EVENTS

Ethnography of Book Collections in the Islamicate World

Researchers habitually employ in their work the ‘archives’ of Muslims, be that the private or state collections. Often scholars focus on the concrete sources and do not ask questions about the archival ecology that enables the circulation and preservation of sources. Our seminar places the archival collections in the Islamicate world at the centre of inquiry. We are interested in the provenance research, the organizational forms of archives, the significance of the colonial pasts for the history of book collections as well as the impact of the archival structures on scholarly practices, representation of sources and their marginalization. Our seminar builds on the decolonial thread in rethinking the modern forms of knowledge production in museums, archives, and universities and attempts to reconsider the role of archives in the Islamicate world. Special attention will be paid to individual experiences of the archive builders, their curators and researchers – this is why we speak of the ethnography of book collections.

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The MIND project is hosting an international conference

The Muslim Self: A Transregional History is an international workshop at the University of Amsterdam, December 1-3, 2022
Convenors: Alfrid Bustanov, Roy Bar Sadeh, Galiia Muratova

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The Summer School ‘Islam in Russia V: Muslim Subjectivity in the City’

Our project prioritizes the valorization of academic knowledge and the development of international scholarly networks among the young researchers. From 15th to 22nd of August 2021, the Fifth Summer School ‘Islam in Russia: Muslim Subjectivity in the City’ took place in Kazan.

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On Muslim Subjectivity in Russia: The Hybrid Languages of Self-Description

The goal is to test the limits of existing approaches in autobiographical studies and apply them to the study of Muslim subjectivities in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The workshop unites an international group of young researchers working in the framework of the ERC project “The Muslim Individual in Imperial and Soviet Russia.” This one-day workshop will comprise of one guest-lecture and a series of in-depth discussions of papers prepared and circulated in advance. A guest-lecture by a leading theorist in the studies of life writing will help the workshop participants to situate their case studies in the broader methodological context and relate them directly to existing scholarly debates.

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