The Symposium was a huge success! Read about it here.
The Corinne True Center for Bahá’í History is pleased to announce a symposium on the history of the Bahá’í religion, looking at its growth and development in eastern countries, western countries, and the global south. The symposium will be held at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton on Friday, April 10, 2026. It is cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), the Department of History, the Department of Judaic Studies (Religious Studies Minor), the Department of Middle Eastern and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (MEAMS), the Translation Research and Instruction Program (TRIP), and the Center for Middle East and North Africa Studies (CMENAS) at Binghamton University.
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All sessions will occur in the Conference Room of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), Library North (LN) 1106, next to the elevators to Library Tower on the main campus of Binghamton University.
FRIDAY, APRIL 10
9:00-9:15: Welcome by Katie Sorenson (Associate Director of IASH, Binghamton University) and Omid Ghaemmaghami (Binghamton University / Corinne True Center)
9:15 – 10:45: Panel 1, African American Intellectuals and the Bahá’í Faith
Chair: Juliana Góes (Department of Sociology, Binghamton University)
Aaron Yates (Denison University), “Race, Religion, and Resistance: Du Bois, Gregory, and Locke on the Struggle to End Racism”
Guy Emerson Mount (Wake Forest University), “Elsewheres, Nowheres, and the World Ending Tendencies Within W.E.B. Du Bois’s Religious Thought”
10:45-11:00: Break
11:00-12:30: Panel 2: The Practice and Application of History
Chair: Jonathan Karp (Department of History, Binghamton University)
Louis Venters (Francis Marion University), “Blackness, Modernity, and World Orders: Contemporary History That Bahá’ís Can Use”
Otha Malik Nash (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), “History as a Translative Process: A Reflection on Practice”
2:00-3:30: Panel 3: History and Context of Some Bahá’í Authoritative Texts
Chair: Kent Schull (Center for Middle East and North Africa Studies (CMENAS), Binghamton University)
Omid Ghaemmaghami (Binghamton University of the State University of New York). “‘A Copy of the Book of the Baub of Akka’: The Nineteenth Century Journey from Acre to Tehran to New York of the Bahá’í Religion’s Most Important Text”
Mina Yazdani (Eastern Kentucky University), “A Nineteenth Century Persian Text on Political Philosophy: The Text and Context of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Risáliy-i-Síyásíyyih (1893)”
3:30-3:45: Break
3:45-5:15: Panel 4: Development of the Bahá’í Communities in the United States and East Africa
Chair: Nate Mathews (Department of Africana Studies, Binghamton University)
Janice Ndegwa (Stanford University), “ ‘A Deadly War Was Going on Within My Divided Self’: The Bahá’í Faith During the Anti-Colonial and Independence Moment in East Africa”
Robert H. Stockman (Indiana University), “Demography of the American Bahá’í Community, 1894 to the Present”
5:15: Closing Remarks by Robert Stockman (Indiana University / Corinne True Center)