1st International Conference on Critical Muslim Studies: “Re-Orienting the Post-Western”

Date: April 7-9, 2021

Venue: University of Leeds, UK

To mark the 5^th anniversary of the journal ReOrient, the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds will host the first international conference on Critical Muslim Studies.

The current proliferation of the ‘critical’ as a prefix in an ever-increasing range of fields and sites addressing an engaging an epistemological and methodological problem has long presented a challenge and opportunity to advance legacies in shaping our understanding of the world. A disparity of efforts, however, is discernible among scholars grappling in different fields against the impasses of positivism, presentism and the entrenchment of disciplines in epistemic cages forged as part of Europe’s worldmaking.

The key touchstones of Critical Muslim Studies, emphasize scholarship that is non-positivist, and conceptually rigorous. It is an approach that includes being attentive to racial formations and processes of racialization; engaging with comparative and transnational context and processes on a global scale, and mapping out non-linear histories, discontinuities and genealogies.

This international and interdisciplinary conference aims to bring into conversation researchers who may not necessarily identify themselves as doing Critical Muslim Studies but share some of the same concerns and interests and recognize the need for epistemic decolonization.

Source: Criticalmuslimstudies.co.uk