Word: birthday
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After 15 years, the Department of African and African American Studies is changing hands. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, the Thomas professor of history and of Af-Am, is the second woman to lead the department, three years shy of its 40th birthday. Former chair Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., who is Du Bois professor of the Humanities, will continue directing the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research...
...party off and the din rising, I resigned myself to sitting on the balcony and spying on the neighbor's festivities. The buffet tent and the chairs were filled with men, so the female members of the household were either invited to an all-women's Twelfth Imam birthday party, or confined to the house. I couldn't see the speaker, but his voice transfixed the all-male assembly, rising to extol the Mahdi's virtues (immortal, pure)."He may even be among us right here right now, in this very gathering!" he exclaimed, looking about exaggeratedly. The idea that...
...Iranians have celebrated the Twelfth Imam's birthday for centuries, but it was only after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that the holiday was celebrated by draping Tehran in tinsel and colored lights, much like a Western city during Christmas. The government honors the Mahdi's birthday with more fanfare than it treats other arguably more prominent Muslim holidays. This year, out on a short trip for groceries, I ate Mahdi birthday cookies on one street, and was offered a cold fruit drink at a nearby square. The result of this government-nurtured devotion to the Mahdi has transformed the piety...
...well (on the male or female side). Caretakers fish the letters out regularly, and burn them nearby. If you happen to be walking through the area, it's common to find half-scorched fragments of letters to the Mahdi in the grass. On the occasion of the Mahdi's birthday this year, the government installed 60 new payphones at Jamkaran, and extended Iran's mobile network coverage to the site...
...deputies on earth. The legitimacy of the Islamic system and the credibility of the establishment clergy are founded on the Twelfth Imam. Which is why the President mentions him at every opportunity, why the Jamkaran pilgrimage site is becoming a small city. And of course, why his birthday is celebrated with unparalleled passion, at high volume...