Archive for May 20th, 2021

Sound and Voice in Contemporary Twelver Shi’i Islam

Description: Thursday 27th – Friday 28th May 2021 – 14:00 – 17:00 (GMT+1)
To register and attend please email: s.j.williamsonfa@bham.ac.uk

This international workshop held online brings together new scholarship within anthropology, ethnomusicology and religious studies on sound and voice in Twelver Shi’i Islam.

Despite the growing body of work on sound and Islam, little attention so far has been paid to sound in Shi’i Islam. Within Shi’i communities, the central and shared sounds of the recitation of the Quran and the adhan exist amongst additional forms of vocalised sonic expression. A vast range of supplications, laments and chants of praise and celebratory poetry are central to Shi’i devotion to Ahl al-Bayt, the Family of the Prophet. Within Twelver Shi’ism there is a surprising consistency in content and form of these genres worldwide. Yet, a huge diversity in style correlates with the wide geographic distributions of these communities.

Bringing together ethnographically-grounded contributions from the Middle East and South Asia, this workshop aims to consolidate current research on sound and voice in contemporary Twelver Shi’i Islam. In thinking about the politics and aesthetics of sound in these diverse settings we ask the question, how does Shi’ism sound? What parallels and divergences exist between the way sound is mobilised and engaged with in Shi’ism and in other Islamic pathways? How does sound mediate across social, political and conceptual boundaries- between communal groups in the public sphere, the secular and sacred, ‘this-world’ and the ‘other-worldly’? What are the distinct aesthetic qualities of Shi’i devotion and how do they relate to poetics, theology, politics and society? Approaching the study of Shi’ism from a sonic perspective presents new ways of thinking about key issues such as transnationalism, cultural production and socio-political activism whilst further contributing to wider efforts to understand religion materially and sensorially.

Speakers:
Epsita Halder, Jadavpur University
Nabeel Jafri, University of Toronto
Timothy Cooper, University of Cambridge
Joseph Alagha, Haigazian University
Hamidreza Salehyar, University of Toronto
Maryam Aras, University of Bonn
Stefan Williamson-Fa, University of Birmingham

Organized by: The Alterumma project at the University of Birmingham