Call for Papers

The 3rd Muslim Studies Conference
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan

Conference Dates: April 3-5

Conference Title: “Muslims, Race and the Public Sphere”

Keynote Speakers: Mahmood Mamdani, Geneive Abdo, and Howard Winant

Conference Topic:
“Muslims, Race and the Public Sphere” is an interdisciplinary conference
sponsored by the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University. This
conference is one the first forums in the US to address the problematics of
race as they have impacted Muslims. In an effort to understand the
relationship between Islamophobia and what might be viewed as a Muslim
racial formation, the conference will address both the history and more
recent process by which Muslims in the West, particularly in North America
and in Europe, have been subjected to racial discourses in the public
sphere. The conference raises the question as to whether Muslims, or
cultural characteristics associated with Islam, have become the grounds for
constituting a racialized subjectivity. In public policy, the media, and
popular culture, are Muslims or individuals thought to be Muslims,
increasingly identified in terms of racial otherness? Is the classic
confusion of Muslim with Arab, the confusion of Sikhs with Muslims, and the
racial profiling of Asians, Africans and Latinos, assumed to be Muslims,
indications that in the public sphere the category of Muslim is being
constituted racially? What are the connections between anti-Semitism and
Islamophobia? What is the history of the racial discourses that have
contributed to the racialization of Muslims? Can the history be traced to
the period of modern European colonialism and to US and European
citizenship laws of the 19th and 20th century? This conference seeks to
engage these questions and the wide range of other issues that have
contributed to thinking of Muslims in racial terms. The conference
organizers are seeking papers that take up this topic from any disciplinary
angle. We will accept individual papers or panel proposals. All inquiries
and proposals should be sent by e-mail to: hassans3_at_msu.edu

Salah D. Hassan
Associate Professor
Department of English
Michigan State University

===================================
 From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
            cfp_at_english.upenn.edu
             more information at
         http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
===================================
Received on Thu Oct 04 2007 - 21:30:38 EDT