Study of Islam Unit

This Unit encourages proposals in all areas of Islamic studies. Successful proposals will reflect theoretical and methodological sophistication and engagement with existing scholarship, along with innovative examination of Muslim practices, texts, and material culture in diverse contexts and geographies. In addition to individual paper proposals, we especially encourage the submission of coherent pre-arranged sessions involving multiple scholars, including traditional paper panels, roundtable or lightning sessions, or other creative presentation formats. We also encourage proposals with attention to classroom and public pedagogies.

It is an explicit requirement of our Unit for pre-arranged panels to incorporate diversity along the lines of gender, race, institutional context, and rank. 

If your proposal is accepted and you agree to be on the program, we expect you to appear in-person to participate in your session at the Annual Meeting, barring unforeseeable exceptional circumstances. Please note that the Islamic Studies Program Units have a policy according to which no-shows may be barred from the program for the following year. 

___

In light of the intense uncertainties we are currently facing, this year’s presidential theme exhorts us to consider our collective “future/s,” in order to “imagine futures beyond despair on the one hand, or superficial hope on the other.” With this in mind, the Study of Islam unit is interested in how the future is imagined, foreclosed, or manufactured within Muslim traditions and lifeworlds, as well as in the precarious institutions where we study them. We are particularly interested in the following areas in relation to this theme: 

• Lessons from apocalyptic times (whether past or contemporary)
• The future of Islamic studies as a field and within institutions of higher education
• The end of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and the potential for Islamic Studies to be an alternative way of envisioning DEI work
• Muslim children, youth, and future-making
• Islamic Studies and artificial intelligence
• Indigenous Studies and Islamic Studies: shared/divergent conceptualizations of time, land, and survival; comparative approaches to settler-colonialism, resistance, and the stewardship of the future

As always, we encourage submissions on topics of general interest, such as the Qur’an and hadith, Islamic law and ethics, philosophy and theology, mysticism, ritual, gender and sexuality, race and politics, and other areas. Furthermore, we encourage proposals dealing with Shi’ism within and across these areas, as well as other forms of Islam that have been rendered marginal or peripheral.

As we have done for many years now, we also invite proposals for a special Graduate Student Session: This session will offer advanced graduate students the opportunity to present for 5 minutes on their dissertation research, followed by short responses from other panelists and open discussion. If you are a graduate student nearing completion of your dissertation, and are interested in talking succinctly about your research in this session, please submit a paper proposal through the PAPERS system with the abstract and proposal the same text and length (maximum 150 words), and indicate that your submission is for this special session format at the top of the proposal.