with Professor Han Hsien Liew
September 11, 2025
10:30 a.m.–Noon
Coor Hall 4403
In this workshop, Dr. Liew will speak about his forthcoming book, Preaching Pious
Rulership in Medieval Islam: Ibn al-Jawzi's Political Thought, which studies the relationship
between preaching, politics, and emotions in the medieval Islamic world. In considering the
role of piety and homiletics in Islamic political thought, the book aims to rethink the concept
of the "political" in the context of Islam. Of special interest to graduate students, Dr. Liew
will also speak about his experience of converting his dissertation into a book and of
obtaining a book contract.
About the speaker:
Han Hsien Liew is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. In addition to the history of Islamic political thought, his research interests include Qur’anic exegesis, Islamic theology, Islam in Southeast Asia and the history of emotions. His work has been published in Al-Qanṭara: Revista de Estudios Árabes, Journal of Islamic Studies, Journal of the American Oriental Society and Arabica. He was recently awarded a Herodotus Fund Membership from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
Lecture and Q&A with Dr. Ken Chitwood
September 24, 2025
Noon–1:30 p.m.
Coor Hall 4403 and online
Among Puerto Rican converts to Islam, marginalization is a fact of daily life. Their “authenticity” is questioned by other Muslims and by fellow Borícua on the island and in the United States. At the same time, they exist under the shadow of US colonization and as Muslims in the context of American empire. To be a Puerto Rican Muslim, then, is to negotiate identity at numerous intersections of diversity and difference. Drawing on years of ethnographic research and more than a hundred interviews conducted in Puerto Rico, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and online, Ken Chitwood tells the story of Puerto Rican Muslims as they construct a shared sense of peoplehood through everyday practices. This lecture thus provides a study of cosmopolitanism not as a political ideal but as a mundane social reality—a reality that complicates scholarly and public conversations about race, ethnicity, and religion in the Americas.
About the speaker:
Dr. Ken Chitwood holds a PhD from the University of Florida and is currently a postdoctoral researcher pursuing Habilitation with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth. He is also an Affiliate Researcher with the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. His first book, The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean (2021) won the Religion News Association’s Best Nonfiction Book Award. His second, Borícua Muslims: The Everyday Lives of Puerto Rican Converts to Islam (UTexas Press) releases in October 2025, and his third, an edited anthology, Engaged Spirituality: Stories of Religious Inspiration, Resilience, and Work for the Common Good (Bloomsbury) is forthcoming in 2026. Chitwood has been reviewing books on Christianity, Islam, religion, anthropology, culture, and history for eleven years with Publisher's Weekly, the Houston Chronicle, Reading Religion from the American Academy of Religion, and other scholarly and popular publications.
with Diana Coleman
November 13
10:30–Noon
Coor Hall 4403 and online
In a time of rampant anti-intellectualism, when expertise is daily demeaned and devalued, how does one maintain a committed presence within the aching work of bringing to light and speaking truths into the world?
About the speaker:
Diana Coleman is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University. As NAU’s 2024/25 College of Arts and Letters teacher of the year, NAU’s Interns to Scholars program 2024/25 Mentor of the Year, and an invited keynote speaker for the June 2026 “Camps, Belonging, and Abolition Democracy” conference at University of Graz in Austria, Dr. Coleman is committed to empowering her students, continuing her research and activism, and to reaching broader publics. She has researched, presented, and participated in dozens of conferences, panels, and workshops, guest lecturing nationally and internationally. Her publications include a chapter in Guantánamo and American Empire: The Humanities Respond, “El Sur También Existe: Imagining futures” in Cultural Dynamics, and articles in two special issues of Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Language and Culture. Her activism includes the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, the Free Shaker Aamer campaign, panel member at the Parliamentary Meeting on Shaker Aamer’s behalf at the Westminster House of Commons, attendee at the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture and an organizer of the Sayyarah for Sufiyan campaign. She was a Humanities Scholar and lecturer for the 2023 TOM KIEFER: El Sueño Americano / The American Dream exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts and recently completed in-depth training with the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program through Temple University.