Islam and the Humanities 2018: Day 1 - Panel 4

Islam and the Humanities 2018 – Assessing the Islamic Past: Historical and Philosophical Intervention April 20th, Panel 4 (3:45-5:15 p.m.) Respondent: Constantin Fasolt, University of Chicago Nils Riecken, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin “On Tragic Temporality: Abdallah Laroui’s Reading of Tradition” Rian Thum, Loyola University, New Orleans “What is Islamic History and is it Worth Talking About?” Dinner with participants and colleagues and students from Brown (7:30) This conference is dedicated to exploring epistemological issues pertaining to how we read sources for the Islamic past and construct scholarly narratives about them. Presenters will engage a wide variety of materials, time periods, and geographical locations with the aim of constructing a common conversation on the topic. The panels are moderated by colleagues with expertise beyond Islamic materials, in order to highlight the significance of conceptual matters. The conference is cosponsored by Islam and the Humanities Research Initiative, Cogut Institute for the Humanities, and the departments of History and Religious Studies at Brown. We are especially pleased that the conference is also cosponsored by the international journal History and Theory with plans to create a special issue based on conference presentations.