The theme of our conference, “How Ideas Win,” is aimed at generating interdisciplinary discussion around the formation and function of orthodox and heterodox views and practices across Islamicate history. Specifically we are interested in considering how orthodox concepts and practices are established through exclusive claims to validity and authenticity, and how these claims are contested and shift over time. We ask the following questions: How is tradition imagined and invoked in laying claim to authenticity? How is orthodoxy maintained or transformed through readings of texts and contexts? How are these debates fashioned by the broader discursive systems and cultural, economic, and political structures within which they arise? How does the concept of orthodoxy condition debates over embodied practice? How is orthodoxy invoked in different contexts by the same or similar figures? Is heterodoxy a mere byproduct of orthodoxy or is it self-consciously employed?

We are interested in papers that explore a variety of themes and topics in the study of Islam and the Islamicate through the lens of emerging orthodoxies and contested hegemonies. Thus, we encourage papers from a range of disciplines and interdisciplines (including but not limited to: religious studies, history, anthropology, sociology, law, political science, literature, communications, philosophy, and geography) that examine such questions across historical and contemporary Islamicate contexts. We are also interested in reflexive studies on how the contemporary academy has defined orthodoxy and tradition.

Possible themes for papers include, but are not limited to: • Institutions of religious learning
• The role of the schools of law and dissipating authority
• Neo-traditionalism in the modern religious imaginary
• The `ulama’ and competing religious authorities
• The formation of majority and minority legal views
• Political Islam and modernist engagements with tradition
• Conceptions of self and other
• Muslim resistance to cultural hegemony and globalization
• Muslim political and cultural hegemonies
• Colonial encounters and cultural authenticity
• Muslim minorities’ invocations and appropriations of tradition
• Normative masculinity and femininity
• Discursive formations of sex, body, and pleasure
• Academic orientations in the study of Islam

To apply, please send the following to DukeUNCconf@gmail.com
* paper title
* proposal of no more than 500 words
* CV
* brief biographical sketch

The deadline for submissions is January 5th, 2011.