Middle East Studies

Islam and the Humanities 2018 – Assessing the Islamic Past: Historical and Philosophical Intervention

event poster

Friday, April 20 –
Saturday, April 21, 2018

Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute

Registration is required.

This conference is dedicated to exploring epistemological issues pertaining to how we read sources for the Islamic past and construct scholarly narratives about them. Presenters will engage a wide variety of materials, time periods, and geographical locations with the aim of constructing a common conversation on the topic. The panels are moderated by colleagues with expertise beyond Islamic materials, in order to highlight the significance of conceptual matters.

Islam and the Humanities Research Initiative > > >

Workshops, Conferences, Seminars

Friday, April 20, 2018

Panel 1 (9:30-11:00 a.m.)

    • Respondent: Helge Jordheim, University of Oslo
    • Judith Pfeiffer, University of Bonn
      “Rashīd al-Dīn’s Craft: Narrating Parallel Pasts in the Fourteenth Century”
    • Nancy Florida, University of Michigan
      “Living in a Time of Madness: The Last Days of Java’s Last Prophetic Poet”

Panel 2 (11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.)

    • Respondent: Aishwary Kumar, Stanford University
    • Sean Hanretta, Northwestern University
      “The Logics of Practical Representations: Islam and Social Transformation among a Minority Population in Ghana”
    • Margrit Pernau, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
      “Emotions and Temporalities. Sayid Ahmad Khan's Concept of Modernity”

Panel 3 (2:00-3:30 p.m.)

    • Respondent: Anne Murphy, University of British Columbia
    • Kaya Şahin, Indiana University
      “To Observe, to Record, to Memorialize (ca. 1582): Depicting the Circumcision of an Ottoman Prince”
    • Dana Sajdi, Boston College
      “The Reinventions of a Tradition: Cityscapes of Damascus in the long 16th-Century”

Panel 4 (3:45-5:15 p.m.)

    • Respondent: Constantin Fasolt, University of Chicago
    • Nils Riecken, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
      “On Tragic Temporality: Abdallah Laroui’s Reading of Tradition”
    • Rian Thum, Loyola University, New Orleans
      “What is Islamic History and is it Worth Talking About?”
    • Dinner with participants and colleagues and students from Brown (7:30)

Saturday, April 21, 2018

    • Summary discussion with participants and editors of History and Theory (10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.)
    • Lunch (12:00-1:00 p.m.)