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December 11, 2007
The 3rd Muslim Studies Conference: Michigan State University
Conference Title: “Muslims, Race and the Public Sphere”
Conference Dates: April 3-5, 2008
Abstract Submission Deadline: December 15, 2007
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@msu.edu
Posted by fisherhe at December 11, 2007 03:14 PM