Vernaculars of Faith and Material Politics in the Maghreb

Muriam Haleh Davis
History
UC Santa Cruz

Margaux Fitoussi
Comparative Literature
UC Irvine

This project will bring together graduate students and faculty across the UC to investigate how faith-based vernaculars sustain material politics, ranging from art to agriculture, in North Africa. The working group builds on the UC’s strength in the study of the Maghreb (defined as Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania), which is often marginalized in the Anglophone academy. This multicampus faculty working group will explore the particular cosmologies and epistemologies that have emerged from religious vernaculars in the Maghreb from the 18th century to the present. A region that has been heavily influenced by both Islamic and Jewish history, the Maghreb has been shaped by particular forms of syncretic (and at times rather unorthodox) religious forms that often mix Sufi traditions, local customs (ʿurf), and tribal ethics. This working group will highlight how religious beliefs are locally interpreted (rather than formal theology) and study the material effects of these frameworks in three domains: art and aesthetics, environmental practices and agroecology, and finally moral and political economies.

Image credit: Mo Scarpelli