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Lecture | LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series

Can Neurodiversity be a Lens to Study Sufism?

Date
Wednesday 14 May 2025
Time
Serie
LIAS After-Lunch Talk Series
Address
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden
Room
1.128 (Verbarium)

Abstract

In this talk, I will explore if neurodiversity as a framework can be productive in studying Sufism. In the first part of this talk, I unpack the category of “neurodiversity” and explore intriguing ways in which medical and social aspects of this term intersect in the current society. Gender, race, caste and subaltern studies for instance, provide us with a lens through which we revisit historical documents or study of society. In similar veins, I explore if “neurodiversity” can be considered useful. Hence, in the second part, I closely examine the example of the Sufi “Majzub”.  By comparing it with how we understand neurodiversity today, I interrogate whether “madness” associated with being a “Majzub” can be reframed as being neurodiverse.

About the speaker

Anwesha Sengupta is an advanced doctoral candidate at the Middle-Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) program at Columbia University in the city of New York, USA. She is currently a visiting researcher at the Purana project at Leiden Institute of Area Studies (LIAS) in Leiden University. Her doctoral research broadly studies themes and motifs of Hindu-Muslim intersection in a corpus of 16th -17th century Avadhi Sufi texts. Her research interests include translation studies, digital methods for textual analysis, transregional circulation of early modern texts, and neurodiversity. She has published her works in multiple peer-reviewed edited volumes. She is also a member of the Graduate Student Advisory Committee at the Center for Teaching and Learning at Columbia University.

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