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Saginaw Valley State University

Dr. Raana Akbar Memorial Lecture Series on Islam and Culture

Dr. Raana Akbar Memorial Lecture Series

The Dr. Raana Akbar Memorial Lecture Series on Islam & Culture in partnership with The Dow Visiting Scholars and Artists Endowment presents . . .

Literary Culture and a Shared Ethical Tradition in Late-Colonial India

Wednesday, September 10, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Rhea Miller Recital Hall (Entrance inside Groening Commons)
Please join us for a reception outside the theater at 5:30 p.m.

This event will be simulcast online via Zoom. To watch online, please register here

Guest Speaker: Farina Mir, PhD., Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History and Honors, University of Michigan

Farina Mir PortraitDr. Mir will speak about the late-colonial literature of Urdu akhlaq, or Islamic philosophical ethics, circa 1850-1947. She argues that it was a shared literary tradition, with Hinduism, Islam and other faiths participating simultaneously. Previous interpretive strategies have tended to favor one of two paths — to emphasize Urdu as a shared tradition and source of cosmopolitanism, or to describe it as source for a modern Muslim identity in South Asia and contentious religious debate. Mir synthesizes the two interpretive strategies to argue that a literary tradition can be Islamic and not just Islamicate. The implications are broad for our understanding of modern South Asian historiography and as a window into South Asian ethics.

Farina Mir is the Arthur F. Thurnau professor of history and honors at the University of Michigan. She is a historian of colonial and postcolonial South Asia, with particular interest in the religious, cultural and social history of late-colonial north India. Mir is the co-editor of “Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture, and Practice”(2012). She is the author of “The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab”(2010), which won her the 2011 John F. Richards Prize in South Asian History from the American Historical Association and the 2012 Bernard Cohn Prize from the Association of Asian Studies. She is currently completing another book, “Genres of Muslim Modernity: Being Muslim in Late-Colonial India, 1858-1947”, which examines Urdu-language akhlaq and how these ethics texts reveal an important history of Muslims in South Asia

Download Farina Mir Akbar Flyer 2025 (729KB)

The Raana Akbar Memorial Lecture on Islam & Culture was established in 2011 by Dr. Waheed Akbar in memory of his wife Raana, a former member of the SVSU Board of Control, physician and community leader.

"Dr. Raana Akbar was a dedicated physician, a respected community leader and a beloved wife, mother and friend. She held passionately to a hope that the faith and culture that inspired and comforted her would be better understood and appreciated by others. Islam is the faith that gives purpose and meaning to some 1.8 billion human souls, nearly one quarter of the human race. And this lecture series, now in its tenth year, is an enduring expression of Raana's hope and of her firm belief that, in the end, we are all just fellow searchers for truth, fellow seekers after God. Salam alaykum . . . Peace be upon you." --Eric Gilbertson, SVSU President Emeritus

 

Past Lectures