ASA 2023

At the 66th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco, CA, the IASG sponsored the following panels:

The Aesthetic Strategies of Islam in Africa

Chair: Oludamini Ogunnaike, University of Virginia

Discussant: Oludamini Ogunnaike, University of Virginia

West African Sahelian Muslims’ Artistic Self-Representations: A Response to the Neocolonial Weight (Ousseina Alidou, Rutgers University)
“Chronicle of the Cassava Flour,” a Hausa ajami poem by Shaykh Abubakar Atiƙu (d. 1974): Humorous play, historical chronicle, or Sufi allusion? (Andrea Brigaglia, Università di Napoli L’Orientale)
The So-Called “Tomb” of Askia Muhammad: Pilgrimage, Politics, and Colonial Myth (Mark DeLancey, DePaul University)
The Social Politics of Praise: Taara and Umar Tal in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Djelimory Diabate, Harvard University)

Chair: Zachary Wright, Northwestern University in Qatar

Discussant: Rudolph Ware, University of California Santa Barbara

Islamic Scholarship in Songhay Beyond Timbuktu (Zachary Wright, Northwestern University in Qatar)
Umar Futi Tal’s Kitāb al-Rimāḥ De-Marginalized: Tariqa Formation in 19th Century West Africa (Farah El-Sharif, Stanford University)
Non-Europhone African Philosophy: Sufism, Islamic Philosophy, and Intellectual Sciences (al-‘ulūm al-‘aqliyya) in the Bilād al-Sūdān (Oludamini Ogunnaike, University of Virgina)
Reimagining the Concept of Modernity in the Study of Islam in Africa (Ousman Kobo, Ohio State University)

Chair: David Glovsky, Boston University

Governance in Gwandu: A Fulani hegemony in Sokoto’s western territories, captured in Saʻd ibn ʻAbd al-Raḥmān’s Tartīb al-aṣḥāb (Ali Diakite and Paul Naylor, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, St. John’s University)
From Conflict Ecology to Disease Environments: Coastal Erosion, Refugees, and Injustice in Colonial Coastal Cities along the Gambia River, 1850- 1880 (Abdoulie Jabang, Department of History, Michigan State University)
Acceptable Alliances: Muwālā and Military Cooperation with ‘non-Muslims’ in the Nineteenth Century Sahel (Joseph Bradshaw, Department of History, Philosophy and Anthropology, Augusta University)

Chair: Emily Jenan Riley, El Colegio de México

The Female Economy in Fatou Diome’s Celles qui attendent and Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre (Elizabeth Woods, Boston University)
Re-considering the Pulaar’s philosophy of “Joom suudu”: From folktales to women’s assessment (Sira Sow, Université Gaston Berger)
Discourses of Wifing (Marame Gueye, East Carolina University)
Who Owes Who What?: Indigenous Ideas About Gender and Marital Rights in Senegal (Emily Jenan Riley, El Colegio de México)

Chair: Oludamini Ogunnaike, University of Virginia

Discussants: Joseph Hill, University of Alberta and Ousmane Kane, Harvard University

The poetics of prophetic praise: Shaykh Muhammad b. Jaʿfar al-Kattānī’s multifaceted mawlid (Armaan Siddiqui, Harvard University)
The Madīḥ of Muḥammad al-Mishrī, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s “Second Existence” (Adnan Adrian Wood-Smith, Harvard University)
As the Gentle Rain from Heaven: The Effective Power of Language in the West African Sufi Poem Xarnu Bi (Nicholas Judt, Harvard University)
Linguistic Localization of Sufi Poetry in Northern Nigeria: A Synopsis of Composition and Performance from the 20th century (Umar Sheikh Tahir, Columbia University)

Chair: Ismael Montana, Northern Illinois University

Discussant: Bruce Hall, UC Berkeley

Enslavement and Maroonage in Morocco (Chouki El Hamel, Arizona State University)
Bordering Blackness: the Haratin in the Moroccan Colonial Archive (Moyagaye Bedward, Rutgers University-New Brunswick)
Migrant Women and the Stigmatization of Blackness in Morocco (Maha Marouan, Penn State University)

Chair: Khaled Esseissah, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discussant: Ismael Montana, Northern Illinois University

Challenges to Afro-Arab Social Inclusion in Northwest Africa (Stephen King, Georgetown University)
Sites of Servitude: Transregional Slave Trades, Difference, and Belonging in Tunis (1736-1895) (Catherine F. Boyle, Harvard University)
Ana Hartānī māni Bārānī (I am a Hartānī, not a stranger): Harāṭīn Youth, Music, Social Activism, Citizenship in Post-Slavery Mauritania (Khaled Esseissah, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Chair: Ismael Montana, Northern Illinois University

Discussant: Chouki El Hamel, Arizona State University

Aftermath of Slavery in Morocco?: A Consideration *Madia Thompson, Independent Scholar)
The Old Arguments Anew: Proslavery Thought, Concubinage and the Illusion of Abolition in Nigeria (Abdulbasit Kassim, Rice University)
Abolition of Slavery between the French Revolution and the Algerian Revolution: From Slaves to Subjects to Citizens (Yacine Daddi-Addoun, Emory University)

Chair: Zachary Wright, Northwestern University in Qatar

Discussant: Zachary Wright, Northwestern University in Qatar

Colonial Encounter and the Triadic Response of the Ulama to the Challenge of Western Education in Ilorin (Aliyu Sakariyau Alabi, Bayero University)
Evolving Swahili Islamic Marital Advice (1932-2020) (Katrina Thompson, University of Wisconsin)
Gendered Praxis of Da’wa: Ethiopian Muslim Revivalist Women’s Vision of Da’wa for Social Change through Economic Empowerment and Self-Development Skill Trainings (Yekatit G. Tsehayu, University of Florida)
Questioning Sainthood in Contemporary Senegal (Macodou Fall, University of Florida)