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History Faculty

Dr. Carl DavilaDr. Davila

Office: 127 Albert W. Brown Building
Phone: 585.395.5699
E-Mail: cdavila@brockport.edu

Specialization

  • Arab History, Classical Islam, Arabic Language and Culture

Education

  • Ph.D., Yale University, 2006 (Arabic Studies)
  • B.A., SUNY College at Brockport, 1998 (History)

Awards and Honors

  • Presidential Fellow, SUNY College at Brockport, 2006-2008
  • Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Morocco, "The Moroccan Andalusian Music Tradition: Between the Spoken and the Written," 2005-2006.
  • Fulbright Fellowship for Research in Morocco, "Translation and Textual Analysis of the Andalusian Music," 2004-2005.
  • Graduate Research Grant, American Institute for Maghreb Studies, "Al-Musiqa al-Andalusiyya fi al-Magrib al-Aqsa: The Survival and Preservation of a Literary Tradition." 2003-2004.
  • Presidential Citation for Outstanding Graduating Student, SUNY College at Brockport, 1998.

Courses Taught 

  • The Ancient World
  • Research Methods in History
  • Medieval Islamic Civilization
  • Anthropology of Islam
  • Gender in the Islamic World
  • Jihad
  • Sufism
  • Qur'an
  • Graduate Topics in World History:
    " From Battle-days to Days of Faith": Topics in Arab-Islamic History
  • Al-Andalus: History and Legacy
  • Arabic Literature in History
  • Middle East/North Africa Regional Seminar
  • Orientalism
  • Women in the Mediterranean World
  • Study-Tour of Islamic Spain and Morocco

Publications

  • Al-Āla: History, Society and Text.  Forthcoming from Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden.
  • Elite Music and Dance," in Mapping the Medieval Mediterranean, ca. 300-1550: An Encyclopedia of Perspectives in Research, Amity Nichols Law, volume editor.  Forthcoming from E.J. Brill, Leiden.
  • "Teaching Said: Culture Discourse Meets Culture Critique," in Counterpoints: Edward Said's Legacy, May Telmissany and Stephanie Tara Schwartz, editors.  Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.
  • "Fixing a Misbegotten Biography: Ziryab in the Mediterranean World." Al-Masâq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 12 (ii) 2009.
  • Review: Varieties of Muslim Experience: Encounters with Arab Political and Cultural Life, by Lawrence Rosen.  Anthropological Quarterly, 82 (1) 2009.
  • "Kun shafî'î: The Value of Orality and Literacy in the Moroccan Âla" in Echoes of al-Andalus, Carl Davila and Jonathan Shannon, eds. (forthcoming)
  • "Andalusian Strophic Poetry Between the Spoken and the Written: The Case of the Moroccan Andalusian Music Tradition"  in Muwashshah: Proceedings of the Conference on Arabic and Hebrew Strophic Poetry and its Romance Parallels, School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS], London, 8-10 October 2004.  Ed. Ed Emery. London: RN Books. 2006
  • "Ila l-muhibbati l-azima...": The Performance of Authority in Nineteenth-Century Alawi Official Correspondence," JAGMES. (in press)
  • "Sunset in the Gardens of al-Andalus" (poetry from the Moroccan Andalusian Music in translation) Palimpsest, April 2005.
  • "Sunset in the Gardens of al-Andalus," Nebulua 2.1 Online Journal, March 2005 (http://www.nobleworld.biz).

 Conferences and Presentation

  • "Slaves and Wives, Fact and Fiction: Uncovering Gender Ideology in Classical Islamic Spain" lecture given at the Department of History, National University of Ireland in Maynooth, March 2012.
  • "Woman, Song and Freedom: The Bifurcations of Gender Ideology in 9th-Century Cordoba" paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, Washington, D.C., December, 2011.
  • "'They called her the imâm': Artiste Slaves and the Production of Courtly Music in 9th-Century  Cordoba" paper presented at the Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, New Haven, CT, March, 2010.
  • "Ka-dâratin 'alâ t-tamâm : The Facets of al-madîh an-nabawî in Nûbat Ramal al-Mâya" lecture given at the Yale Arabic Colloquium, December, 2010.
  • Knowledge is the Beginning: Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra film and panel discussion presented at the College at Brockport, April, 2009.
  • "The Palestine Question" lecture given at the Oak Orchard Speaker Series, Holley, NY, October, 2009.
  • "Is 'Islamic Feminism' Necessary?  A Case in Point" presented at the Seneca Falls Dialogues: "Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Women's Leadership/Activism: Past, Present, and Future", Seneca Falls, NY, October, 2008.
  • Conference organizer: Reconsidering 'the Orient' and 'the Occident' in the 21st Century: Observing the 30th Anniversary of Edward Said's Orientalism, the College at Brockport, 12 April, 2008.  www.brockport.edu/orientalism
  • "The Other Andalusian Music: Andalusi Strophic Poetry in the Moroccan Samâ' wa-Madîh" presented at the Third International Conference on Andalusian Strophic Poetry at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, October, 2007.
  • "'Islamofascism?' Engineered Discourses on Islam" Presidential Fellows Lecture given at the College at Brockport, November, 2006.
  • "Teaching Said: Culture Discourse Meets Culture Critique" presented at the Counterpoints Conference on the Legacy of Edward Said, University of Ottawa, October, 2008."Text and Performed Text: Linguistic Registers in the Moroccan Âla," presented at the Middle East Studies Association annual conference in Boston, MA, November 2006.  
  • "Fixing a Misbegotten Biography: Ziryâb in the Mediterranean World," presented at the International Medieval Conference, University of Leeds, UK, July 2006.
  • "Kun shafi`i: Orality and Literacy in the Moroccan Ala," presented at the Middle Eastern Studies Association annual conference in Washington, D.C., November 2005.
  • "A Tradition of Teaching a Tradition: Oral and Literate Dimensions of the Moroccan Ala," presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference in Atlanta, GA, November 2005.
  • "Andalusian Strophic Poetry Between the Spoken and the Written: The Case of the Moroccan Andalusian Music," presented at Muwashshah: Andalusian Strophic Poetry and Its Hebrew and Persian Cognates conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, October, 2004.

 Current Projects

  • A paper illustrating that performance and literary context play a key role in allowing certain song texts in Ramal al-Māya to be understood as al-madīḥ al-nabawī, even though their images derive from secular ghazal poetry and sometimes attribute contrary qualities to the Prophet Muḥammad. 
  • A paper that traces the real and imaginary trajectories of motifs and images derived from ghazal poems in Ramal al-Māya in order to demonstrate that the modern Moroccan Andalusian music tradition exemplifies the migration of literary-cultural artifacts across the Mediterranean Islamic world and in particular, between medieval Iberia and modern North Africa, driven as much by cultural-historical values as by literary content as such.
  • Co-editing with Jonathan Shannon a forthcoming anthology entitled Echoes of al-Andalus, featuring new scholarship on the Andalusian music traditions of the Mediterranean.

Dr. Davila 2

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Last Updated 4/24/12

News

Two History Faculty receive SUNY Chancellor's Awards for 2012!

Five history students have won campus-wide awards for the 2011-2012 year!

History student Judith Littlejohn interviewed about her love of history and how it led to a job as the curator for the Elba museum

Dr. Macpherson gives the keynote lecture in the Belize at 30 Conference, the final event in the celebrations of Belize's Independence 

Events

There will be no department events until the Fall term.  History faculty will be present at SOAR events, however, to assist new transfers and late admits. 

Best wishes for a fun and productive summer.