Shii News – CfP: Panel for 2025 International Association for the History of Religions World Congress (Kraków)

Call for Papers: Mapping Methods and Theories in Shiʿi Studies, Open Panel at the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) World Congress, Kraków 2025
Convenors: Mohammad Nabeel Jafri (University of Toronto), Candace Mixon (Reed College)
Abstract: The trajectory of scholarship on Shiʿism is marked by two overarching influences. First, as the early Orientalists pored over and translated myriad Arabic and Persian texts in the 19th and 20th centuries, they accepted the normative claims offered by their objects of study as fact, relegating Shiʿism outside the purview of Islam. Second, nascent attempts at a systematic study of Shiʿa traditions can be dated to the 1970’s, where much of the scholarship produced was inspired by the then current political and social contexts of Iran. Today, the dual legacies of focusing on Sunni texts and Shiʿi politics can often be arthritic, foreclosing potential and productive avenues of inquiry. Under the Congress subtheme of Mapping, we invite analyses of recent trends in the field that challenge simple binaries of Sunni/Shiʿa, Arabic/Persian, and texts/practices, opting to consider their crossways and varied intersections. We welcome papers whose archives include languages and geographies underrepresented in the field, and whose methods are sensitive to the interplay of texts, practices, and materials in Shiʿi devotion. We especially encourage papers to think through not just the limitations of the oeuvre of Orientalist textual-philological works, but also possible and potential benefits that such scholarship enables, particularly since many of the Shiʿa devotees inhabit worlds as logocentric as the ones portrayed by early European scholars.
Submission: As per the IAHR website (https://iahr2025.org/call-for-panels-papers/open-panels/), interested participants can apply directly to the conference, and choose the panel’s number (30) and title (Mapping Methods and Theories in Shiʿi Studies) in the submission system.
Deadline: The IAHR deadline for individual papers is Dec 1, 2024.
Evaluation of papers: The acceptance works at two levels. First, the IAHR congress committee accepts papers from within the submissions they’ve received. The accepted papers are then forwarded to the panel conveners who finalize the panel. Papers accepted by the IAHR committee but not by the panel conveners are still presentable at the IAHR meeting as individual papers.
For any questions, please feel free to email Mohammad Nabeel Jafri at nabeel.jafri@mail.utoronto.ca

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Posted in: Field-specific (academic)