The annual Duke-University of North Carolina (UNC) Graduate IslamicStudies Conference for 2008, “Practice and Embodiment in Islam,” soughtto provide an interlocutory space for engaging the somewhat nascent turn tothe body. Held on 5-6 April 2008, this event focused on the theme of practiceand embodiment in Islamicate texts and contexts. Of late, the theorizationof the body has been a sustained topic of research in the humanities andthe social sciences.In his opening remarks, Omid Safi (UNC-Chapel Hill) highlighted thesignificance of inculcating a “culture of generosity,” since academic circlescan often generate feelings of estrangement. “The real challenge for us,” heemphasized, “is to step out of the comfort zones of our community.” Safithen introduced the keynote speaker: Shahzad Bashir (Stanford University).Bashir’s tour de force of fourteenth-fifteenth century Persianate hagiographyrevealed how the body, as an analytic category and interpretive lens,enables quite sophisticated and unprecedented readings and insights intoSufi hagiographies of this period.After claiming that such texts describe theoutward appearance and movements of Sufi shaykhs’ bodies in great detail,he suggested the accompanying miracle stories were usually, if not always,invoked to preserve, heal, feed, or discipline the bodies of others, particularlythose on the Sufi path. Bashir said that a majority of the miracles thushad to do with corporeal integrity and continuity. While historians usuallysee the preponderance of such miracles in hagiographies as unhelpfulsources, Bashir argued that these texts constitute an argument for sainthoodand that careful analysis of the patterns found therein represent one of ourbest windows into classical Sufism’s socio-intellectual world ...
The Fifth Annual Duke-UNC Graduate Islamic Studies Conference