Qur’anic Studies: Methodology and Hermeneutics (IQSA)

Call For Papers: This unit aims to understand and contextualise the methods and hermeneutics applied to the Qur’anic text, both historical and contemporary. The Methodology and Hermeneutics unit addresses questions that might implicitly govern other units, such as: What is Qur’anic Studies, and how does the study of the Qur’an differ from the study of its interpretation? What are the methodological differences between descriptive and normative approaches to the text? How does context (intellectual, social, ethical, historical) affect hermeneutical approaches to the text? The unit welcomes papers addressed to the hermeneutics and methods of particular schools of interpretation or thought, and also on hermeneutics as applied to specific subjects or concepts such as social justice and gender. This year the Methodology and Hermeneutics unit additionally invites submissions with a special focus on European hermeneutics and the Qur’an. The predominantly European tradition of 20th century hermeneutics that is exemplified by such seminal figures as Dilthey, Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, Tillich, and Ricoeur has produced a rich and sustained inquiry into the possibilities of an epistemology of, and an interpretive methodology for, “the text.” Interrogating the very relationship between the reader and the text, this hermeneutical tradition has offered insights into the nature of language, readership, reception, discourse as event, interpretive predispositions, and “worlds” opened up by the text. To what extent do these insights have implications for our understanding of the Qur’an? What insights from the European tradition have had resonance with scholars of the Qur’an, and have prior attempts to incorporate such insights been successful?

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