Description:

This international symposium will bring scholars of Islam, international and public affairs, education, race, and law together with practicing journalists and attorneys for a sustained reflection on the conventions and tropes that pervade contemporary public discourse on religion, with focused attention to coverage of Islam and Muslims in the United States and abroad.

In particular, we aim to foster a critical conversation about Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiatives, ‘radicalization,’ and journalistic coverage and scholarly debate on so-called religious violence.

We will explore methods and strategies of writing and reporting on these issues that de-center religion as an explanatory framework. Our intention is to cultivate and to publicize modes of public discourse that do not re-inscribe the very tropes that are in most need of critique.

This symposium is part of the Talking ‘Religion’: Publics, Politics and the Media project, made possible by the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs and the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. Talking ‘Religion’ provides scholars of religion and politics with new avenues for publicizing their work, and journalists with new ways of understanding and conceptualizing religion in their reporting.

Program

Thursday, April 25

9:00am-9:30am – Coffee and pastries

9:30am-9:45am – Welcome and Introductory remarks
Brannon Ingram and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

9:45am-11:00am – Thursday Keynote: “Covering Islam in America: Dynamics of Racialization and Demonization”
Leila Fadel, NPR

11:15am-12:30pm – PANEL I: Beyond the Politics of Recognition: Reporting on American Muslims
Chair: Emrah Yildiz; Discussants: Suad Joseph, Asraa Mustufa, Monique Parsons, Layla Quran, Ariel Schwartz

12:30pm-1:30pm – Lunch (Evans Center)
Student reporters Hannah Brown and Caity Henderson present their work for “Reporting Islam” course (Fall 2018)

1:30pm-2:45pm – PANEL II: Islamophilia and Islamophobia in the US and Beyond
Chair: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd; Discussants: Caleb Elfenbein, Brannon Ingram, Amber Khan, Zekeria Ahmed Salem, Noah Salomon

3:00pm-4:15pm – PANEL III: Covering and Countering ‘CVE’: Challenges and Strategies
Chair: Wendell Marsh; Discussants: Sahar Aziz, Anver Emon, Aysha Khan, Nicole Nguyen, Alex Ruppenthal

3:45pm-4:00pm – Open discussion

4:00pm-5:00pm – Reception (Evans Center)

Friday, April 26

9:00am-9:30am – Coffee and pastries

9:30am-10:45am – Friday Keynote: “Buried Faultlines: Suppressed Muslim Narratives and their Excavation”
Ramzi Kassem, CUNY School of Law

11:00am-12:15pm – PANEL IV: Race, Immigration, Islam and (White) Power
Chair: Brannon Ingram; Discussants: Louise Cainkar, Megan Goodwin, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Ahmed Ibrahim, Nadine Naber, Darryl Li

12:15pm-12:45pm – Concluding roundtable
Moderated by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Brannon Ingram

The organizers would like to thank the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs and Northwestern Buffett for supporting this symposium, and Northwestern's Program in Middle East and North African Studies for co-sponsoring. A special thanks to Toby Volkman of the Luce Foundation, and John Paul Christy and Valerie Popp of ACLS. We also thank Gina Giliberti for her contributions to the Global Politics & Religion research group and Mara Kelly for her assistance on the “Talking Religion” project.

For more information, see https://sites.northwestern.edu/reportingislam/