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Tuesday 27 January, 16:00: 

Religious Minorities Online (RMO) editors meeting (closed meeting)

Tuesday 17 February, 16:00: 

Religious Minorities Online (RMO) editors meeting (closed meeting)

Tuesday 3 March, 15:00: 

Sydnesplassen 12-13, Undervisningsrom 130
Lecture by Raphael Michaeli: Performing Praise to the Prophet: From Manuscript to Print – Mawlid Texts and Practices from the Swahili Coast.

Tuesday 10 March, 15:00: 

Lecture by Konsta Ilari Kaikkonen, "Fjordscapes and definitions of sacred in Unjárga (Nesseby)"

Tuesday 31 March, 16:00: 

Religious Minorities Online (RMO) editors meeting (closed meeting)

Tuesday 21 April, 16:00: 

Religious Minorities Online (RMO) editors meeting (closed meeting)

Tuesday 5 may-Thursday 7 May: Conference After Conversion

In this two-day conference, followed by a field trip on the third day, the question “What happens after conversion” will be central. While traditionally much research has been done on the reasons why and ways in which individuals or groups converted, only recently more attention is paid to the afterlife of conversion. This conference will focus on the various ways in which converts have often, rather than ‘dissolve’ in the religion they adopted voluntarily or under coercion, paved new and creative religious paths that negotiate new and old. A more detailed program will be announced.

Tuesday 2 June, 16:00: 

Religious Minorities Online (RMO) editors meeting (closed meeting)

Tuesday 30 June, 16:00: 

Religious Minorities Online (RMO) editors meeting (closed meeting)

Tuesday 4 November: Discussing teaching religious minorities in Oslo

On Tuesday 4 November we will visit several institutions relevant for the study of minorities in Oslo, such as the Holocaust-Center, STL Oslo - Samarbeidsrådet for tros- og livssynssamfunn Oslo, Institutt for kirke-, religions- og livssynsforskning (KIFO). The aim is to discuss possibilities and strategies for the study of religious minorities at the University of Bergen.

Please contact Alexander.Haven@uib.no if you can join us in Oslo.

Wednesday 12 November, 15:15-16:45: Michael Stausberg: Religious Minorities in Iran. 

Sydneshaugen skole. Kollokvierom 217

Michael Stausberg, Professor in the Study of Religion, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, will present his research on religious minorities in Iran.

Tuesday 18 November, 15-16: Keren Abbou Hershkovits: Mothers, sons, and the communities in-between in early Arabic historiography. 

Online presentation. Please contact Alexander.Haven@uib.no to receive the zoom link.

Keren Abbou Hershkovits, The Department of History, Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Open

University, Israel

Keren Abbou Hershkovits currently focuses on early Abbasid sources that describe early converts to Islam. Her work aims to uncover how this process was understood and presented across different historiographical genres. Her main interest is in how women are depicted in these accounts and for what purposes. She is currently co-editing a book titled Scriptural Sexuality. Her most recent paper, "Circulating Knowledge: Receiving, Transmitting and Employing, a Gendered Perspective," was published in Catalin-Stefan Popa (ed.), Teaching and Learning the Norms of Life and Faith: Pedagogues, Educators and Their Heritage in Abrahamic Religions, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. She is in the process of writing a monograph, tentatively titled: Men Writing Women: Gendered Aspects of Early Islam. Her presentation today discusses some of the findings of the first chapter.

Abstract

Qurʾān verses and ḥadīth repeatedly enjoin honoring one’s parents—especially one’s mother. Yet while maternity is framed as a woman’s imperative, our sources do little to spell out what “motherhood” entails in practice. Compounding this gap, mothers are only sparsely depicted in early Arabic historiography. This paper focuses on episodes where mothers interact with their sons to ask why these women appear at all—and what work they do when they do appear.

When read in a broader context and considered as part of a larger narrative, it becomes apparent that mothers are not merely historical figures, but rather serve as shorthand, cueing author’s arguments without the need to state them explicitly. It further becomes apparent that there is no one single aspect of motherhood that is praised or expected. In one case, the great grief the mother expresses is the “right” emotion, whereas in another account, her steadfastness is the commended expression. This variability suggests that it is not “motherhood” that is being described, or at least not only motherhood, but also values, norms and piety.

These accounts, moreover, tell us more about men than about women. Because they are male-authored and male-facing, they train attention on the son’s comportment and on how his reaction forecasts or endorses communal response. When Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr rejects a gift from her son without a word, the narrator marks his distress, his instant grasp of the norm he violated, and his chastened acceptance, quietly staging mothers as moral guides, signaling the premium on modesty, and underscoring the son’s duty to safeguard his mother’s comfort.

Through close readings of several mother–son interactions, the paper maps these functions without reconstructing a social history of maternal duties. In this corpus, the mother functions less as subject than as an authorizing device, one that encapsulates privileged knowledge of her son, licenses moral judgment about him, and cues communal norms.

Wednesday 3 December, 15:15-16:45: Alexander van der Haven: Converts as Double Minorities in the Seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. 

Sydnesplassen 12-13 Rom: Undervisningsrom 210