Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Engseng Ho, Duke University

PROGRAMME

ABSTRACT

The Arabia Asia Transregional Studies Roundtable Series, organized by the Muhammad Alagil Distinguished Chair in Arabia Asia Studies, meets to discuss challenges and solutions in research and publishing on all aspects of Arabia Asia relations. While the potentially large spatial and temporal dimensions of such relations pose challenges in framing research and narrating findings, we now have a number of methodologically innovative books and projects creatively building this field with all manner of empirical materials. And there is more to be done!

The third roundtable will focus on the book, Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Taps and Guns in Islamic Malaya, by Teren Sevea. His ground-breaking study unravels the significance of Islamic miracle workers (pawangs) in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Malay world, locating them in the spiritual economy of the Indian Ocean. Examining the connections between miracles and material life, Sevea explains how the production and extraction of natural resources, as well as the uses of technologies, were intertwined with the knowledge of charismatic religious figures.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Chiara Formichi is the H. Stanley Krusen Professor of World Religions and Director of the Religious Studies Program at Cornell University. She specializes on Islam in Southeast Asia. Her research and publications focus on the intersection of religion and politics in colonial and postcolonial Southeast Asia, and on the relationship between Islamic Studies and Asian Studies. She has published two single-authored books, edited five volumes or special issues, and over 20 journal articles and book chapters. Chiara’s latest publication is Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge, 2020), and the monograph Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia is under contract with Stanford University Press.

Erin Pettigrew is Associate Professor of History and Arab Crossroads Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is a historian of Africa specializing in West African colonial and postcolonial history with a focus on Muslim societies. Her research has focused on the cultural history of Islam, slavery, race, gender, and nation in what is today primarily the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. She is the author of Invoking the Invisible in the Sahara: Islam, Spiritual Mediation, and Social Change (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Iza Hussin is Associate Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Mohamed Noah Fellow at Pembroke College Cambridge. She works at the intersection of comparative politics, Islam and Muslim politics, and law and society. She is the author of The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority and the Making of the Muslim State.

Shahzad Bashir is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities and Professor of History and Religious Studies at Brown University. His most recent book is A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press, 2022), a digital publication whose interface performs its argument. He has earlier worked on an array of topics pertaining to Iranian and South Asian worlds.

Verena Meyer is Assistant Professor of Islam in South and Southeast Asia at Leiden University. Before coming to Leiden, she received her PhD at Columbia University’s Department of Religion and held a postdoctoral fellowship in Norway. Trained in Islamic Studies and specialized in Islam in the Malay-Indonesian world, she draws on ethnographic field research, training in contemporary critical theory, and literary studies in Javanese, Malay, and Arabic to investigate questions of Islamic identity, the role of memory and the formation of heritage, and the transmission of knowledge across time and space. Her articles have been published in journals including Indonesia and the Malay World, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Philological Encounters, and Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde.

Teren Sevea is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya, that won the 2022 Association for Asian Studies’ Harry J. Benda Prize. He has also co-edited Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia and is currently completing a forthcoming book entitled Singapore Islam: The Prophet’s Port and Sufism across the Oceans.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this online talk have been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to ziqi@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the event.