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Topic

Historical Formations of Religion and Democracy

Description

The applicability, utility, and definitions of modern, European categories of “religion” and “democracy” on the African continent have been hotly contested and debated for centuries. In this session, panelists will trace the historical formations of these categories and their relationship to each other across different domains in various African societies and polities, providing foundational context for the rest of the conversations and presentations of the conference, Religion and Democracy on the African Continent: Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Possibilities.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Virginia Democracy Initiative's Religion, Race & Democracy Lab, the Page-Barbour Funds, the Institute of the Humanities & Global Culture, the Carter G. Woodson Institute, and the Virginia Center for the Study of Religion.

Time

May 7, 2022 11:30 AM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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Message preview	Hi there, You are invited to a Zoom webinar. When: May 7, 2022 11:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Topic: Historical Formations of Religion and Democracy Register in advance for this webinar: https://virginia.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bh4XC64KTLuJAXCwFJ3kvg Or an H.323/SIP room system: H.323: 162.255.37.11 (US West) 162.255.36.11 (US East) 221.122.88.195 (China) 115.114.131.7 (India Mumbai) 115.114.115.7 (India Hyderabad) 213.19.144.110 (Amsterdam Netherlands) 213.244.140.110 (Germany) 103.122.166.55 (Australia Sydney) 103.122.167.55 (Australia Melbourne) 209.9.211.110 (Hong Kong SAR) 64.211.144.160 (Brazil) 69.174.57.160 (Canada Toronto) 65.39.152.160 (Canada Vancouver) 207.226.132.110 (Japan Tokyo) 149.137.24.110 (Japan Osaka) Meeting ID: 956 7940 6406 SIP: 95679406406@zoomcrc.com After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. ---------- Webinar Speakers Rabiat Akande (Assistant Professor of Law @Osgoode Hall Law School, York University) Rabiat Akande works in the fields of legal history, law and religion, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, Islamic law, International law, and (post)colonial African law and society. Her current research explores struggles over religion-state relations in comparative contexts and illuminates law’s centrality to one of modernity’s most contested issues–the relationship between religion, and the state, and society–while also interrogating law’s complex relationship with power, political theology, identity, and socio-political change. These issues are at the forefront of her book project, Constitutional Entanglements: Empire, Law and Religion in Colonial Northern Nigeria (under contract with Cambridge University Press), which traces the emergence of “secularism” as a constitutional idea of ordering religion-state relations in early to mid-twentieth century British Colonial Northern Nigeria, and grapples with the postcolonial legacy of that inheritance. Abdulbasit Kassim (PhD Candidate, Religion @Rice University) Abdulbasit Kassim is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Religion at Rice University and a Visiting Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Islamic Thought in Africa at Northwestern University. He received his M.A. in Politics and International Relations from Keele University and his B.Sc. in International Studies from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. His primary field of research is Islam and Africana Studies, with particular interests in African intellectual and religious history, history of classical and modern Islamic thought, slavery and race in Africa and the African diaspora, African and African diaspora religions, Arabic-Ajami codicology and textual anthropology, Africology and postcolonial studies, gender and sexuality in African Muslim societies, and religion in international relations. Ebenezer Obadare (Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies @Council on Foreign Relations) Ebenezer Obadare is Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Before joining CFR, he was professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He is also a senior fellow at the New York University School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs, as well as a fellow at the University of South Africa’s Institute of Theology. Obadare was Ralf Dahrendorf Scholar and Ford Foundation International Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he completed his PhD in social policy in 2005. He holds a BA in history and an MSc in international relations from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His forthcoming book, from the University of Notre Dame Press, is titled Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria. He is the editor of Journal of Modern African Studies and contributing editor of Current History. Zekeria Ahmed Salem (Associate Professor, Political Science @Northwestern University) Zekeria Ahmed Salem is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and Director of the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa. Salem studies religion and politics with a special focus on Islam and Muslim politics in Africa in comparative perspective. Empirically focused on Mauritania, a country straddling the Arab world and Sub-Saharan Africa, Salem’s research explores in particular the interplay between inequality, Islamic knowledge and power. A first monograph explores this theme through an examination of two parallel post-colonial developments: the push against the traditional forms of inequality such as slavery and social hierarchies on the one hand and the Islamization of the Mauritanian public and political life on the other. Alexander Thurston (Assistant Professor, Political Science @University of Cincinati) Alexander Thurston is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinati, where he works on Islam and politics in northwest Africa, with a focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He has conducted field research in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso, and he has authored several books, including Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement (Princeton University Press, 2018), and Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Robert Trent Vinson (Director & Chair @Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies) Robert Trent Vinson is Director & Chair of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American & African Studies at the University of Virginia and a Research Associate at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He is a scholar and teacher of 19th and 20th century African & African Diaspora history, specializing in the transnational connections between southern Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean. His first book was The Americans Are Coming!: Dreams of ’American Negro Liberation’ in Segregationist South Africa (2012) and his second book was Albert Luthuli: Mandela before Mandela (2018). Vinson currently serves as President of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), the world’s premier professional organization of African and African Diaspora scholars.

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