Prof. Jason Welle Gives Presentation on Ṣūfism at AAR Annual Meeting

At the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Prof. Jason Welle OFM, Visiting Lecturer at PISAI, delivered a paper entitled, “Listening at Keyholes to the Heart: The Pious Sensorium of Early Ṣūfī Samāʿ.”  This presentation for the AAR’s Islamic Mysticism Group expands upon Prof. Welle’s doctoral research on the Ṣūfī master Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021).  In the paper, Prof. Welle brought some contemporary anthropological approaches toward sensory studies into engagement with Arabic texts describing samāʿ sessions during Ṣūfism’s formative period.  The AAR is the largest professional organization of religion scholars in the world, regularly drawing ten thousand professors, graduate students, and independent researchers to its annual meeting, held this year from 19-22 November in San Antonio, Texas.