Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria

An event to celebrate the launch of Rabiat Akande’s new book, Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria. Her book represents an important contribution to the study of colonialism, law and religion, and African and global legal history. It’s a beautifully written, carefully researched monograph that has already been having an impact in the field.
 
Three outstanding scholars will engage in conversation around this new book and in discussion with Rabiat Akande.

• Pamela Klassen, Chair, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto
• Sam Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale University
• Bonny Ibhawoh, Senator William McMaster Chair in Global Human Rights, McMaster University
• Questions about this event should be directed to the Colloquium convener, Benjamin Berger, BBerger@osgoode.yorku.ca.

About Rabiat Akande

In her recent book, Entangled Domains: Empire, Law and Religion in Northern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Dr. Akande investigates the case of the British imperial encounter in Colonial Northern Nigeria. In particular, the book chronicles contestations between British colonial officials, Christian missionaries, and indigenous Muslim elites over law’s governance religious difference, and grapples with the postcolonial legacy of those struggles. The book illuminates law’s centrality to one of modernity’s most contested issues–the relationship between religion, the state, and society–while also spotlighting law’s complex relationship with power, political theology, identity, and socio-political change.

Beyond Entangled Domains, Dr. Akande’s work has appeared in the American Journal of International Law (forthcoming), the Law and History Review, the Journal of Law and Religion, the Supreme Court Law Review, Die Welt des Islam (forthcoming), and in co-edited volumes published by or forthcoming with the Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Edward Elgar Publishing, University of Toronto Press, and the University of Virginia Press. Dr. Akande is currently at work on “Malcolm X, Black Globalism, and the Human Rights Critique of Imperialism,” a book project that investigates the globalist critique of imperialism that was central to Malcolm X’s thought in his last years and inspired by his visits to Africa and the Muslim World. She is also at work on a volume interrogating histories of the idea of the “international” in pre-colonial Africa.