Usmon Boron

My research focuses on the interplay between tradition, secularity, and the modern state. My current book project, entitled “In the Shadow of Tradition: Soviet Secularism and Islamic Revival in Kyrgyzstan,” explores the conceptual and affective legacy of Soviet secularism against the backdrop of the ongoing Islamic revival in Kyrgyzstan. Demonstrating how Soviet secularization transformed the Islamic tradition in Central Asia and how Soviet secular concepts inflect the religiosities of post-Soviet Muslims, this project illuminates hitherto unexamined affinities between liberal and communist instantiations of secular modernity. Some results of my research are forthcoming as an article in the Comparative Studies in Society and History journal.

I received my PhD from the University of Toronto in 2022. I have taught courses on religion, secularism, and the Islamic tradition at McGill University, University of Toronto, and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Publications:

Forthcoming: “‘And I Believe in Signs’: Soviet Secularity and Islamic Tradition in Kyrgyzstan.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 66, no. 2 (April 2024).