Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA)

Institute Director: M. Sani Umar, associate professor of Religion (m-umar@northwestern.edu)

Inaugurated in 2000, ISITA is the first research center in the United States specifically devoted to the study of African Islamic culture. ISITA seeks to raise awareness of Africa’s rich Islamic intellectual and literary heritage by encouraging collaboration and interaction between scholars and by publishing works on African Islamic thought and the transmission of knowledge. Projects include:

Constituting Bodies of Islamic Knowledge: Deepening and Expanding the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa
Co-Principal Investigators:
Rüdiger Seesemann, assistant professor of religion, Northwestern University (seesemann@northwestern.edu)
Rudolph T. Ware, assistant professor of history, University of Michigan
Funder: Ford Foundation
This three-year project (2005-2008) supports field research in Africa, as well as workshops, conferences, and publications that address how African Muslims actively shape religious life through engagement with texts and bodies of religious knowledge that range from historical manuscripts to popular contemporary materials such as videos and DVDs

Increasing Access to Arabic-script Materials in the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies
Funder: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Melville J. Herskovits Library at Northwestern houses an important collection of Arabic script materials from West Africa (primarily Nigeria). This joint project of the Program of African Studies, Northwestern University Library, and Academic Technologies has created a catalog of these manuscript holdings that will increase awareness of the collection's rich holdings whose use can reshape our understanding of Islam, Africa and African history as a whole. The web-based catalog can be accessed at http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/arbmss.

Islam and the Public Sphere in Africa
Funder: Carnegie Corporation of New York
ISITA has organized a conference on Islam and the Public Sphere in Africa, with a goal of producing an edited volume on the theme.