Conference | West Africa and the Maghreb: Reassessing Intellectual Connections in the 21st Century

Date: 

Friday, September 14, 2018, 9:15am to 6:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Sperry Room

Convened by the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professorship on Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, Harvard Divinity School.

Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead Research Cluster on Religion in Public Life in Africa and the African Diaspora.

For full conference program, please click here or see below for the Day 2 agenda.

Day 2

9:15–11:15am Panel 1: Sufism and Sufi Orders in Muslim Africa
Chair: Stephanie Paulsell, Harvard Divinity School.

“Perspectives on “Politicized Sufism”: A Case Study of the ṭarīqa QadīrīBoutchichiyya”
Armaan Sidiqi, Harvard University.

”Black Muslimness Mobilized: A Study of West African Sufism in Diaspora”
Jaison M. Carter, Harvard University.

“Technologies of Devotion in the works of Sidi Mukhtar al-Kunti”
Ariela Marcus-Sells, Elon University.

“The Politics of Love in African Performances of Sufi Poetry”
Christine Thun-Nhi Dang, New York University.

12.00–2.00pm Panel 2: Prayers, Invocations and the Talismanic Tradition
Chair: Kimberly C. Patton, Harvard Divinity School.

“Doing Things with (Divine) Words: al-Ruqya al-Shar’iyya and the creation of an Islamic Modernity”
James C. Riggan, Florida State University.

“Pious Devotions as Islamic Intellectual History: The Prayers of the Tijāniyya in North and West Africa”
Zachary Wright, Northwestern University Qatar.
Adam Larson, Weill Cornell University – Qatar.

“Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: A Reconsideration of the Evil Eye and Ruqyah through Ethnographic Analysis”
Paul Anderson, Harvard University.

“Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: A Study of West African Arabic MadīḥPoetry and Its Precedents”
Oludamini Ogunnaike, College of Williams and Mary.

2:45–4:45pm Panel 3: Re-evalutating the Historic Core Curriculum
Chair: Charles Hallisey, Harvard Divinity School

“Sufism, Scholarly Networks, and Territorial Integration in the Early Modern Sahara (Algeria, Mauritania, Mali), 1600-1800”
Ismail Warcheid, CNRS France.

“Of Radd and Sharḥ and Ṭurra : The Long and Late Dynamism of the African Commentary Tradition on Akhḍarī's Sullam on Avicennian Organon Logic”
David Owen, Harvard University.

“The Study of Mathematics in the Sahel from the 15thto the 20th C.”
Alexis Trouillot, Université Paris VII.

“Verse Tradition, Muslim Scholars and Transmission of Islamic Knowledge in Mauritania, The ‘Land of Million Poets’”
Abubakar Abdulkadir, University of Alberta, Canada.

5:00–6:00pm Concert by Noor Ensemble (Andover Chapel)

This event is free and open to the public.

 

west_africa_program.pdf1.35 MB
See also: 2018-2019