The Western Indian Ocean Studies Program at Florida International University in Miami is pleased to announce the launch of its academic Khōjā Studies Listserv. Khōjā Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that connects religious studies, diaspora studies, and postcolonial studies to South Asian and African area studies within the framework of the Western Indian Ocean to answer historical questions of aesthetics, authority, identity, and the circulation of ideas across the littoral.

The listserv is particularly sensitive to providing full-text and PDFs of articles for scholars in the Global South and providing a platform for the expression of emic perspectives of the communities researched. Most importantly, what drives the listserv is intellectual curiosity that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

Western Indian Ocean Studies Department of Religious Studies (Florida International University) is a research collaboration among AIPS, CEIAS-CNRS, FIU, and SUZA which will promote multidisciplinary avenues of research into the dynamics of cosmopolitan religious identities in the western Indian Ocean region. Its purpose is three-fold: the preservation of texts, material culture, and oral traditions; international academic collaboration to share resources and expertise; and to publish original research and translations in English and French to develop the study the connection between South Asia and East Africa through its transnational littoral communities.

To sign up, please visit https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/khojastudies

For more information on Western Indian Ocean Studies at FIU, please visit http://khoja.fiu.edu/