Lectures & Events
Lectures, book talks and conferences
The Institute’s public programme: bringing scholars, students and the public into the same room. The lecture series opens on 9 October 2026 and runs through the academic year.
Inaugural event · Autumn 2026
The Inaugural Event
The evening the Institute opens: welcome remarks by Dr James E. Jones, then the Inaugural Lecture by Shaykh Dr Mohammad Akram Nadwi.
The scholar who opens an institute sets its terms. The Institute invited Shaykh Akram Nadwi first because his work is a claim about the tradition established not by argument alone but by returning to the sources and setting down what is actually there. Dr Jones opens the evening on behalf of the College; a lecture of about forty minutes follows, then some twenty-five minutes in conversation with Ali Javed, then questions from the audience: about ninety minutes in all. The session will be recorded, with the Shaykh’s permission, and a short reading list drawn from his work circulated to registrants beforehand.
9:30 PM ISTChicago · New Delhi
Scholars of Faith: Muslim Girls’ Education in North India
Dr Usha Sanyal · Wingate University (retired)A Barelwi girls’ madrasa in Shahjahanpur and the tradition it belongs to. A lecture, then a conversation with Ali Javed and questions from the audience.
The Loss of Hindustan
Manan Ahmed Asif · Columbia UniversityManan Ahmed Asif on the idea of Hindustan and how it was lost. A thirty-minute lecture, fifteen minutes in conversation, then questions from the audience.
The Gabriel of Madness: Islamic Poetry, Ethics, and Muslim Life in an Age of Hindu Nationalism
Anand Vivek Taneja · Vanderbilt UniversityHow Indian Muslims have drawn on Islamic traditions and Urdu poetry to sustain an ethical and plural life under Hindu-nationalist rule. A lecture from his new book, then a conversation with Ali Javed and questions from the audience.
A Lecture by Asad Q. Ahmed
Asad Q. Ahmed · University of California, BerkeleyTitle to be announced. The Berkeley historian of Arabic logic on how a transregional philosophical tradition became distinctly Indian. A lecture, then a conversation with Ali Javed and questions from the audience.
Islam in Local Contexts: India
Ali Javed · An Intellectual History of the Persianate and Urdu Tradition, c. 1000 to the PresentFourteen Wednesday evenings, twelve sessions, one tradition studied on its own terms. Cross-listed for undergraduates and graduates at American Islamic College, and taught live online.
Public lecture · Autumn 2026
Photograph · credit to be confirmed
Scholars of Faith
Muslim Girls’ Education in North India
Girls’ madrasas in North India have been filling since the 1990s; in some districts of western Uttar Pradesh they now outnumber the boys’. Drawing on her work inside Jamiʿa Nur al-Shariʿat, a Barelwi girls’ madrasa in Shahjahanpur founded in 2003, Usha Sanyal traces the tradition it belongs to, from Ahmad Riza Khan’s Ahl-e Sunnat in Rohilkhand after Mughal decline to the presses, fatwas and allied pirs that carried it beyond Bareilly, and asks what changes when women claim religious authority from inside the tradition.
9:30 PM ISTChicago · New Delhi
Rais Rahman
Wake Forest University · author of Locale, Everyday Islam, and Modernity: Qasbah Towns and Muslim Life in Colonial India (Oxford, 2015).
Accepted