AVACGIS Faculty Talk - Dr. Benjamin Gatling (English & Folklore)

Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikistan

Thursday, March 28, 2019 1:30 PM to 2:30 PM EDT
Enterprise Hall, 318 (conference room)

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2014, Dr. Gatling highlights the range of expressive forms- memories, stories, poetry, artifacts, rituals, and other embodied practices- Sufis employ as they try to construct a Sufi life in twenty-first century Central Asia. He argues that Sufis transcend the oppressive religious politics of contemporary Tajikistan by using expressive forms to inhabit multiple times: the paradoxical present, the Persian sacred past, and the Soviet era. This lecture shows the intricate, ground level ways that Muslim expressive culture intersects with authoritarian politics, not as artful forms of resistance but rather as a means to shape experiences of the present. Benjamin Gatling (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is a folklorist specializing in the expressive culture of Central Asia and the Middle East. Prior to coming to Mason, he held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University, where he was a core faculty member of the Duke Islamic Studies Center. His first book, Expressions of Sufi Culture in Tajikstan, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. His research interests include narrative, performance, the ethnography of communication, Persianate oral traditions, and Islam in Central Asia. He serves as a book review editor for the Journal of American Folklore and lead list editor of H-FOLK, H-Net's network for folklore and ethnology.