KD Thompson

@phdeviant

Evjue-Bascom Professor in the Humanities at UW-Madison | Religious Studies | Researching language, identity, & Islamic media in East Africa May all beings find peace.

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KD Thompson@phdeviant· 9d

KD Thompson@phdeviant· 10d

Join us Aug. 19 for an online Idea Exchange on Pedagogies of Language Destandardization. Bring your assignments, activities, questions, and ideas as we think collectively about language justice in teaching. Free and open to all. #LanguageJustice #Pedagogy #Raciolinguistics

Flyer for an online event titled Idea Exchange: Pedagogies of Language Destandardization. The event will take place on Wednesday, August 19, at 3:00 p.m. Central Time via Zoom. The virtual coffee hour invites educators, students, and scholars to share assignments, classroom activities, and teaching approaches related to language, standardization, linguistic inequality, and language justice. The goal is to exchange practical ideas for bringing critical perspectives on language into pedagogical practice. The discussion will be moderated by Jonathan Larson, Assistant Professor of Education at Grinnell College and a member of the LSJ Working Group. The event is free and open to all interested participants.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· 12d

Finally got a paddle board

A child with red hair kneeling on a blue paddleboard on a calm lake, seen from behind. They are wearing a life vest, water shoes, and holding a paddle across the board as they look out toward a distant tree-lined shore under a clear sky.

A selfie of a smiling person with glasses and short hair standing on a paddleboard. In the water next to the blue board behind her, a child wearing a life jacket is happily swimming.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· 22d

Upcoming event: Queer & Trans Muslim Experiences of Faith and Identity Across Borders, a space to explore religion, gender, sexuality, migration, & belonging. All genders, orientations, & faith backgrounds welcome. 28 Aug, 5PM Eastern. Register: tinyurl.com/yn335jpa

Flyer for “Queer and Trans Muslim Experiences of Faith and Identity Across Borders.” The flyer features a green and white color scheme with the themes “Religion, Gender, Sexuality, Migration, Belonging.” It invites participants to a welcoming space for exploring faith, identity, and belonging across borders, emphasizing that all genders, sexual orientations, and faith backgrounds are welcome. The event takes place on Friday, August 28 at 5:00 p.m. at Glad Day Lit, 32 Lisgar Street, Toronto. The flyer includes logos for OCASI’s Positive Spaces Initiative, Glad Day Lit, and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, along with contact information and a registration link.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jul 7

Spotted in a Kenyan bookstore ☺️

Someone’s holding a copy of Gendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean: Islam, Marriage, and Sexuality on the Swahili Coast (edited by Erin E. Stiles and Katrina Daly Thompson), in front of a bookshelf in a bookshop. The cover shows a henna-decorated hand with red bangles against an orange fabric background.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jul 7

A carved wooden doorway with turquoise tile trim in Zanzibar, topped with the text ‘Happy World Swahili Day / Siku ya Kiswahili Duniani,’ opening into a small shop with fruit and baskets on display

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jul 5

Post-vacation hammock time

POV from a hammock, looking down at crossed legs in black and white daisy-print pants and black sandals, feet propped on the hammock’s colorful pink, orange, and purple striped fabric. A leafy green backyard, a yellow house, and a picnic table are visible in the background under dappled sunlight.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jun 16

I wish my feet could look like this forever

A person’s two feet resting on a gray surface, both decorated with intricate henna designs of similar age but different types. The upper foot displays reddish-pink henna with floral and butterfly patterns across the top and ankle. The lower foot shows warm brown henna with large floral and scroll designs along the ankle and foot. The person is wearing jeans, and a beige textile is visible in the background.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jun 7

Post-Tanzania hammock time

Legs in black pants resting in a striped hammock, feet adorned with henna designs and wearing black Birkenstock sandals, with a yellow clapboard building and garden visible in the background.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jun 3

It strikes Nick as strange, how few languages he understands. One and a half human ones. Not a single word of all the other living, speaking things. But what these men chant Nick half grasps, and when the songs are finished, he adds, Amen, if only because it may be the single oldest word he knows. The older the word, the more likely it is to be both useful and true. —Richard Powers, The Overstory

KD Thompson@phdeviant· May 30

Finally

KD Thompson@phdeviant· May 27

Pleased to publish with my graduate student Lilian Abunga in Assessing Language Proficiency Around the World (Wiley, Jan 2027). Our Swahili assessment chapter will be in this landmark volume. Pre-order at wiley.com. Code AJK26 for 20% off until October.

Book announcement for Wiley’s “Assessing Language Proficiency Around the World,” edited by Antony John Kunnan and Cecilia Guanfang Zhao, with Assistant Editor Coral Yiwei Qin. Publication January 2027. ISBN 978-1-394-34517-5. Includes promotional code AJK26 for 20% off pre-orders through October 5, 2026. Book cover features abstract colorful design in orange, blue, and purple.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· May 19

Nimefika

KD Thompson@phdeviant· May 6

New book coming soon 📖 The Autonomous Language Learning Toolkit (Routledge): research‑based tools for autonomous language learners, mentors, and educators. Cover reveal below 👇

Illustrated book cover showing a large pink brain filled with interlocking gears in blue, green, yellow, and navy, adjusted by a large wrench held by a human figure. The imagery suggests problem‑solving and learning processes. Text reads: “The Autonomous Language Learning Toolkit: A Guide for Learners, Educators, and Mentors” by K.D. Thompson and Adeola Agoke, published by Routledge.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Apr 24

Weekend plans

Person relaxing in a colorful striped hammock outdoors on a sunny day, legs extended and wearing black flip-flops and black-and-white floral pants, with a yellow garage, green spring trees, and blue sky in the background.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Apr 17

A mountain cur mix pretending sitting strangely

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Apr 10

It’s library book booty day again.

A pile of library books on top of a keffiyeh

SOUTH AFRICAN KEYWORDS
NICK SHEPHERD & STEVEN Robins

Ann Oakley SEX, GENDER & SOCIETY

Desai & MASQUELIER
CRITICAL TERMS FOR THE STUDY OF AFRICA

SWAHILI-ENGLISH DICTIONARY

A HANDBook OF THE SWAHILI LANGUAGE

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Apr 7

Today, the WI Democratic Muslim & Jewish Caucuses are standing together for Salah Sarsour, a Milwaukee neighbor jailed far from his family. This is interfaith witness.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Muslim and Jewish Caucuses Condemn ICE Detention of ISM President Salah Sarsour
We are the Muslim and Jewish Caucuses of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. We do not always agree; we hold that in honesty and without apology.
Today, we are united in condemning the detention and planned deportation of Salah Sarsour — President of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. Salah is a husband, father, grandfather, and Wisconsin neighbor for over 30 years.
Today he sits in a jail in southern Indiana, far from his family and community, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming Salah "poses an adverse consequence to foreign policy considerations."
With this White House's policies of open bigotry, it is clear that Salah was targeted for political motivations based on being a Palestinian-American and his advocacy for his community.
We decry the Trump Administration's continued detention, which they justify with character attacks designed to villainize him and pit our two communities against one another.
This is not justice.
We say clearly, together: this is wrong, and we will not be silent.
We come together in a rare moment from a place of shared faith. Both of our traditions - regardless of nationality, religion, or politics — are created in dignity and deserving justice.
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said: "All mankind is from Adam and Eve; an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab."
The Jewish concept of b'zelem Elohim - that every person is created in the image of God - demands that we see the divine dignity and worth in Salah Sarsour. When that is lost, every person's freedom is threatened.
The First Amendment protects the speech that power finds inconvenient, for everyone. When the government uses its authority to silence voices it disagrees with — as in the cases of Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Salah Sarsour — it is an unconstitutional attack on all of our freedoms.
Nothing is more American, more Jewish, or more Muslim than b…

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 25

Grateful for another Eid celebration with friends at the home of @govevers.wisconsin.gov — inshallah he’ll be vetoing SB446 later this week & safeguarding free speech in Wisconsin.

The neoclassical white façade of the Wisconsin Governor’s Executive Residence, featuring tall fluted columns, a grand portico with a hanging lantern, an arched transom window above the entrance, and steps with black iron railings, photographed from below against a blue sky with wispy clouds.

A navy blue button pinned to a cream knit sweater, reading ‘VETO’ in gold text above a megaphone icon, with ‘AB 446 / SB 445’ printed along the bottom, worn at an Eid reception for Wisconsin’s Muslims at the Wisconsin Governor’s Executive Residence.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 23

Calling all queer Muslims over the age of 18! Reem is conducting research associated with The Ayah Project to construct a Queer Muslims needs assessment to better understand the experiences and needs of queer Muslims across the U.S. If you are interested, email ritani2@wisc.edu for more information!

A purple promotional flyer for ‘A Queer Muslim Needs Assessment’ by Reem Itani, UW–Madison, featuring three polaroid-style photos of Pride demonstrators holding signs reading ‘Trans Muslims Are Everywhere’ and ‘Imaan LGBTQI Muslims.’ The flyer lists four bullet points: one 30-minute interview, one 6-minute survey, completely anonymous, and email ritani2@wisc.edu for more info.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 22

Grounded
The stories all forget that the Buddha was just a man sitting beneath a tree in the middle of the night, weathering the storm of his thoughts and fears, each one demanding: Who do you think you are? His simple answer: to reach down and touch the earth, feel the wet hair of the grasses, the smooth skin of sandy soil beneath his hand. And so I say to myself: Ground yourself here.
Pick up a single dead oak leaf, if that's all you can do, and turn it this way and that, so the leathery surface gleams in thin winter light, so that the earth, which you are, can welcome you back.
—James Crews, from Breathing Room

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 20

A digital illustration of four young Muslims standing together in prayer, heads bowed, wearing diverse head coverings including hijabs and kufis. The text ‘Eid mubarak!’ appears above in bold yellow lettering against a black background.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 17

Issue 94:1 of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion is now out, and an image from my article is on the cover! 😊 doi.org/10.1093/jaar...

Cover image
ON THE COVER: Amina Sadiki, a member of Wadau wa Radio Nuur (The Patrons of Radio Nuur), posing with her radio after an interview with K.D. Thompson in Tanga, Tanzania, July 2024. Photograph taken and provided by K.D. Thompson. In "A Woman Is Not Created Mute: An Ethnography of Gender and Voice on Islamic Radio in Tanga, Tanzania," published in this issue of the JAAR, K.D. Thompson explores how Muslims navigate theological and social constraints on women's participation in Islamic radio, theorizing
"voice" as both acoustic and symbolic, showing how involvement with Islamic radio can simultaneously reinforce and reconfigure gender norms, and arguing that women's vocal presence on Islamic radio constitutes a form of religious agency that is neither wholly resistant nor wholly compliant but situated within evolving moral and institutional frameworks.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 14

CFP for @americananthro.bsky.social panel on ethnographic work from the Swahili Coast/East Africa. Themes: memory, authority, belonging, verge-like moments. Send title + 300-word abstract to kd.thompson@wisc.edu by 1 April. Open to scholars at all stages. Join us! @afaa-africananthro.bsky.social

Call for Papers for a panel "On the Verge: Ethnographic Worlds Along the Swahili Coast and Beyond."

We invite paper submissions for a proposed panel at the 2026 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Our panel brings together ethnographers working along the Swahili Coast and across East Africa whose research explores lives lived in moments of transition, tension, anticipation, or emergence. We are especially interested in scholarship that examines how people articulate meaning, identity, authority, and belonging as they navigate shifting social, political, ecological, and moral landscapes.

The 2026 theme, On the Verge, speaks to thresholds—political, environmental, technological, and affective. Across East Africa and the wider Indian Ocean world, communities confront climate precarity and its tipping points; reconfigured mobilities and global realignments; transformations in media, religion, gender, and kinship; and evolving forms of state power, economic possibility, and collective imagination. These conditions make the coast and hinterland sites where endings and beginnings hinge on one another, and where ethnography must dwell in the unstable space in between.

This panel asks:

How do people along the Swahili Coast—and in East Africa more broadly—live, narrate, theorize, and navigate such verge-like conditions?

We welcome papers that engage one or more of the following (non-exhaustive) themes:

Memory, history, and the poetics of belonging
Gender, authority, and emergent forms of Islamic or Christian practice
Indian Ocean mobilities, diaspora, and transoceanic imaginaries
Media worlds, sound, and communicative politics
Climate precarity, ecological knowledge, and coastal futures
Race, biopolitics, and the shifting terms of global power
Everyday negotiations of state authority and institutional fragility
Fiction, storytelling, and narrative ethnography as analytic tools

The panel will include the following papers:

• Rachel Maina, University of Wisconsin–Madison — On the Verge of Memory: Narrating Swahili‑Chinese Identity through Ethnography and Fiction

This paper examines how residents of Siyu, in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago, narrate Chinese ancestry through intersecting oral histories, fragments of memory, and literary representation. By pairing ethnographic interviews with The Dragonfly Sea, Maina shows how Swahili‑Chinese identity emerges not as fixed lineage but as a narrative practice through which communities reinterpret Indian Ocean histories to negotiate belonging in the present.

• K.D. Thompson, University of Wisconsin–Madison — “Our Jamvi Has Pens and Papers”: Metapragmatic Authority and Women’s Islamic Pedagogy on the Swahili Coast

This paper analyzes how women broadcasters on Radio Nuur in Tanga, Tanzania, transform a feminized domestic speech genre—conversation on the jamvi—into a platform for public Islamic pedagogy. Through metapragmatic labor, strategic vocal stance, and the crafting of a discursive sitara, Thompson shows how domestic communicative authority is scaled into the public sphere while navigating the institutional limits placed on women’s religious voice.

We welcome additional ethnographically grounded papers from scholars at any career stage whose work touches the Swahili Coast, mainland East Africa, or related transoceanic worlds. We especially encourage submissions from graduate students, early‑career scholars, and researchers based in East Africa.

To submit:

Please send a paper title, 300‑word abstract, affiliation, and contact information to

📧kd.thompson@wisc.edu

by 1 April 2026.

If you have questions about fit or wish to discuss your idea, please reach out. We look forward to building a vibrant conversation on verges, thresholds, and emergent futures across the Swahili and East African worlds.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 5

“Africa is not what it is because of what it is like. Africa is what it is because of what the world is like, and vice versa. So we study Africa to understand the world.” — Elísio Macamo

A sepia-colored globe showing Africa. Photo by James Wiseman on Unsplash

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Mar 3

Library book booty

A stack of four library books resting on a patterned textile surface. From top to bottom: Rhetoric and Demagoguery by Roberts-Miller; And God Knows the Soldiers by Abou El Fadl; Mass Communication & Development; and Everyday Media Culture in Africa, edited by Wendy Willems and Winston Mano.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Feb 27

Speaking at tonight’s Muslim faculty & staff Iftar on Ramadhan’s lessons for non-Muslims.

KD Thompson, a person with an asymmetrical haircut and pink hair, wearing an abaya and prayer beads, standing at a podium and speaking into a microphone.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Feb 22

On the nose.

Duolingo app screenshot showing an Arabic translation exercise. The prompt reads “Translate this sentence” with Arabic text and a Duolingo character. Word tiles at the bottom read: I, am, always, hungry, in, the, afternoon, during, Ramadan.

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Feb 19

Reading The Book of Eights after suhur (as one does) and found this little guy drawn in the margins.

Simple line drawing of a cartoon figure on a white background, positioned in the lower right. The figure has a round bald head, large round eyes, two large ears, and a small curved mouth

KD Thompson@phdeviant· Jan 4

Yesterday I had the beautiful experience of seeing one of my graduate students get married and welcoming her new husband to our extended family. May they be blessed with many years together!