Conference Reports 

AMSS Thirty-second Annual Conference 

Bloomington, IN - September 26-28, 2003 

The Thirty-second Annual AMSS Conference, cosponsored this year by 

Indiana University's Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program and the 
department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, analyzed "East 

Meets West: Understanding the Muslim Presence in Europe and North 

America." Katherine Bullock (program committee chair, University of 

Toronto), Nazif Shahrani (professor of anthropology, director of Middle 
Eastern and Islamic studies program, Indiana University), Patrick 

O'Meara (dean, International Programs, Indiana University), and Louay 

Safi (president, AMSS) welcomed attendees and made introductory 

remarks. 
Since the passing of Edward Said coincided with the beginning of the 

conference, in his welcoming remarks Shahrani referred to this great 

scholar's lasting legacy. In fact, many panelists during the course of the 
conference talked about the importance of Said's research to their own 

work. 

Regular AMSS attendees such as myself would tell you that this con­

ference was a tightly organized orchestra of excellent sessions, one after the 
other. The number of sessions was smaller than usual, and there were fewer 

parallel sessions, probably because far more academic rigor had been exer­

cised in selectiong papers than had been the case in previous conferences. 

A special delight on the first day was the lunch and jumu'ah prayer at 
the Bloomington Islamic Center, catered and served by Bloomington 

Muslim community volunteers. After these events, the conference began 

in earnest. The opening panel, "A Political Philosophical Perspective on 

Islam and Democracy," featured M. A. Muqtedar Khan (Adrian College), 
who addressed the theoretical aspects of this debate, and Nazia Khand­

walla (University of Texas), who looked at the debate in an empirical 

study of slum-dwelling women in Karachi. 
The second session focused on North American Muslim women's 

narrations of identity. Shabana Mir (Indiana University) spoke on