Contemporary Islam Unit

The Contemporary Islam Unit is soliciting proposals for the 2025 AAR annual meeting on any topics related to the study of Islam in the contemporary period. This year, we have particular interests in the following topics:

·   Islam and Black radical traditions 

·   Revisiting Malcolm X: 100 years later 

·   Palestine, especially as thematically connected to the 2025 AAR presidential theme of “freedom”

·   Academic freedom: Methods and politics of doing and disseminating research in/on currently or recently precarious zones, including but not limited to Palestine/Israel or scholasticide in Gaza

·   Critical theory approaches to the concept of freedom (in relation to various Islamic genres and practices or in conversation with scholars like, but not limited to, Sara Ahmed, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, and Muhammad Iqbal

·   Theological approaches to freedom as an Islamic concept – whether theological, ethical, spiritual, legal, etc. 

·   Islam and African religions

·   Papers with a theoretically innovative or methodologically courageous intervention in their research topic (for example, deliberately inclusive or exclusive citational practices; experiments with form or genre; innovative use of media)

Co-Sponsored Call: 

"For Our Freedom, They Must Go! Authoritarianism, Islamophobia, Anti-Latinx Narratives and the Imaginaries of Resistance"

At the turn of the 21st century, Samuel Huntington identified the United States as a nation of settlers facing multiple threats to its constitution, including Muslims and Latinx populations. Over the past two decades, both groups have become central targets in the discursive strategies of international fascism, now in power in the US and in multiple spaces throughout the world. In collaboration with the Contemporary Islam, Latino/a Religion, Culture, and Society and Religions, Social Conflict, and Peace Studies units, we invite proposals that show entanglements in one or more of these topics:  

• Narratives of white genocide and replacement, particularly regarding Muslim and/or Latinx immigration.
• The new right-wing co-optation of Muslim and/or Latinx populations.
• New religioracial perspectives on whiteness in the United States regarding the future inclusion of a “Middle Eastern or North African” designation in the US census.
• They Are Eternal Foreigners: The denaturalization of longstanding Muslim and/or Latinx histories, memories, or individuals.
• Conspiracy theories that link Muslim and/or Latino Immigration with a Jewish plot to destroy Western civilization.
• Religious resistance against state oppression: Cross-cultural, Muslim and/or Latinx experiences.
• The intersection of Islamophobia and anti-Latinx sentiment with anti-Black racism, Sinophobia, anti-Native racism, and/or antisemitism.
• Liberationist and decolonial frameworks in resistance to racist and authoritarian structures.
• Fascism as "colonialism turned inward:” What the US and Europe can learn from  Global South struggles?  
• Doctrines of National/International Security, New Red/Green/Brown-scares.
• Conflictive Narratives of ‘Freedom’ and American consciousness.
• How white Christian nationalist ideologies use religious texts and myths of racial supremacy to justify the marginalization of non-Christian, immigrant, and racialized groups.

For all submissions: 

Pre-arranged panels should reflect gender and racial/ethnic diversity as well as diversity of field, method, and scholarly rank as appropriate. We also encourage pre-arranged panels to take a broad and inclusive approach to what counts as “Islam,” recognizing the theological diversity within Islam and among Muslims; this includes but is not limited to Shi‘a, Ibadiyya, Ahmadiyya, and the Nation of Islam.

 If your proposal is accepted and you agree to be on the program, we expect you to show up to participate in the Annual Meeting or online program, barring unforeseeable exceptional circumstances. Please note that it is the policy of all Islamic Studies program units to ban no-shows at the Annual Meeting from participating in the program for the following two years.