MIST 252   Muslim Societies in Motion

How have contemporary global markets, media, and mobility fueled a worldwide Islamic revival? Has expanded access to public schooling and digital media among ordinary Muslims challenged state power and authority—or enhanced it? If pious Muslims rejected Islam’s mystical (Sufi) traditions in the twentieth century, why are many embracing these traditions today? This course poses and answers such questions by exploring Muslim-majority societies across time and place, emphasizing the changing technologies, institutions, practices, and identities that bind them. Major historical topics addressed include Islam’s foundational texts and interpretive traditions, colonial modernity and market capitalism, the rise of nation-states and national identities, and contemporary globalization. Major social-cultural topics include changing media technologies and access, current Islamic revivalism and Islamic feminist movements, gender and sexuality, knowledge and power, and secularism and non-Muslim religious minorities.