Race and Religion Series: Global Circuits of Difference with Dr. Mbaye Lo

The Race and Religion series at ISGRJ-Newark seeks to center conversations about the intersections of race and religion, and the racialization of religion, from historical and contemporary perspectives, in the U.S. and globally. As categories of identity and identification, race and religion have historically overlapped and competed as primary forms of differentiation and markers of difference.

This Spring, the series will focus on Islam in Africa. One of the consequences of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was that West African Muslims preceded much of the rest of the Muslim world in their confrontation with imperial power, market economies, and the moral questions they engendered. Later European colonization and the subsequent process of decolonization, and the tensions between discriminating hierarchies of race and the moral commitments of religion, conditioned conflicting ways of imagining community and group membership.

About the Featured Speaker:

Mbaye Lo is Associate Professor of the Practice of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and International Comparative Studies at Duke University.

Originally from Senegal, Lo completed his undergraduate and graduate training in classical Arabic language and literature at the International University of Africa, Khartoum and Khartoum International Institute for Arabic Language, Sudan. He also received an MA in American history from Cleveland State University where he also earned his PhD from from the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs with a dissertation on Re-inventing Civil Society-Based Governance in Africa: Theories and Practices.

Professor Lo is a recipient of several awards including the National Humanities Center fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship on Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs, Duke Engage Program Director Award, and Duke University Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Professor Lo is the author and editor of nine books in both English and Arabic that examine the intersection of intellectual and social discourse of Arabic/Islamic and African cultures. He has written widely on political Islam, Arabic literary traditions in West Africa, and ideas of civil society and governance.