Working Groups committed to deep study of specific topics related to a given year’s national conference theme will be connected throughout the year through digital Collaborative Asynchronous Annotations and Marginal Conversations using Hypothesis software (web.hypothes.is). This software allows groups to collectively annotate and discuss web-based digital texts; they are asynchronous “conversations in the margins” of the texts. Working groups may schedule occasional meetings to be convened in person for those in the region or virtually via Zoom for those further away; sustained continuity of conversations will be maintained by the digital text annotation platform.
Digital texts and topics around which working groups will be formed:
Year 1: Epistemological Foundations
During the first year, three core texts will provide the foundational variables of the epistemology of traditional Islamic Theology and Philosophy. The Big Questions addressed with these groups will be “What is knowledge?”, “What is knowing?”, “What are the limits of what is knowable?”, and (most importantly) “How is certain knowledge obtained?”
- al-Muwaqqaf fī ʿilm al-kalām (author: al-Ījī, d. 1356 CE)
- Sharh al-Taftāzānī ʿalā al-ʿAqāʾid al-Nasafiyya (author: al-Taftāzānī, d. 1390 CE)
- Sharḥ al-Kubrā li al-Sanūsī (author: al-Sanūsī, d. 1490)
- Glossary of Technical Terms (author: Carl Sharif El-Tobgui—contemporary)