17^th Annual Duke-UNC Middle East and Islamic Studies Graduate Student Conference

Date: February 29, 2020

Venue: FedEx Global Education Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, US

The 17^th Annual Duke-UNC conference is the longest running graduate student Middle East & Islamic Studies conference in the country. This year’s conference “Who Speaks for Islam? Approaches to Authority within the Academy and Beyond” will be held in Chapel Hill, NC on Saturday, February 29, 2020. In light of recent attempts at intimidation by the state, we are particularly interested in thinking through the politics of power. As such, we are seeking papers that interrogate questions of authority and power.

As keynote speaker, Professor Kecia Ali will speak to gendered citational politics and structures of authority within the academy.

Potential topics include:

• Who gets to speak for Islam and Muslims?
• What landscapes of authority exist in the Islamicate world? For example, what geographies constitute the Islamicate world?
• What sources and methods are used to construct our respective fields and how are they informed by our politics? For example, how do we introduce traditionally non-authoritative voices, such as those in critical queer and gender methodologies?
• As socially engaged scholars, how do we use critique and nuance in our research without creating divisions among us in a time that we need solidarity? How can we introduce contentions and arguments in our scholastic communities without stealing authority from others? How do we balance the academic and public realms?
• How do we craft responsible scholarship knowing it will be out of our hands once it is published? What sources of authority determine knowledge production in our fields?

Conference Website: https://islamicstudiesconf2020.web.unc.edu/