How Ideas Win: Formations of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy In Muslim Practice and Thought

[Omer Allahverdi]

*How Ideas Win: Formations of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy In Muslim Practice
and Thought
*
 February 19-20, 2011
FedEx Global Education Center
The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

*“Wherever Muslims have the power to regulate, uphold, require, or adjust

correct practices, and to condemn, exclude, undermine, or replace incorrect
ones, there is the domain of orthodoxy.” --Talal Asad *

*“It is -- to use that word with all its difficulties in an Islamic context

-- the ‘orthodoxy’. But changes in ‘orthodoxy’ have always come about by a
cumulative pressure that continues to build up outside its nucleus, and when
a critical mass is reached the nucleus ‘re-forms’ itself." --Fazlur Rahman*


While scholars positioned both inside and outside the Islamic tradition have
long classified strands of thought and practice within that tradition as
either orthodox or heterodox, many voices in contemporary academia have

instead become interested in understanding the socio-political processes
that go into this labeling. They are considering orthodoxy not in terms of
an essential and unified core, but as an emergent and contested category.

By looking at how this category comes into being and shifts across time and
place, they seek to understand the function of power and agency as key
elements in the formation, evolution, and dissolution of orthodoxies.


The theme of our conference, “How Ideas Win,” is aimed at generating
interdisciplinary discussion around the formation and function of orthodox
and heterodox views and practices across Islamicate history.  Specifically

we are interested in considering how orthodox concepts and practices are
established through exclusive claims to validity and authenticity, and how
these claims are contested and shift over time. We ask the following

questions: How is tradition imagined and invoked in laying claim to
authenticity? How is orthodoxy maintained or transformed through readings of
texts and contexts? How are these debates fashioned by the broader

discursive systems and cultural, economic, and political structures within
which they arise? How does the concept of orthodoxy condition debates over
embodied practice? How is orthodoxy invoked in different contexts by the

same or similar figures? Is heterodoxy a mere byproduct of orthodoxy or is
it self-consciously employed?

We are interested in papers that explore a variety of themes and topics in
the study of Islam and the Islamicate through the lens of emerging

orthodoxies and contested hegemonies. Thus, we encourage papers from a range
of disciplines and interdisciplines (including but not limited to: religious
studies, history, anthropology, sociology, law, political science,

literature, communications, philosophy, and geography) that examine such
questions across historical and contemporary Islamicate contexts.  We are
also interested in reflexive studies on how the contemporary academy has

defined orthodoxy and tradition.
Possible themes for papers include, but are not limited to:

   - Institutions of religious learningThe role of the schools of law and
   dissipating authority
   - Neo-traditionalism in the modern religious imaginary

   - The `ulama’ and competing religious authorities
   - The formation of majority and minority legal views
   - Political Islam and modernist engagements with tradition
   - Conceptions of self and other
   - Muslim resistance to cultural hegemony and globalization

   - Muslim political and cultural hegemonies
   - Colonial encounters and cultural authenticity
   - Muslim minorities’ invocations and appropriations of tradition
   - Normative masculinity and femininity
   - Discursive formations of sex, body, and pleasure

   - Academic orientations in the study of Islam

These are of course broad themes and topics, each of which can and should be
framed in dialogue with the analytic lens suggested above.

As a hallmark of the Duke-UNC Islamic Studies Conference, we will provide

the opportunity for interactive, deliberative, and interdisciplinary
engagement with scholarly work in progress by setting this gathering in an
intimate workshop format. We expect that those invited to present papers

will remain for the duration of the conference in order to engage the other
participants in a true exchange of ideas. Lunch and refreshments will be
provided on both days and a formal dinner will be held on Saturday night.


Limited financial assistance to cover travel expenses may be available to
those who demonstrate financial need and are not receiving funding from
their home institutions.
To apply, please send the following to DukeU...@gmail.com

    * paper title
    * proposal of no more than 500 words
    * CV
    * brief biographical sketch
The deadline for submissions is January 5th, 2011.




---------------------
Atiya Husain

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Sociology PhD Student

--
Ömer Allahverdi

PhD Student at Ankara University, Graduate School of Social Sciences , Department of  Political Science