CANCELLED // Materialities of the Occult in Tatar Manuscripts, 19th-20th Centuries

Unfortunately this event had to be cancelled!

The occult turn in Islamic studies has opened a wide field for archival and anthropological research beyond the confines of imperial discourses. One possible way of inquiry lies in the material aspects of occult manuscripts, as well as the practices and objects involved. How did the practice of the occult affect the preservation of relevant manuscript sources and their archival trajectories? What is the connection between occult materiality and language use? Can we trace the specifically female experiences of dealing with Muslim occult practices? This talk will be based on the study of private and state collections containing occult texts and objects from the Volga-Ural region and Western Siberia.

Alfrid Bustanov is a historian of Islam in Russia and Central Asia. He is currently an assistant professor of European studies at the University of Amsterdam and a principal investigator of the ERC project MIND: The Muslim Individual in Imperial and Soviet Russia. Alfrid has published widely on the past and present of Muslim communities in the former Soviet realm. His latest publications include: Muslim Subjectivity in Soviet Russia: The Memoirs of ’Abd al-Majid al-Qadiri. (2022); ‘A Space for the Subject: Tracing Garden Culture in Muslim Russia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (2022); О перспективах оккультного поворота в российском исламоведении. Государство, Религия Церковь в России и за Рубежом (2022). Alfrid resides in Leiden, the Netherlands.

 

The event will be hybrid.

Online registration to participate via zoom: Registration