Liberation and Grief
McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies Student Council (MIISSC) invites abstracts for scholarly papers to be presented at its 11th annual graduate symposium, held on the 3rd of May 2024. The theme “Liberation and Grief” invites scholars, graduate students, and early-career academics from all over North America, to engage with the themes of liberation, grief, and/or their intersection across various disciplines within Islamic Studies. Liberation can manifest in numerous forms, ranging from social and political emancipation to personal and psychological freedom. Simultaneously, grief, as a universal human experience, is not only confined to personal loss but can also emerge from societal transformations, historical events, and the struggle for liberation itself. Liberation movements in social and political contexts can be fueled by or lead to an accompanying grief from sacrifice and losses endured. On a personal and more intimate level, liberation and transformation stem from journeys of self-discovery, personal growth, and the psychological aspects of breaking free from constraints. While on a social level, the idea of collectivity is crucial to the understanding of a community’s ability to cope with grief, trauma, and a pursuit of collective liberation.
It is in this intersection between liberation and grief that our symposium is interested in; themes of papers exploring this intersection can include but are not limited to:
Pre-modern ideas of liberation and grief;
Grief as remembrance and liberation in Islamic eschatology and Shi’i Islam;
Postcolonial theory and redefining loss;
Modern and contemporary politics;
Marxist ideas of liberation in Islamicate world;
History of anticolonial movements;
Feminism and gender in Islam and Islamic Studies;
Queer sexuality and liberation;
Affect studies and liberation;
Liberation and Sufi studies;
Art movements from the Islamicate world, between resistance and grief, past and present, including: literature, film, dance, music, etc.