[appel à communication] 11th Conference on Ibadi Studies (22-24 juin 2020, Rio de janeiro)

FAR BEYOND THE ATLANTIC
LITERARY PRODUCTION, EXCHANGE AND MATERIAL CULTURE
ACROSS BRAZILIAN AND IBADI-OMANI HISTORY

The Portuguese occupations of Brazil and Oman provide the starting pointfor the 11th conference on Ibadi Studies, which sets out to explore the multifaceted aspects of history, religion and culture in these distant, though connected, areas.
The conference focuses on the historical and cultural relations between the Portuguese and two of the societies that they occupied: those inhabiting an Atlantic shore and another, the Indian Ocean. Identifying the role and the heritage left by the Portuguese maritime explorers, from the 15th century beyond, is fundamental for understanding the relations between Portuguese, Omani and Brazilian societies and their mutual representations of the ‘Other’. In order to shed light on this issue, the conference remains open to topics such as the Portuguese historical sources on Oman and Brazil, modern travelers’ accounts on both countries and translation of Omani sources and literature from Arabic into Brazilian Portuguese. The conference will also focus on the Ibadi communities of East and North Africa, their interconnections, influences and differences over
time with the Omani community.
The shared past of the Portuguese presence in Brazil and Oman has received very little attention.
The conference aims to fill this gap using comparative, multidimensional and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of cultural heritage, especially as it is embodied in religious and other expressions.
The study of religion and cultural heritage in modern times, apart from the study of ideas, beliefs and religious teachings, also involves understanding the role that aesthetics, objects, places, costumes, and other material goods and signifiers play in religious practice. As mediators of the internal religiosity and the cultural heritage of individuals and communities, these elements transform religious phenomenon into something particular and concrete.
The conference thus takes a step beyond theology, religious law, history, religious literature and ethics in general, to deal with material culture and cultural heritage, looking also at the ways in which intellectuals have helped to refine, prioritize, represent, and serve religion.
The 11th Conference on Ibadi Studies will investigate material cultures which have emerged over the centuries as a distillation of local culture and religiosity, accepting parallel influences, in dialectical or polemical form, from other sources.
Finally, the 11th Conference on Ibadi Studies welcomes innovative researches on religion, law, history, literature, art, archeology and architecture as well as studies providing anthropological and social understanding of archival and monumental elements of tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

Thematic Subdivisions of the Conference will include:
1. Literature and cultural heritage
2. Exchanges of goods and ideas across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean
3. Ibadi and/or Brazilian material culture in a comparative perspective
4. Religious and urban art and architecture
5. Intangible heritage embodied: Orality and popular culture
6. Defining the “self” and the “other/s” in multicultural environments
7. Transmission of knowledge and production of books as artefacts of the material culture
8. Portuguese sources on Ibadism, Oman and South Arabia
9. Omani sources on the Portuguese Empire
10. Description of Ibadi and Brazilian societies by travelers in a comparative perspective
11. Omani Postcolonial literature and its translation into Brazilian Portuguese

Place: Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Department of Oriental and Slavic Languages Faculty of Letters

Date: 22-24 juin 2020

Informations complémentaires: https://ibadistudies.org/index.php/conferences/upcoming-conferences/details

Enki Baptiste

Postdoctorant en histoire médiévale et en islamologie (Université Lumière Lyon 2 - CIHAM UMR 5648), chercheur associé au CEFREPA USR 3141

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