Presented By: Global Islamic Studies Center
Qahwah & Authors. Borícua Muslims with Ken Chitwood
Ken Chitwood, Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth
RSVP: https://myumi.ch/z9y1R
Date: November 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Location: UMMA Multipurpose Room
Join us on November 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM at UMMA Multipurpose Room for a conversation with Ken Chitwood on his new book Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam.
Drawing on years of ethnographic research and more than a hundred interviews conducted in Puerto Rico, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and online, Ken Chitwood tells the story of Puerto Rican Muslims as they construct a shared sense of peoplehood through everyday practices and historical reimaginings that complicate ideas about race, ethnicity, and religion in the Americas. Expanding the geography of global Islam and recasting the relationship between religion and Puerto Rican culture, “Borícua Muslims” reckons with the many entanglements of Latinx and Muslim identities amid late-modern globalization.
Joining us in conversation with Ken Chitwood will be University of Michigan Professors Sara Awartani, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, and Aliyah Khan (moderator).
Meet the speakers:
Ken Chitwood is a postdoctoral researcher pursuing Habilitation with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth. He is also an Affiliate Researcher with the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. His first monograph, The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean (2021) won the Religion News Association’s Best Nonfiction Book Award. His second book, Borícua Muslims: The Everyday Lives of Puerto Rican Converts to Islam is out now with the University of Texas Press (2025); and his third book, the edited anthology Engaged Spirituality: Stories of Religious Inspiration, Resilience, and Work for the Common Good is due out with Bloomsbury (2026). Chitwood’s academic work focuses on Islam and religion in the Americas, Latinx Muslims, Christian-Muslim relations, global Christianity, Muslim minorities, and ethnographic methods and manifestations of religion-beyond-religion in a global and digital age. He is also a working journalist; an editor of ReligionLink, a premier resource for journalists reporting on religion; and the current president of the Religion News Association (RNA).
Sara Awartani is an interdisciplinary historian at the University of Michigan whose research, publications, and teaching focus on twentieth-century U.S. social movements, interracial solidarities, policing, and American global power, with special attention to Latinx and Arab American histories. Her first book project, Solidarities of Liberation, Visions of Empire: Puerto Rico, Palestine, and American Global Power (under contract), chronicles a globally expansive story of Palestine liberation, Puerto Rican radicalism, and the United States' efforts to weaponize and police those freedom dreams. Awartani's research appears in a variety of peer-reviewed and public-facing forums, including Radical History Review; Kalfou: A Comparative Ethnic Studies Journal; Society & Space; Middle East Report; and” Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader.” Her research has received support across subfields, including the Puerto Rican Studies Association and the Arab American National Museum, with additional recognition by the Ford Foundation and the Latin American Studies Association.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009) and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (2021). His books of fiction include Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails (2005) and Abolición del pato (2015). He appears as Lola von Miramar in the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens.
Aliyah Khan (moderator) is Director of the Global Islamic Studies Center (GISC), and Associate Professor of English, and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She specializes academically in postcolonial Caribbean and Muslim literatures, and she has also published creative nonfiction in Guernica and various anthologies. Khan’s award-winning book Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (2020) is the first scholarly monograph on the comparative history, literature, and music of enslaved African Muslims and indentured Indian Muslims in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Her interviews have appeared in and on NPR, the Washington Post, Times of India, Sky TV (UK), NCN Guyana Broadcasting, Bayt al Fann, and other venues.
For more events from the Global Islamic Studies Center at the University of Michigan, please visit ii.umich.edu/islamicstudies
Accommodation: If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange. Email: -- islamicstudies@umich.edu
Date: November 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Location: UMMA Multipurpose Room
Join us on November 19, 2025 at 5:00 PM at UMMA Multipurpose Room for a conversation with Ken Chitwood on his new book Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam.
Drawing on years of ethnographic research and more than a hundred interviews conducted in Puerto Rico, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and online, Ken Chitwood tells the story of Puerto Rican Muslims as they construct a shared sense of peoplehood through everyday practices and historical reimaginings that complicate ideas about race, ethnicity, and religion in the Americas. Expanding the geography of global Islam and recasting the relationship between religion and Puerto Rican culture, “Borícua Muslims” reckons with the many entanglements of Latinx and Muslim identities amid late-modern globalization.
Joining us in conversation with Ken Chitwood will be University of Michigan Professors Sara Awartani, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, and Aliyah Khan (moderator).
Meet the speakers:
Ken Chitwood is a postdoctoral researcher pursuing Habilitation with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth. He is also an Affiliate Researcher with the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. His first monograph, The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean (2021) won the Religion News Association’s Best Nonfiction Book Award. His second book, Borícua Muslims: The Everyday Lives of Puerto Rican Converts to Islam is out now with the University of Texas Press (2025); and his third book, the edited anthology Engaged Spirituality: Stories of Religious Inspiration, Resilience, and Work for the Common Good is due out with Bloomsbury (2026). Chitwood’s academic work focuses on Islam and religion in the Americas, Latinx Muslims, Christian-Muslim relations, global Christianity, Muslim minorities, and ethnographic methods and manifestations of religion-beyond-religion in a global and digital age. He is also a working journalist; an editor of ReligionLink, a premier resource for journalists reporting on religion; and the current president of the Religion News Association (RNA).
Sara Awartani is an interdisciplinary historian at the University of Michigan whose research, publications, and teaching focus on twentieth-century U.S. social movements, interracial solidarities, policing, and American global power, with special attention to Latinx and Arab American histories. Her first book project, Solidarities of Liberation, Visions of Empire: Puerto Rico, Palestine, and American Global Power (under contract), chronicles a globally expansive story of Palestine liberation, Puerto Rican radicalism, and the United States' efforts to weaponize and police those freedom dreams. Awartani's research appears in a variety of peer-reviewed and public-facing forums, including Radical History Review; Kalfou: A Comparative Ethnic Studies Journal; Society & Space; Middle East Report; and” Critical Dialogues in Latinx Studies: A Reader.” Her research has received support across subfields, including the Puerto Rican Studies Association and the Arab American National Museum, with additional recognition by the Ford Foundation and the Latin American Studies Association.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009) and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (2021). His books of fiction include Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails (2005) and Abolición del pato (2015). He appears as Lola von Miramar in the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens.
Aliyah Khan (moderator) is Director of the Global Islamic Studies Center (GISC), and Associate Professor of English, and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She specializes academically in postcolonial Caribbean and Muslim literatures, and she has also published creative nonfiction in Guernica and various anthologies. Khan’s award-winning book Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean (2020) is the first scholarly monograph on the comparative history, literature, and music of enslaved African Muslims and indentured Indian Muslims in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Her interviews have appeared in and on NPR, the Washington Post, Times of India, Sky TV (UK), NCN Guyana Broadcasting, Bayt al Fann, and other venues.
For more events from the Global Islamic Studies Center at the University of Michigan, please visit ii.umich.edu/islamicstudies
Accommodation: If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange. Email: -- islamicstudies@umich.edu
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