Contemporary Islam Unit

We invite proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative-format sessions for the upcoming Annual Meeting, both online and in-person related to the study of Islam in the contemporary period. This year’s presidential theme, Futures / Future(s), asks scholars, teacher-scholars, and scholar-practitioners, to confront the rapidly shifting landscapes of religious studies, within and beyond the academy, and to imagine where our field is headed.

At a time when higher education faces precarity, especially for contingent faculty, graduate students, and scholars working outside traditional academic structures and those working across the Humanistic disciplines, this theme calls for collective action, collaborative scholarship, and expansive thinking. As AAR President, Laurel Schneider, puts it: “Scholars of religion are uniquely positioned to reflect critically on the modes and capacities of religious and spiritual stories and practices, ancient and new, local and global, to imagine futures beyond despair on the one hand, or superficial hope on the other.”

We especially welcome proposals addressing one or more of the following sub-themes:

• Refugee Camps and Futurity: Analyses of spaces imagined as temporary but that are actually functionally permanent; studies of belonging, temporality, infrastructure, and survival in contexts of displacement.
• Muslim Afrofuturism or Histories of Muslim Sci-Fi and Futurism: Explorations of Black Muslim futurities, aesthetics, and political thought; engagements with speculative fiction, art, and performance.
• Liberatory Futures and Eschatology: How religious visions of the afterlife unsettle, critique, or inspire alternative social and political futures.
• Disability Studies and Assistive Technologies: Intersections of religious studies, disability studies, and technological mediation; spiritual, ethical, and communal dimensions of assistive technologies.
• Knowledge Production Beyond Traditional Centers: Rethinking hierarchies of religious knowledge, from seminaries and divinity schools to Global South institutions.
• The Future of Muslim and Islamic Politics: Reassessing political categories, representation, and the “Islamic-ness” of political movements; imagining new frameworks for analyzing Muslim political life.
• Muslim Mayors and Urban Futures: We encourage individual papers or a pre-arranged panel examining Muslim mayoral leadership in the U.S. and beyond, thinking about how cities function as distinctive religious, political, and imaginative spaces.
• We welcome submissions from religious studies scholars working in any geographical region, methodological approach, historical period, or institutional setting, including independent scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners. Scholars working outside of the professional academy are encouraged to indicate their interest in being a part of the June 2026 online program to take advantage of free and reduced rate registration and more flexibility in our programming allotments. 

Online Program

The call for papers for the online program (June 22-25) is the same as above, with an additional encouragement to consider future/s of pedagogy and writing about Islam, as well as conceptualizations of borders and limitations of movement in regards to scholarly exchange and output.

For all submissions: 

To offer the committee maximal flexibility in arranging our program, please indicate your willingness to have your proposal(s) considered for the online and in-person conferences (the online program has a low flat rate registration fee this year).

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.

Final papers or proposal submissions generated by ChatGPT or similar AI tools are not permitted. All work must be original, and any use of AI for editorial support should be minimal.

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.

For questions about the theme or proposal fit, please contact:
Candace Mixon (candacem@reed.edu) and Kimberly Wortmann (wortmakt@wfu.edu), Co-Chairs, Contemporary Islam Unit