Archival Abundance and Silences in Islamic Studies: A Graduate Conference 

Call for Proposals

October 2nd – 3rd 2026

Princeton University

Keynote Speaker: Nancy Khalek, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Professor of History at Brown University 

“In ordinary Arabic, the processes of archivization and memorization share a vocabulary derived from the trilateral root ḥ-f-ẓ, which has the basic meaning of ‘to store, preserve, safeguard.’ To place or enter a document in an archive is terminologically equivalent to memorizing a text.” – Brinkley Messick, Shariʿa Scripts

Three decades after Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever, scholars in the humanities continue to approach archives as a site of possibility. As historian Arlette Farge writes, “The archive’s allure, nonetheless, lives on. The taste for the archives is not a fashion that will go out of style as quickly as it came in.” This conference will examine the enduring significance of archives and archival theory for the study of Islam and Muslim societies. 

Following Alan Mikhail’s provocation to view archives as a place of becoming, how can scholars of Islamic Studies imagine the archive as more than a historical, visual, or textual repository? In what ways can we approach tradition as an archive of knowledge? How do archives reproduce existing power structures and racial epistemologies? How can scholars of religion interrogate and disrupt the limits of the archival record? What are the moral and political imperatives for writing histories of the unlettered? How can we attend to the quotidian and the lived experiences of Muslims in the premodern world and today? 

The Department of Religion at Princeton invites graduate students, as well as emerging and early-career researchers working on Islam and Muslim communities to submit their work. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers that address the theme of the conference from a variety of disciplines and methods such as history, area studies, critical theory, anthropology, diaspora studies, art and archaeology, religious studies, comparative literature, or gender and sexuality studies. 

Participants may consider, but need not limit themselves to, topics such as:

• Confronting the colonial in state archives
• Ethics of recuperating subaltern subjectivity, agency, or voice
• Reception history and materiality of textual traditions
• Archives as constructions of memory and tradition
• The role of the state in knowledge production and regulation
• Archives as projects of canonization
• Photography, epistolary collections, private papers as sites of religious contestation
• Museum and curatorial displays of Islamic art and manuscripts
• The promise and challenge of unconventional archives like oral history projects, digitization efforts, and endangered archives
• Archiving in times of precarity and crisis

Guidelines for Submission

Please submit a 350 - 500 word abstract and title using this form: https://forms.gle/fWHyZ2K3rcfQPxxZA. The deadline for submission is April 6, 2026. Submissions should include your full name, institutional affiliation, if applicable, and contact information. Travel and lodging expenses for participants within the US will be covered. Due to budgetary constraints, we are unfortunately unable to cover travel expenses for international applicants. Please feel free to reach out to princetonrelgradconference@gmail.com with any questions or concerns. Accepted speakers will be notified and final papers will be due before September 10, 2026.