2025 Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium on Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Thursday, December 18, 2025 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM EST
Online Location
The AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University and The Maydan, the Center’s public-facing scholarship platform, present the Eighth Annual Graduate Student Book Review Colloquium on Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies to be held virtually on December 18, 2025. Please refer to the application procedures detailed below. The deadline for applications is October 15, 2025.
Objective
The Colloquium invites advanced graduate students in the social sciences and humanities to submit reviews on noteworthy books published between January 1, 2024-June 1, 2025 in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.
The Colloquium is organized by The Maydan, the public-facing scholarship platform of the AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies. The Maydan is dedicated to supporting Islamic Studies with the recognition that academic scholarship in this field of inquiry is currently in need of discussions and publications that are able to disseminate research to a larger audience. The Colloquium aims to foster a lasting conversation between academic and lay readership.
At the Colloquium, the accepted graduate students will have the opportunity to present their book reviews in pre-organized panels lasting 20 minutes, and then discuss their reviews with leading scholars in the field. The Colloquium will take place on Zoom.
In selecting their books, reviewers are expected to focus on a single monograph – as a general rule, edited volumes and reference works remain outside the scope of this Colloquium, applicants should contact Maydan editor-in-chief Ahmet Tekelioglu atekelio@gmu.edu to discuss exceptions – and to demonstrate engagement with the existing literature, using references to at least two books on a similar theme. The reviewers are encouraged to construct their works with particular attention to the context, content, and critique of the selected book.
Schedule
9:45am-10:00am Introduction/Welcome
10:00am- 11:00am Panel 1: Indian Muslims and Belonging
Discussant: Sumaiya Hamdani
Gungun Islam (Michigan State University), Zara Chowdhary’s The Lucky Ones: A Memoir (2024).
Saiyid Ashraf Husain Jafri (Ibn Haldun University), Kalyani Devaki Menon, Making Place for Muslims in Contemporary India (Cornell University Press, 2022).
11:15am-12:15pm Panel 2: Violence and Memory in Islamic Societies
Discussant: Dr. Yasemin Ipek, (George Mason University).
Rushnae Kabir (University of Pennsylvania), Tanweer Fazal, Practices of the State: Muslims, Law and Violence in India (Three Essays Collective, 2024).
Thruya Al-Naseri (Ibn Haldun University), Amir Moosavi . Dust That Never Settles: Literary Afterlives of the Iran-Iraq War (Stanford University Press, 2025).
12:15pm-1:00pm Break
1:00pm-2:20pm Panel 3: Social Movements and State Power
Discussant: Dr. Cengiz Sisman, (University of Houston & Maydan).
Owais Manzoor Dar (Independent Researcher), Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui, Islamic Law on Trial: Contesting Colonial Power in British India, (University of California Press, 2025).
Ayah Aboelela (Northeastern University) – Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford University Press, 2024).
Abdullah Eren (University of Essex), Maryam Al-Kuwari, Tribal Reawakening and the Future of State-Building in Kuwait and Qatar (Springer, 2025).
2:20pm-2:40pm Conclusion/Final Remarks
