Structural Challenges to Constructive Muslim Thought and Engaged Scholarship

As the “Constructive Muslim Thought and Engaged Scholarship” seminar enters its third year, the organizing group continue to develops ways for better understanding the nature and substance of this capacious, developing, and distinctive field. For this session, the participants have been invited to join a roundtable conversation aimed at exploring what it means to be Muslim in the Euro-American Academy while also being committed to engaged and constructive Muslim scholarship. What are the most pressing or entrenched structural challenges facing scholars within the field? Participants are invited to speak from their experiences and to consider matters related to publication venues, academic presses, career advancement, graduate training, religious formation, intra-Muslim dynamics as well as broader socio-cultural and political forces. What sort of transformative work needs to be done and how can it be dynamically pursued? All seminar attendees are encouraged to join the conversation after the invited participants have shared their opening remarks.