“CONSTRUCTING AND CONTESTING ISLAM IN CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS”
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA
We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the Fifth Annual Islamic Studies Conference at UC Santa Barbara. This year’s conference will be held May 8th-10th, 2015 at the Mosher Alumni House. The keynote address will be delivered by Charles Hirschkind, professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
We welcome contributions that consider this theme from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with a focus on the ways in which contestations of practice, authority, and interpretation function in the constitution of competing visions of normative Islam. In examining the ways in which Islam and Muslim identities are constructed and contested in contemporary discourses, this conference seeks to explore questions such as: How is language employed, by Muslims and/or non-Muslims, to define and delimit the boundaries of Islamic identity? In what ways do these discursive practices inform and interact with practices of identification by Muslims and non-Muslims? What are the politics and economics that condition representations and perceptions of Islam and Muslims in the ‘public’ sphere?
To submit a proposal, please send an abstract (300-500 words) along with a two-page CV by December 15, 2014 to:
We especially encourage papers which take up these issues in relation to the following themes:
Disciplining and Teaching Islam
- The roles of Muslim and non-Muslim organizations (advocacy groups, think tanks, pedagogical institutions) in shaping public perceptions of normative Islam.
- The (mis)use of Islamic terminology in media, political, and popular discourse.
- The development of Islamic Studies as field and its role in shaping and problematizing understandings of Islam.
- Genealogies and changing normativities of Islamic terms and concepts (taqlīd, ijtihād, sharī‘a, khilāfa, etc.)
Islam and the Arts
- Visual arts, music, poetry, literature, architecture, dance, and film.
- The contested place of the Islamic fashion industry in Muslim communities.
- The construction of sensory landscapes and sacred spaces.
Minorities and Marginalization
- Individuals, practices, traditions, movements, and communities that are usually viewed as peripheral (or even “un-Islamic”).
- How traditions, practices, and individuals become marginalized in relation to particular structures of power.
- Islamic counterpublics and the construction of subjectivities.
- Methods and discourses for mobilizing Muslims for protest, activism, or militancy.
- Changing practices and possibilities of identification across generational, spatial, and social contexts, including the politics of hyphenated or qualified identities (American-Muslim, Arab-Muslim, secular Muslim, modern Muslim, etc.).
Travel assistance may be available for conference presenters on a limited basis.
