Call for papers: IRAQ special section on the life, work and legacy of Ethel Drower
Ethel Stephana Drower (1879–1972) was a pioneer of the anthropological study of Iraq’s minorities, especially the Mandaeans. She travelled widely, published prolifically, and earned the respect of her informants as well as her academic peers, despite her lack of formal academic training. Yet, beyond J.J. Buckley’s Lady E.S. Drower’s Scholarly Correspondence (Brill 2012), she has been little studied and is largely unknown outside the specialist field of Mandaean studies.
2019 will mark the 140th anniversary of Drower’s birth and the 85th anniversary of the first issue of IRAQ, to which she contributed (E.S. Drower, ‘Mandean writings’, IRAQ 1 [1934], 171–82). We propose to celebrate the occasion with a special section devoted to assessing Drower’s life, work, and legacy, co-edited by Erica Hunter, Augusta McMahon, Eleanor Robson, and Mark Weeden.
We invite papers of 5,000 to 10,000 words addressing topics and issues that might include (but are not limited to) the following in relation to Ethel Drower:
- women’s lives in Mandate Iraq
- Iraqi folklore and anthropology
- Mandaean history and culture
- the Mandaic language
The deadline for expressions of interest is 1 March 2018. Please email an anonymised one-page PDF to the Editors at e.robson @ ucl.ac.uk. Expressions of interest will be reviewed by the Editorial Board, which will issue invitations to submit papers by the end of that month.
The deadline for submission of invited papers is 1st September 2018. Please follow the submission instructions. All submissions will be double-blind refereed and up to six papers will be selected for publication in IRAQ 81 (2019). Authors will be informed of the outcome by the end of December 2018.
The Editors of IRAQ
Eleanor Robson, Augusta McMahon, and Mark Weeden
January 2018
