WORKSHOP ON LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF AUTHORITY IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES

MARCH 3-4, 2011
Landau Economics Building, Lucas Conference Room
579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305- 6072 (GET MAP)

THE EVENT
The two-day workshop focuses on the processes underlying the social construction of authority in Islamic societies and the ways in which those processes have been affected by issues of language and the development of literacy since the seventeenth century.  Presentations will explore these issues in the context of peripheries as well as the core regions. Workshop sessions are free and open to public.

Conference Program (PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION)
Paper abstracts (PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION)

THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2011

10:00 AM – 12:40 PM – CONTEMPORARY STRUGGLES FOR AUTHORITY
Chair: Flagg Miller, University of California Davis (CV/Website)

• Ebru Erdem-Akçay, University of California, Riverside (CV/Website)
  “Religiosity, Language Use and Political Expression: A Study on two Turkish Online Communities” (abstract) (paper)

• Peter McMurray, Harvard University
  “Listening to the Poetics and Politics of Contemporary Balkan Sufism” (abstract) (paper)

• Stéphane Lacroix, Sciences Po (CV/Website)
  “Ulama, Intellectuals and the Struggle for Authority within Islamist Movements” (abstract) (paper)

• Bernard Rougier, Collège de France/Sciences Po
  “Authority built on grammars of action: the particular case of the Arab Levant” (abstract) (paper)

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM – LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND THE NATION
Chair: Michael Cooperson, University of California, Los Angeles (CV/Website)

• Parna Sengupta, Stanford University (CV/Website)
  “Schooling Faith: Religious Pluralism in Twentieth Century Bengal” (abstract) (paper)

• Nabil Mouline, Sciences Po/Princeton University (CV/Website)
  “The Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in contemporary Saudi Arabia” (abstract) (paper)

• Alexander Knysh, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (CV/Website)
  “Arabic as the Language of Resistance: The Caucasus Emirate” (abstract) (paper)

4:30 PM – 6:30 PM – LITERATURE AND PERFORMANCE
Chair: Sholeh Quinn, University of California, Merced (CV/Website)

• Prashant Keshavmurthy, McGill University (CV/Website)
  “Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzu and the Emergence of the Universal Human Subject in early Modern Persian Literary Theory” (abstract) (paper)

• Melis Sülos, CUNY (CV/Website)
  “The Rise and the Politicization of the Popular Theatre in the Late Ottoman World” (abstract) (paper)

• Yaseen Noorani, University of Arizona (CV/Website)
  “Literary Aestheticism and the Formation of the Notion of Islamic Civilization” (abstract) (paper)

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2011

10:00 AM – 12:40 PM – THE ULEMA IN MODERN TIMES
Chair: Tugrul Keskin, Portland State University (CV/Website)

• Mara Leichtman, Michigan State University (CV/Website)
  “Arabic Literacy, Conversion to Shi’i Islam, and the Transformation of Religious Authority in Senegal” (abstract) (paper)

• Zekeria Ahmed Salem, University of Florida (CV/Website)
  “From Slaves to Imams? Knowledge, Islamic Authority, and Social Change in Mauritania” (abstract) (paper)

• Thomas Pierret, Princeton University (CV/Website)
  “Tradition as an Asset: Informal Religious Teaching and the Cooptation of the ‘New Literate Elites’ by the Ulema in 20th Century Syria” (abstract) (paper)

• Laurence Louër, CERI/Sciences Po/CNRS (CV/Website)
  “Mohammed al-Shirazi and the Construction of Religious Authority” (abstract) (paper)

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM – MODERN TRANSFORMATIONS OF AUTHORITY
Chair: Mohammad Salama, San Francisco State University  (CV/Website)

• Kristen Brustad, University of Texas, Austin (CV/Website)
  “Standard Language Ideology and the Construction of Modern Standard Arabic” (abstract) (paper)

• David Lelyveld, William Paterson University (CV/Website)
  “Sir Syed’s Printing Press: Print, Literacy and Islam in Early Nineteenth Century India” (abstract) (paper) (pictures)

• Brett Wilson, Macalester College (CV/Website)
  “Qur’an Translation in the Age of Nationalism” (abstract) (paper)

4:30 PM – 6:30 PM – VISUALITY
Chair: Qamar Adamjee, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco

• Chanchal Dadlani, Columbia University (CV/Website)
  “The Visual, the Textual, and the Construction of Cultural Authority in the Late Mughal Empire” (abstract) (paper)

• Hamza Zeghlache, University of Setif
  “Text, Space and Images: Written Representation of Islamic Architecture in Arabic Manuscript” (abstract) (paper)
• Elham Etemadi, University of Leuven
  “The Verbal Conditionality of Visual Literacy: Early Modern Persian Paintings” (abstract) (paper)

CONTACT
Dr. Burçak Keskin-Kozat
Associate Director, The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
Stanford University, Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies
abbasiprogram@stanford.edu

 

Sponsored by
The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and The Kuwait Program at Sciences Po (Paris, France)