Hamdia Traoré’s “Des marabouts de Djenné” and Muslim Portraiture in Mali presents rare insight into the Qur’anic schools of Mali, and their esteemed teachers. In this public program presented in dialogue with the exhibition, Northwestern faculty Usman Hamid, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Shira Schwartz, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, and Sean Hanretta, Associate Professor of History, reflect on the role of the body, material objects, and social relationships in the transmission of religious knowledge, with particular attention to West African Islam and Sufi traditions. Co-presented by the Department of Religious Studies.
Participation level – light, participants may choose to share thoughts and questions during the gallery talk.
Programs are open to all, on a first-come first-served basis. RSVPs are not required, but are appreciated.
About the Speakers:
Usman Hamid is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies. A historian of Islam, Usman Hamid specializes in the study of early modern South Asia and its connections with Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean world. His current research project charts how the circulation of texts, objects, and people across the Indian Ocean starting from the late-sixteenth century shaped the aesthetics of Muslim devotion to the Prophet Muhammad in South Asia. He earned his PhD from the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Northwestern, Hamid was Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at Hamilton College, a liberal arts college in Upstate New York. Hamid’s research has been supported by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada.
Shira Schwartz is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, specializing in late antique rabbinic and contemporary Orthodox and ex-Orthodox Judaism, comparative forms of religious exit and queer/trans religious lives. A comparatist by training, Schwartz’s interdisciplinary research combines textual, phenomenological and bioethnographic methods to explore how gender/sex and sexuality are constructed in minoritized ethnoreligious worlds and their educational institutions. Schwartz’s research has been awarded support by the Association for Jewish Studies, Network for Research in Jewish Education, Jewish Orthodoxies Research Fellowship, and Humanities Without Walls, among others. Schwartz has previously served as a visiting scholar in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University in the Concentration for Education and Jewish Studies, and as a fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan. Before coming to Northwestern, Schwartz served as the inaugural Phyllis Backer Professor of Jewish Studies at Syracuse University. Schwartz holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and graduate certificate in Judaic Studies from the University of Michigan.
Sean Hanretta is Associate Professor in the Department of History. His research focuses on the intellectual and social history of modern West Africa. He is currently working on a long-term project on the history of Muslim weddings and funerals in Ghana and is also completing a textbook on the global history of death and dying. He is particularly interested in the theory of historical evidence and in non-documentary forms of historical sources. His book, Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of An Emancipatory Community, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009 and his work has appeared in the Journal of African History, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Past & Present, and other venues.
Image credit: Hamdia Traoré (Djenné, Mali, born 1992), Boubacar Bamoye Théra, marabout et maître coranique. Djenné-Algassouba (Boubacar Bamoye Théra, Marabout and Qur’anic Teacher. Djenné-Algassouba), from the series Des Marabouts de Djenné (Marabouts of Djenné), February 2018, printed 2023, Inkjet print, pigment-based. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Irwin and Andra S. Press Collection Endowment Fund purchase. 2022.17.12.
Cost: Free and open to the public
Block Museum of Art
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