Devin DeWeese, Ph.D., a noted scholar of Islam in Asia, will discuss “Survival Strategies: Interpreting Islam in Central Asia, Past and Present” at 11 a.m. March 30 in Duncker Hall’s Hurst Lounge.
Free and open to the public, the lecture is sponsored by the Jewish, Islamic and Near Eastern Studies program in Arts & Sciences.
DeWeese is a professor of Central Eurasian studies and director of the Denis Sinor Institute for Inner Asian Studies at Indiana University.
His talk will center on the problem of religious “survivals,” in this case, elements of pre-Islamic religious traditions believed to survive in and shape the practice and worldview of Muslims.
This background provides a way of understanding Islam in Central Asia in the context of various academic constituencies that have employed it, including colonial, nationalist and Soviet.
DeWeese will focus on examples drawn from his work on the Yasavi Sufi tradition of Central Asia and discuss some implications of this strategy for the ways in which Islam in contemporary Central Asia is analyzed.
For more information, call Debra Schwartz at 935-8567 or e-mail jines@artsci.wustl.edu.