Research Focus Group Talk: Racing Time: Chronologies of Black Muslim Belonging in Arabic Epics

How do racialized icons of popular culture index Muslim ideas of history and belonging? Several Arabic epics (siyar sha‘biyya) contain Black protagonists who are assigned unique origin stories and legacies of involvement in Islam’s expansion. This talk will analyze their roles in the racial imaginaries of popular tales that proliferated from the 12th century onward across the Middle East and North Africa through oral and written traditions.

Rachel Schine earned her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the humanities at NYU, Abu Dhabi. She previously served as a postdoctoral associate and instructor of Arabic literature and culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations.

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Sponsored by the IHC’s Un-disciplining Premodern Histories of Race and Gender Research Focus Group