4th Annual Duke-UNC Graduate Islamic Studies Conference
The Departments of Religion at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University are now accepting papers for inclusion in their Fourth Annual Duke-UNC Graduate Islamic Studies Conference:
Islam and the Challenge of Pluralism:
Muslim Encounters with the Other
April 6th-7th 2007
Global Education Center
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Guest Speakers:
Hasan Hanafi, Professor of Philosophy, Cairo University
Maulana Waris Mazhari, Dar ul-Uloom Deoband
Kevin Reinhart, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Dartmouth College
Description:
Throughout the history of Islam and Muslim societies, Muslims have engaged with perceived 'others' and in the process defined themselves through ever-shifting internal and external boundaries. Today this engagement is made yet more complex by the emergence of a globalized, transnational Islam.
This growth of globalized Islam coincides in recent years with a growing interest in questions of pluralism across the humanities and social sciences. The Fourth Annual Duke-UNC Graduate Islamic Studies Conference, Islam and the Challenge of Pluralism: Muslim Encounters with the Other, will bring these two themes into a multidisciplinary conversation.
The aim of this conference is to explore the theoretical, methodological, ethnographic and historical dimensions of Muslim encounters with internal and external others. We invite papers from graduate students in a variety of disciplines - including, but not limited to, Islamic studies, sociology, anthropology, history, area-studies and cultural studies - that deal with the following questions, which are not exhaustive:
How have Islamicate cultural and intellectual discourses engaged with "the other" within and between traditions? What is the genealogy of "pluralism"? How does it problematize Islamic discussions of pluralism? How does it relate to the problematic of translation between Muslim and non-Muslim discourses on pluralism? How have interactions between Muslim and non-Muslim communities shaped cultural experiences?
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
* Muslim encounters with other religious communities over time
* Conceptions of pluralism in the textual history of Islam
* Cultural conflict and cultural "fusion" in Muslim majority and minority settings
* Questions of gender and race in comparative studies of religion
* Modern Muslim discourses on gender equality
* Muslims in non-Muslim majority contexts and vice versa
* Muslim encounters with others in literature, film, and media
* Muslim heresiographical literature
* Normative Islam, sectarianism, and constructions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy
The conference will proceed in an interactive, workshop format. We expect that
those invited to present papers will remain for the duration of the conference in order to engage the work of other participants. Proceedings will be held on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, NC.
To apply, please send: 1) a proposal of no more than five hundred (500) words 2)
a paper title and 3) a CV to Brannon Ingram (brannoningram@ gmail.com). The deadline for submissions is February 1st, 2007
[source inter_youth_net]
