Reading Group

Reading Group

The Reading Group in Islamic Studies is a graduate-student-led reading group that explores a different theme pertaining to Islamic studies each semester. 

The Spring 2025 theme is The Indian Ocean World and the Islamicate World.

The Spring 2025 reading group will trace the origins and development of these two conceptual frames in parallel and interrogate their utility for thinking through themes like migration and exchange, labor (both free and unfree), and revolt and revolution. The group will be led by Jakob Myers, PhD student in History.

We welcome graduate students and faculty from all disciplines and departments who wish to engage in a cross-disciplinary conversation about Islamic Studies. No prior knowledge or expertise in either Indian Ocean or Islamic studies is necessary.

Readings and meeting reminders will be distributed via the group's listserv in advance of each session.

Sign up for the listserv

The group will meet on select Wednesdays from 3:30-5pm in GA 3015. 

  1. Chaudhuri, K.N. “The Unity and Disunity of Indian Ocean History from the Rise of Islam to 1750: The Outline of a Theory and Historical Discourse.” Journal of World History 4, no. 1 (1993): 1–21. 

  2. Hodgson, Marshall. “General Prologue.” In The Venture of Islam, Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam, 120–63. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. 

1. Fauvelle, Francois-Xavier. The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021, Chs. 15, 19, 21, 22, 34.

2. Bang, Anne. “Cosmolitanism Colonised? Three Cases from Zanzibar, 1890-1920.” In Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean, edited by Edward Simpson and Kai Kresse, 167–88. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. 

3. Ho, Engseng. The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, Chs. 1, 4, Part II Conclusion.

 

Optional:

Green, Nile. “Saints, Rebels, and Booksellers: Sufis in the Cosmopolitan Western Indian Ocean, c. 1780-1920.” In Struggling with History: Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean, edited by Kai Kresse and Edward Simpson, 125–66. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

1. Freamon, Bernard. “A Taxonomy of Slavery and Slave Trading in Muslim Cultures.” In Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures, 284–305. Leiden: Brill, 2019.

2. Khalili, Laleh. “Landside Labour.” In Sinews of War and Trade, 189–225. New York: Verso, 2020.

3. ———. “Shipboard Work.” In Sinews of War and Trade, 226–48. New York: Verso, 2020.

Optional:

Matthew S. Hopper, “Cyclones, Drought, and Slavery: Environment and Enslavement in the Western Indian Ocean, 1870s to 1920s,” in G. Bankoff & J. Christensen (eds.), Natural Hazards and Peoples in the Indian Ocean World.

Required:

  1. Takriti, Abdel Razzaq. Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965-1976. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Introduction, Chs. 2 and 4, (pp. 1-9, 25-48, and 84-106).

And choose one or two additional readings from the following list:

 

  1. Keshavarzian, Anang. Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Ch. 6 (pp. 228-270)
  2. Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham. “The Nahda, the Press, and the Construction and Dissemination of a Radical Worldview.” In The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914, 35–59. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020. 

  3. Popovic, Alexandre. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1999. Chs. 1 and 5 (pp. 9-33, 129-143).

  4. Wilson, Amrit. The Threat of Liberation: Imperialism and Revolution in Zanzibar. Pluto Press, 2013. Chs. 2-3 (pp. 11-46).

Required: 

1. Wright, Andrea. “From Slaves to Contract Workers: Genealogies of Consent and Security in Indian Labor Migration.” Journal of World History 32, no. 1 (2021): 29–43.

Optional: 

1. Ghosh, Amitav. In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler’s Tale. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Recommended Chapters: "Mangalore" and "Going Back" (pp. 239-342).

2. Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Afterlives. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Recommended chapter: Part One (pp. 8-58).

Apply to lead a reading group

Once each year, the Islamic Studies Program will solicit proposals from graduate students for a reading group theme. We are particularly interested in proposals that concern contemporary approaches and methodologies in the study of Islam that can attract graduate students and faculty from a variety of disciplines, backgrounds, and departments. 

The student whose proposal is selected will have the opportunity to design the overall concept, trajectory, and scope of the reading group and to lead each session. The selected applicant will also receive a $500 Islamic Studies Fellowship.

To be notified about our next call, please sign up for our listserv.

Submission requirements:

  1. A theme for the reading group
  2. A description (max 1000 words) of the topics to be explored in four or five sessions (no longer than an hour and a half each).
  3. Bibliographic entries of texts for inclusion. This list need not be complete or final, but all readings should be accessible in English.
  4. Name, department, and email address of the faculty advisor. 

Eligibility:

Applicants must be a PhD student in good standing in any department at IU Bloomington whose work engages Islamic studies, broadly conceived, and must be in residence in Bloomington for the duration of the reading group.

Deadline: Applications for Spring 2025 are now closed.