Words of Experience - Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst - Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst
Translation, Travel, Transfiguration and the Practice of Scholarship in the Study of Religion
Words of Experience - Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst - Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst
Brannon M Wheeler [+]
United States Naval Academy
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Brannon Wheeler is a Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis where he was the founding Director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies. He received a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago after having received a BA in Religion and History at Pitzer College, studying with Carl Ernst at Pomona College. He is the author and editor of nine books including Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (Chicago, 2006). He is currently finishing a book-length project on camel sacrifice and martyrdom in Islam.
Description
This paper presents three different perspectives on the "experience" of scholarship described by Carl Ernst in his groundbreaking study of the Indian origins of an Ottoman Sufi text, three perspectives all related through me from my interactions with Carl. How do we articulate the tension between, to use Carl's example, what the Turkish dervishes think they are doing (or more accurately what we think they think they are doing) and what we think they are "really" doing. These three perspectives are experimental, designed to get us beyond the tired dichotomy of insider/outsider and to eschew the baggage-laden oversimplification of syncretism.