Afro-Asian World Making: Reflections on Minor Histories, Circulations, and Mediations

Panel Convenor(s)

• NJ

  Neelima Jeychandran

  Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar, Qatar

Panel Chair(s)

• RA

  Rogaia Abusharaf

  Georgetown University, Qatar, Qatar

Panel Discussant(s)

• RA

  Rogaia Abusharaf

  Georgetown University, Qatar, Qatar

Presenter(s)

• NJ

  Neelima Jeychandran

  Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar, Qatar
• AG

  Amal Ghazal

  Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar
• UC

  Uday Chandra

  Georgetown University, Qatar, Qatar

In this panel, we propose an interdisciplinary approach to studying “minor to minor” transnational connections and networks that link African and Asian worlds historically and in contemporary times. While scholars have extensively written about the histories of trade, migration, and the circulation of objects between Asia and Africa and in the Indian Ocean rim since ancient times, we aim to foreground the critical importance of minor relations and other forms of interconnectedness that shape Afro-Asian imaginaries, affinities, and mediations. Our panelists employ ethnographic and humanistic methodologies to explore diverse Afro-Asian relationalities that reveal entangled histories, ambiguous relationships, and layered mappings. These explorations not only redefine the past but also reassemble connections between the local and the trans-local, sea and land, social and religious entities, and between human and non-human constituents. In our study of other world-making practices that link the African, Arabian, and Asian geographies, we propose an oceanic framework emerging from several Indian Ocean sites as a conceptual promise for studying Africa-Asia connections.

Presentations:

• 11:15 - 13:00 GMT

  The Place Beyond a Place: Materialities, Mobilities, and Trans-Indian Oceanic Exchanges
  

  Presenter: Neelima Jeychandran – Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar
• 11:15 - 13:00 GMT

  Texts as Contexts: The Making of Religious Traditions in the Omani Empire
  

  Presenter: Amal Ghazal – Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
• 11:15 - 13:00 GMT

  Interstitial Lives and Interconnected Places: Towards a New Theory of Afro-Asian Circulation
  

  Presenter: Uday Chandra – Georgetown University, Qatar