Franklin Lewis, Associate Professor of Persian, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.

Veli N. Yashin, PhD Candidate, Dept. of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University.

What is the place of Islamic literature and thought in the American university, here and now? Is there an "Islamic humanities"? Does it have a place within the general humanities curriculum? If so what can be said about this place from within the critical space of humanities today? This panel discussion brings together both prominent and emerging scholars to debate and reconceive the larger role of "Islamic Humanities" within the general humanities. In addition to responding to the urgency of revising the teaching of "major texts" as part of the departmental major, then, this panel discussion begins to re-envision the role of the next generation of scholars in continuing the tradition of the "Core" at Columbia and beyond, availing itself of the European, American, and the West-Asian traditions. In this sense, the event also addresses the more general question: how to teach "non-Western" textual traditions in the American university?

Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center.