Conference | LUCIS 10th annual conference
10th LUCIS Annual Conference | Matters of Taste and Style: Muslim Food, Fashion, and Music in Practice
- Date
- Wednesday 6 November 2019 - Thursday 7 November 2019
- Explanation
- Tickets are free but make sure to register to secure your seat and a free lunch!
- Location
- Museum Volkenkunde
Steenstraat 1
Leiden - Room
- Paviljoenzaal
Tenth anniversary
We are delighted to announce the tenth annual conference of LUCIS, to be held on Wednesday 6 and Thursday 7 November 2019 in the National Museum of Ethnology (Volkenkunde). This special edition will be themed around food, fashion, and music. All are welcome!

Muslim food, fashion & music
Food, fashion, and music practices are important ways of saying something about self, society, belonging, and religion. Issues of taste, distinction, and power are intrinsically related to them. Through the performance of these practices, people align and disaffiliate with different groups and styles at different moments and in various settings, thus creating and erasing boundaries between them.
The aim of the conference is to analyse in specific contexts Muslims’ performance of food, fashion, and music practices. We are particularly interested in the life of things from makers to audiences, in the relationship between the global and the local, and in the ways in which ideas about these practices help to form ideologies of groups and their boundaries. The main questions that we pose are the following:
- How do Muslim public figures—professionals, celebrities, influencers, artists—talk about self, society, belonging, and religion through food, fashion, and music practices and to what audiences?
- When, how, and why do particular food, fashion, and music practices become identified as “Muslim” practices, by whom and with what consequences? How does this categorization settle on particular groups or persons, and how does it channel and constrain their position and activity?
- Or, by contrast, when, how, and why does the identification of those practices with religion disappear, leading to the prioritization of other features of social life in the narratives of those practices, and again by whom?
- How do individual tastes and personal preferences in food, fashion, and music interact with regulation and standardization established by arbiters, authorities, and legal frameworks?
Programme
13.00-13.30
|
Nathal M. Dessing
|
Opening and introduction
|
13.30-14.00
|
Katharina Graf
|
Cereal Citizens: Breadmaking as Civic Practice
|
14.00-14.30
|
Rachel Brown
|
Between Confit and Couscous: Negotiating Muslim Identities and Foodways in Paris and Montreal
|
14.30-15.00
|
Pooyan Tamimi Arab
|
Can Muslims Drink? Intoxicating the Anthropology of Islam
|
15.00-15.30
|
Break
|
Coffee & tea
|
15.30-16.00
|
Margreet van Es
|
Halal Dining in Rotterdam
|
16.00-16.30
|
Johan Fischer
|
Muslim Piety as Economy: Markets, Meaning and Morality in Southeast Asia
|
16.30-18.00
|
Food In Practice Reception |
Moroccan tasting session with Katharina Graf. Drinks included! |
10.00-10.30
|
Doors open
|
Coffee & tea
|
10.30-11.00
|
Annelies Moors
|
Islamic Fashion and Anti-fashion Revisited
|
11.00-11.30
|
Laura Morlock
|
Fighting Over Fabric: Muslim Fashion and Québec’s Secularism Bill |
11.30-12.00
|
Arzu Ünal
|
Festive Occasions and Festive Muslim Dress
|
12.00-13.30
|
Lunch break
|
Lunch is free but registration is required
|
13.30-14.00
|
Nina ter Laan
|
"When I hear Ahmed sing, I become another man": Islam-inspired Music in Morocco and Sonic Formations of a 'Moderate' Islam |
14.00-14.30 |
Kholoud Al-Ajarma
|
Singing of Mecca and the Pilgrimage in Morocco |
14.30-15.00 |
Cristina Moreno Almeida
|
Economic Censorship and Economies of Resistance: The Case of Rap Music in Morocco |
15.00-15.30 |
Break |
Coffee & tea |
15.30-16.00 |
Deborah Kapchan
|
Listening to the Islamic Sublime between Morocco and France |
16.00-17.00
|
Music In Practice |
Rap Stories from Casablanca to the Netherlands. A video presentation by Moroccan rapper Dizzy DROS |
17.00-17.30 |
Nathal M. Dessing
|
Closing remarks |
Have a look at the abstracts and bios of the speakers in the programme booklet. Hardcopies of the booklet will be available at the conference.
Participants
- Kholoud Al-Ajarma (University of Groningen)
- Rachel Brown (University of Victoria)
- Margreet van Es (Utrecht University)
- Johan Fischer (Roskilde University)
- Katharina Graf (SOAS)
- Deborah Kapchan (New York University)
- Nina ter Laan (Utrecht University)
- Cristina Moreno Almeida (Kings's College London)
- Laura Morlock (Ryerson University)
- Annelies Moors (University of Amsterdam)
- Pooyan Tamimi Arab (Utrecht University)
- Omar Souhaili (Moroccan rapper, songwriter and producer known by his stage name Dizzy Dros)
- Arzu Ünal (Boğaziçi University)
Convenors
The tenth annual conference of LUCIS is convened by Nathal Dessing, Bart Barendregt, Gabrielle van den Berg, and Cristiana Strava.
All are welcome but please make sure to register to secure your seat!