Call for Papers: Sufi Arts, Rituals, and Performance in Africa,
02/07
Sufi Arts, Rituals, and Performance in Africa
Conference: Thursday February 22nd to Sunday February 25th, 2007
Kansas University, Lawrence, Kansas
The seemingly insurmountable political conflict between
fundamentalist Islam and the West at the beginning of
the twenty-first century has cast a shadow over the
relationship between peoples, whose religions share
common roots, whose values bespeak the same humanity,
and whose artistic expressions are built on similar
aesthetic foundations. Through exploration of the
cultural dimension of Sufism in Africa, this conference
seeks to create a deeper understanding of the religion
and perhaps to inspire consideration of Islam as
something other than an opposing world view.
Popular Islam in Africa is deeply connected with Sufism
in its various forms. Political Islam and its
intertwinement with Nationalism in contemporary Africa
have obscured the deep roots of Sufi Islam. Sufi
brotherhoods have played major roles in African
societies historically, in anti-colonial movements,
social welfare, and cultural practices. Sufi saints and
marabouts have been important lodestars and moral
compasses for millions of Muslims from Morocco to
Egypt, to the Swahili coast, and back west to Senegal.
In much of Africa, Sufism is a way of life. As such, it
encompasses diverse, rich wells of artistic traditions:
visual art practices that include human representation,
ritual performance, dance, music, poetry, and
literature. Scholarship on Sufism has generally
neglected these myriad artistic dimensions, which our
conference seeks to highlight. The conference will
occur in conjunction with the opening of the traveling
exhibition, "A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban
Senegal," at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of
Kansas in Lawrence, KS.
We solicit papers and panel proposals that address Sufi
arts and ritual performances in Africa including - but
not limited to - the following themes: visual culture,
ritual performance, dance, music, drumming, poetry,
architecture and urban design, political arts and
performance, or gender in Sufi performance.
Please send your contact information and an abstract of
250 words by email to Dr. Gitti Salami
(gsalami@ku.edu), by Friday, December 1, 2006
Page Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar, Ph.D.