Join us for the thesis defense of International Studies senior Vija Tessman. Vija will be presenting her original research project Syncretic Spirits of Fire: Narratives of the jinn and related beings in Near Eastern religious corpora, which recently received the first place award in the Arts, Culture, and Humanities category at the Denman Research Forum:
The jinn are spirits of Arabian mythology and Islamic cosmology mentioned in the Qur’ān and in folktale collections such as the One Thousand and One Nights. This thesis project examines the syncretism, or religious blending, of the origins of the jinn in pre-Islamic pagan Arab belief with the portrayal of angels, demons, and other preternatural beings in the religious texts of Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism. This is accomplished through an analysis of narratives from these texts in which jinn, angels, demons, and other such entities feature. The results of this research pinpoint the external origins of specific characteristics of the jinn and have implications for the position and abilities of pre-Islamic spiritual entities in the monotheistic context of Islam.
Vija’s research presentation will be from 9-9:30am and will be open to the public. The actual defense will take place immediately afterwards and will be private.