World, Routledge
(2008) “Two Radical Hair Cuts in Medieval Egypt: Gendering Politics in Times of Trouble” Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean,
(2008) “Islam” chapter in Oxford University Press second edition of Atlas of the World’s Religions, (1st ed. 1999)
(Jan 2008)”Fatima bint Muhammad” “Queen Arwa” “ Egypt: 700-1500” Encyclopedia of Women in World History, New York: Oxford University Press proofs approved
(2008) 'Islam and Diversity: Alternative Voices within Contemporary Islam” New Blackfriars(Blackwell Publishing)
(2006) "Cosmologie et autorite dans l’Ismaelisme medieval " in Klesis: on line-Revue Philosophique in
http://www.revue-klesis.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=39
(2004) “Cosmology and authority in Medieval Ismailism” (in Czech), in Petr Fiala, Jiri Hanus and Jan Vybiral (eds.) Religious and political authority in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Brno: CDK (The Centre for Democracy and Culture Studies), pp. 108-118.
(2003) "Lord (and lord)" in J.D. McAuliffe (ed) Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an Leiden: Brill, vol 3, pp. 229-231.
(1999) "Islam" in Smart .N. (ed.) Atlas of the World's religions, Oxford: OUP, pp. 168-195.
(1998) “Woman, sin and lust: the fall of Adam and Eve according to classical and modern Muslim exegesis”, in Hayes, Porter and Tombs (eds.), Religion and Sexuality, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, pp. 49-63
(1996) “Cosmology and authority in Medieval Ismailism”, Diskus (The on-line Journal of International Religious Studies), 4,1, pp. 11-22
(1994) “Quranic exegesis of ‘alamin, in rabb al- ‘alamin”, BSOAS, LVII, 1, pp. 52-8
(1993) “ ‘Alam al-din in Ismailism: world of obedience or world of immobility?”, BSOAS, LVI, 3, pp. 459-69.
with Hala Kaleh (1993) The Intifada: a bibliography, Oxford: Melcom, 109 pp.
with D. Cortese and J.L.A. Webb (1992) Mauritania, Oxford: Clio Press, World Bibliographical Series, 165 pp

Membership of Organizations

Member of the American Academy of Religion
Member of The Middle East Studies Association (MESA)
Member of the Royal Asiatic Society
Member of the British Association for the Study of Religion (BASR)
Member of the Istituto per l’Oriente (Rome).

Research Projects Undertaken

2003-4 AHRB study leave on women of the Fatimid dynasty, project was awarded an A rating by peer review panel: outcome: Book EUP 2006.
1995-7 Post-doctoral fellowship in “Arabic and Islamic Studies” for a research project on Cosmologies and authority structures in medieval Islam, awarded by the Department of Studies on Africa and the Arab countries, Oriental Institute, Univ. of Naples: outcome journal article (1996)