Interrogating analytical turns for/in the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe

Date: November 29-30, 2018

Venue: Woolf Institute, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0UB, UK

Organizers: Zubair Ahmad, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin and Amin El-Yousfi, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge

This workshop seeks to provide a forum for critically engaging with the analytics of the “ethical” and the “everyday” in the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe. Accompanied by Mayanthi Fernando (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Samuli Schielke (ZMO, Berlin) as keynote speakers, the workshop will have three interrelated aims: Firstly, to bring into conversation and rigorously interrogate two key analytical turns in the study of Islam and Muslims: the “ethical turn” and the turn toward “the everyday”. By doing so, secondly, to make transparent their modes of enquiry as well as the analytical purchase they suggest and might hold. And, finally, to apply these turns, in a more systematic way, to the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe.

The workshop is particularly interested in scrutinizing, and discussing the analytical value and implications of both these turns. What is, we ask, the analytical purchase of these turns within the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe? What, furthermore, might escape our attention while preferring one turn among the other? What happens in the “process of inquiry” while ascribing analytical weight to one rather than the other?

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

– Mayanthi Fernando (University of California, Santa Cruz)
– Samuli Schielke (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin)

Sponsors

We are most grateful for the sponsorship of the Centre of Islamic Studies and the Woolf Institute.

More information on: Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies’ website