RELS1911: Islam in America: A History of the Present

From the ?Age of Discovery,? the transatlantic slave trade, and early American debates on religious freedom, to Black power movements, the War on Terror, and the ?Muslim ban,? Islam has long played an instrumental role in shaping the American landscape. In this freshman seminar, students will examine the long history and contemporary formation of Islam as a religious, racial, and political discourse in America. Together, we will approach this history in the plural, as histories of Islam in America, paying particular attention to the different local and global historical processes that led to the enslaved and voluntary migrations and conversions of a range of racially, ethnically, and class variegated Muslim communities. We will collectively consider the implications of the history of Islam in shaping legal and political discourses of race, religion, and ethnicity in the United States. Importantly, we will ask why Islam and Muslim communities have often featured as a source of anxiety in this history, construed as a challenge and a ?problem? for American society historically and today. Against what narrative of history, and what conception of Americanness, do Islam and Muslim identity emerge as a problem in need of redress? This course is taught by Aisha Ghani from the Department of Anthropology. Aisha Ghani's interests are in the anthropology of religion, political theology, and philosophies of violence. Her work traces the relationship between Islam and secularism historically, theologically, and ethnographically. Her first book project, Violent Returns, is an ethnography of Islam through the lens of "terrorism" and her second book project, Violence as Difference: Genealogical Theologies of Violence in Islam, combines historical, exegetical, and comparative religion and philosophies approaches in order to theorize Islamic difference through violence.

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