Society of Scholars
The Society of Scholars is an intellectual community of humanists of diverse generations, academic ranks, and departmental affiliations who contribute to and learn from one another’s work. Each year, approximately eight faculty and three dissertation research fellowships support members of the Society of Scholars. Scholars in year-long residence at the University of Washington may be invited to participate as well. The group meets biweekly throughout the year to discuss their research in progress.
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2024 - 2025 Society of Scholars
2023 - 2024 Society of Scholars Fellow
Ananya Sikand (she/her/hers)
Muslim Unbelonging: Conceptual and Performance Art in Post-Independence South Asia (1970-2020)
This project reframes histories of conceptual and performance art across South Asia and its diaspora in the wake of Partition. By re-centering their bodies as archives, the artists Rasheed Araeen, Nasreen Mohamedi, Rummana Hussain and Zarina Bhimji offer new configurations and alternative understandings of “Muslimness.” This theoretical and ethnographic approach considers how these artists inhabit a specific lived experience. It also examines how they express their subjectivity, pain and joys. By using archival evidence, ethnography and exhibition histories in Africa, England and South Asia, Sikand suggests “Muslimness” and Islamic art accommodate new improvisations within the bounds of solidarity and sociability.