The Fifth Annual Duke-UNC Graduate Islamic Studies Conference

Abstract

The annual Duke-University of North Carolina (UNC) Graduate Islamic Studies Conference for 2008, “Practice and Embodiment in Islam,” sought to provide an interlocutory space for engaging the somewhat nascent turn to the body. Held on 5-6 April 2008, this event focused on the theme of practice and embodiment in Islamicate texts and contexts. Of late, the theorization of the body has been a sustained topic of research in the humanities and the social sciences. In his opening remarks, Omid Safi (UNC-Chapel Hill) highlighted the significance of inculcating a “culture of generosity,” since academic circles can often generate feelings of estrangement. “The real challenge for us,” he emphasized, “is to step out of the comfort zones of our community.” Safi then introduced the keynote speaker: Shahzad Bashir (Stanford University). Bashir’s tour de force of fourteenth-fifteenth century Persianate hagiography revealed how the body, as an analytic category and interpretive lens, enables quite sophisticated and unprecedented readings and insights into Sufi hagiographies of this period.After claiming that such texts describe the outward appearance and movements of Sufi shaykhs’ bodies in great detail, he suggested the accompanying miracle stories were usually, if not always, invoked to preserve, heal, feed, or discipline the bodies of others, particularly those on the Sufi path. Bashir said that a majority of the miracles thus had to do with corporeal integrity and continuity. While historians usually see the preponderance of such miracles in hagiographies as unhelpful sources, Bashir argued that these texts constitute an argument for sainthood and that careful analysis of the patterns found therein represent one of our best windows into classical Sufism’s socio-intellectual world ...