CIS Public Talks – Alice Wilson on ‘ Defeated Revolutionaries, Lasting Legacies: the social afterlives of revolution in Dhufar, Oman‘ The Visual Culture Seminar Series – on ‘ New York, Lahore: In Dialogue with Shahzia Sikander and Salman Toor.‘ CIS Public Talks – Prof. Michael Cooperson on “ They cannot be imitated in English”: translating the Arabic Impostures of al-Hariri (d. 1122)’‘

Paul Keeler and Yusuf Chaudury discuss the problems in presenting the theory and some solutions to the issues Elizabeth Urban is an Associate Professor of History at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where she specializes in the first two centuries of Islamic history (7th–8th centuries CE). Her talk draws upon her award-winning first book, Conquered Populations in Early Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) , which explores how new Muslims of slave origins entered early Islamic society and articulated their identities within it. Dr. Urban’s work brings together three groups—freedmen, enslaved women, and the children of enslaved mothers—to explore how Islam transformed from a small piety movement into the doctrine of an expansive empire. Throughout the talk, she will highlight the important role that enslaved and freed persons played in shaping the meaning of foundational terms such as Arab and Muslim.

Opening Session: Student Experiences on Being Muslim in the Modern University Speaker: Taskeen Adam, PhD candidate at the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge. She is pursuing research on the role of Massive Open Online Courses in supporting the marginalised in South Africa. Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Professor of Politics, Provost and Acting President of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. El-Affendi has served as the Head of the Politics and IR Program at the Institute (2015-2017), and was founder and Coordinator of the Democracy and Islam Program at the University of Westminster (since 1998). He is also head of Promotion Committee and the Institute. El-Affendi also served as a diplomat in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry (1990-1997), London-based journalist, including editor or managing editor of several publications (1982-1990). CIS-DHF Malabar series– Katherine Kasdorf on ‘ Monumental Jinas and Networks of Prestige: Jain Temples of the Hoysala Capital’ Deepthi is a Research Assistant Professor researching the Art History of South Asia at George Mason University. Her research centers on transcultural art objects, encounters, and artistic practices in littoral South India in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this talk she focuses on the elaborately carved chests and bedsteads that bridged the cultures on either side of the Indian ocean.

Lastly we look at Art. Kepler focuses on the effects on Architecture mostly and how the buildings of today seem almost otherworldly when compared to the classical, undoubtedly beautiful architecture from the past. It’s not uncommon today for people to wonder in stunned disbelief as to why an Architect designed a modern building in a certain way, yet this isn’t the necessarily the case for traditional wonders and purposeful architecture. Again, Keeler argues, the reason for this drastic change is the focus of the gaze from the spiritual to the worldly. William Dalrymple (a Scottish travel writer and historian, whose work centres chiefly on the Indian subcontinent) in conversation with George Michell (who has researched and written on Early Chalukya temple architecture, surveys of town planning and Islamic buildings, studies of Hindu temple architecture and sculptureand in the 1980s and 1990s he co-directed an extensive survey of Hampi-Vijayanagara). Another interesting change of perspective is that of the ‘Islamic Golden Age’ that so many apologists refer to and have internalised. By this phrase, we paint a picture of the apex of Islamic Civilisation where the sciences progressed beyond any contemporaries and ancient knowledge was passed on to Christian Europe, sparking their own rebirth from their Dark Ages. However, this narrative has its own issues. It implies that the only ultimate use of Islam in hindsight was to provide sleeping Europe with the tools for them to wake up and lead the world. This again is due to the fact that our view of a positive society is based on the notion of scientific progress, but as Keeler has already taught us, If we shift our perspective to one where the Balance of things is maintained and not so much the scientific progress, then we start to see things with a lot more context. This also explains why so many today feel like the world is getting more dangerous and generally unstable despite the fact that we are at our technological peak.

Subhashini Kaligotla is Assistant Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Yale University. Her area of expertise is early medieval Deccan India, 500 – 800 CE, with specific research interests in the multisensorial experience of sacred architecture, the agency of makers and images, the intersections between visual and textual representation, landscape history and culture, and the historiography of South Asian art history.

Conference – Arafat Razzaque, in collaboration with CRASSH, convened ‘ Fostering Ethics: Islam, Adoption and the Care of Children‘ The aim of this paper is to locate critique at the intersections of the genealogy of knowledge in anthropological thinking and the decolonizing movement. The paper approaches the decolonizing movement as one of the most crucial points in anthropological thinking, as long as it can go beyond filling the gaps in genealogies by engaging with non-Eurocentric scholarship and, additionally, by carrying the critical angles to the ways it engages with those non-Eurocentric scholarships. From Konkan to Coromandel – Mr Arthur Millner on “ A Cosmopolitan yet Local Tradition: Glazed Tiles in the Deccani Sultanates‘‘ Recent developments in Arabic writing have defied convention, from online youth political activism, to social media and even print publishing. Dr. Khalil explores these developments and re-imagines the Arabic language of the digital age. CIS-DHF Malabar series– Mohit Manohar on ‘ “A Victory Tower Built by a Slave”: The Chand Minar at Daulatabad‘All nations are now judged according to their scientific progress, technological development and economic growth. And yet, humanity is now experiencing multiple crises that are threatening our very existence. Population explosion, financial, social and political instability, the alarming growth of mental illness, the threat of nuclear annihilation and climate change all loom over humanity like a dark cloud. Simultaneously, the world is witnessing a dangerous escalation in the polarisation between Islam and the West. A multi-media dramatic presentation that will challenge your perceptions and transform your understanding of Islam and the West. CIS Public Talks – Heba Morayef on ‘ Struggles for Justice in the Aftermath of the Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt‘: