Posted on by Christina Vlahos

Leichtman, “Shi’i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa”

In August, the Indiana University Press will release “Shi’i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal,” by Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University). The publisher’s description follows:

Mara A. Leichtman offers an in-depth study of Shi‘i Islam in two very different communities in Senegal: the well-established Lebanese diaspora and Senegalese “converts” from Sunni to Shi‘i Islam of recent decades. Sharing a minority religious status in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, each group is cosmopolitan in its own way. Leichtman provides new insights into the everyday lives of Shi‘i Muslims in Africa and the dynamics of local and global Islam. She explores the influence of Hizbullah and Islamic reformist movements, and offers a corrective to prevailing views of Sunni-Shi‘i hostility, demonstrating that religious coexistence is possible in a context such as Senegal.

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Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium (Oct. 30- Nov. 1)

The Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium will be held from October 30 through November 1 in Norcia, Italy.

December 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the most controversial document of the Second Vatican Council, the ‘Declaration on Religious Freedom’, Dignitatis Humanae. Ever since its promulgation, it has been the subject of prolonged and often impassioned debate. What precisely does it teach? What is its authority? How can it be reconciled with the Church’s teaching about the kingship of Christ and the duties of Catholic statesmen? Scholars from all over the world will be meeting in Norcia this autumn, in the presence of Cardinal Raymund Burke, to discuss these vital questions.

Register here.

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Jütte, “The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800”

In May, Yale University Press released “The Age of Secrecy: Jews, Christians, and the Economy of Secrets, 1400–1800” by Daniel Jütte (Harvard University). The publisher’s description follows:

The fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were truly an Age of Secrecy in Europe, when arcane knowledge was widely believed to be positive knowledge that extended into all areas of daily life, from the economic, scientific, and political spheres to the general activities of ordinary people.

So asserts Daniel Jütte in this engrossing, vivid, and award-winning work. He maintains that the widespread acceptance and even reverence for this “economy of secrets” in premodern Europe created a highly complex and sometimes perilous space for mutual contact between Jews and Christians. Surveying the interactions between the two religious groups in a wide array of secret sciences and practices—including alchemy, cryptography, medical arcana, technological and military secrets, and intelligence—the author relates true stories of colorful “professors of secrets” and clandestine encounters. In the process Jütte examines how our current notion of secrecy is radically different in this era of WikiLeaks, Snowden, et al., as opposed to centuries earlier when the truest, most important knowledge was generally considered to be secret by definition.

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“Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community” (Gorman & Kasbarian, eds.)

This month, Edinburgh University Press releases “Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community” edited by Anthony Gorman (University of Edinburgh) and Sossie Kasbarian (University of Lancaster). The publisher’s description follows:

Approaching the Middle East through the lens of Diaspora Studies, the 11 detailed case studies in this volume explore the experiences of different diasporic communities in and of the region, and look at the changing conceptions and practice of diaspora in the modern Middle East. They show how concepts central to diaspora such as ‘homeland’, ‘host state’, ‘exile’, ‘longing’, ‘memory’ and ‘return’ have been deconstructed and reinstated with new meaning through each complex diasporic experience. They also examine how different groups have struggled to claim and negotiate a space for themselves in the Middle East, and the ways in which these efforts have been aided and hampered by the historical, social, legal, political, economic, colonial and post-colonial specificities of the region.

In situating these different communities within their own narratives – of conflict, resistance, war, genocide, persecution, displacement, migration – these studies stress both the common elements of diaspora but also their individual specificity in a way that challenges, complements and at times subverts the dominant nationalist historiography of the region.