Please join the Religious Studies Program on Thursday, February 27th for their 3rd event in the 2024 – 2025 Religion and Politics Series!
Speaker: Professor Benjamin Gatling (George Mason University)
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Sufi groups in Tajikistan have faced significant changes, from growth and public celebration to repression by governing elites. In this talk, Benjamin Gatling draws on ethnographic fieldwork to examine how Tajikistan’s Sufis have adapted since 2010. It discusses how murids cope with missing pirs, closed teaching circles, and limited ritual opportunities, while highlighting resilient expressions of Sufi piety, such as pilgrimage practices and narratives.
Benjamin Gatling is a folklorist, Associate Professor in the English Department, and Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program (MAIS) at George Mason University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from The Ohio State University and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include oral narrative, performance, the ethnography of communication, Persianate oral traditions, and Islam in Central Asia. His current research considers the experiences of Afghan refugees and migrants in the U.S. He serves as Editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association and Associate Editor of the Journal of American Folklore.
Free and open to the public.
Cosponsored by the Anonymous Fund, Anthropology, Communication Arts, Folkore (GNS+), Language Sciences, the Law School, and the Middle East Studies Program.
