Conference program
Conference venue: Harris Hall 108 (Leopold Room), 1881 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, IL
Faculty CONFERENCE convened by Professors Scott Sowerby, Jonathan BRACK, and Rajeev KINRA on Friday and Saturday, April 24-25, 2026
"Religious Pluralism and Rulership in Early Modern Eurasia"
Program:
Friday, April 24
9:00-9:45am: Welcome, coffee, continental breakfast
9:45-10:00am: Opening remarks
10:00-11:30am: PANEL 1 (Chair: Usman Hamid)
Supriya Gandhi, “Temporalities of Tolerance: Mughal Political Discourse under Akbar”
Giancarlo Casale, “Translation and Religious Pluralism from the Mongols to the Ottomans”
11:30am-12:00pm: BREAK
12:00-2:00pm: LUNCH and KEYNOTE
Alan Strathern, “Analogues of Secularity: Managing Religious Pluralism in Pre-modern Eurasia” (lunch served at noon, lecture to begin at ~12:30)
2:15-3:45pm: PANEL 2 (Chair: Haley Bowen)
Mayte Green-Mercado, “Morisco Political Ideas and the Limits of Sovereignty in the Early Modern Mediterranean”
Owen Stanwood, “A Pluralistic Empire: French Overseas Expansion in an Age of Religious War, 1553-1568”
3:45-4:00pm: BREAK
4:00-5:30pm: PANEL 3 (Chair: Alexandra Montero Peters)
Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer, “Strategic Pluralism: Sectarian Politics, Pragmatism, and the Limits of Ottoman Sunnism in the Early Modern Middle East”
Evan Haefeli, “Religious Pluralism and the Empires of the Atlantic World”
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Saturday, April 25
10:00-10:30am: Coffee, continental breakfast
10:30am-12:00pm: PANEL 4 (Chair: Jonathan Brack)
Sarah Rindlisbacher Thomi, “Unity in Discord: Confessional Division and Diplomacy in Early Modern Switzerland”
Scott Sowerby, “Segmented Toleration in Early Modern European Empires”
12:00-1:00pm: LUNCH
1:00-2:30pm: PANEL 5 (Chair: Alexander Barna)
Robert Travers, “‘Calling out to Gentoos and Mussulmen to bear witness’: Hindus, Muslims and conceptions of the people in late eighteenth-century Bengal”
Rajeev Kinra, “Mughal Pluralism and the European Enlightenment”