Personally Speaking: Will Sherman, Ph.D.
“Singing with the Mountains: Narratives of God and Language in Islam and Afghanistan”
The final Personally Speaking series event of the year explores how down-on-their-luck messiahs and wandering poets in the sixteenth-century Afghan highlands challenge us to rethink what we know about Afghanistan, the history of Islam, and our relationship to the past and to language. Using research from the recently published Singing with the Mountains: The Language of God in the Afghan Highlands, William E. B. Sherman explores a remarkable Muslim movement known as the Roshaniyya—or the ‘illuminated ones’—who believed not only in following the word of God, but in making their own words divine and revelatory. Branded heretics whose story ended in a grim tower of skulls, the Roshaniyya nonetheless reflected a vibrant culture of religious experimentation that challenges the ways we usually narrate the histories of religion, identity, and ethnicity in Afghanistan. Their story echoes across Central and South Asia, where people asked what language—whether in the vernacular or God’s own speech—could reveal about who we are and what we might become. This book invites us to return imaginatively to that world of saints and visionaries, not just to recover a forgotten past, but to challenge our narrow ideas of Islam, limited understanding of Afghanistan, and our apocalyptic anxieties.
Will Sherman, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director in the Department of Religious Studies. He earned his doctorate from Stanford University. His research explores how Muslim communities of the past tested the edges of language through revelation, magic, mystical speech, poetry and translation. Sherman has published on the link between religious language and the
socio-political emergence of Afghanistan as a nation-state, on Christian-Muslim debates, on revelation, and on the history of Qur’anic “imitation.”
Additional Research
The author welcomes questions and comments about the topic and, although it is not necessary to read anything before the event, we refer you to additional research for more in-depth coverage:
Books
William Sherman, Singing with the Mountains: The Language of God in the Afghan Highlands (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2023).
William Sherman, Islam and Race in Afghanistan: From the ‘Lost Tribes’ to Contemporary Imaginations In The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Race, edited by Zain Abdullah. London: Routledge (2025)
William Sherman and Ahoo Najafian, trans. The Divine Tragedy of ‘Attar (forthcoming IB Tauris 2026) (Translation of a major Sufi Persian epic from the 13th century)
Journal Articles
William Sherman, Romance on the Afghan Frontier: Desire in the Literature of the Church Missionary Society in Peshawar. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Vol. 49, #6 (2021): 1021-1046. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2021.1950325.
William Sherman, Finding the Qur’an in Imitation: Critical Mimesis from Musaylima to Finnegans Wake.” ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies. Fall 2024.
Other Attention
Worrall, Kevin. 2022. “When Pashto Became Divine.” Edinburgh University Press Blog, May 27.
Event Facts, Parking and Accessibility
“Singing with the Mountains: Narratives of God and Language in Islam and Afghanistan”
Will Sherman, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Religious Studies
Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Time: 5:15 p.m., with a light reception at 4:15 p.m.
Location: J. Murrey Atkins Library, Halton Room
9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223
Please note the event is on Wednesday in 2025-2026
Open to the public at no charge
Parking: pats.charlotte.edu; The two closest parking locations are the Cone Deck and the Union Deck adjacent to the Popp Martin Student Union. (Look for arrows on the map.) Please read about the library’s accessibility support and contact chess-events@charlotte.edu if you have an accessibility issue directly related to Personally Speaking.
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Now in its 16th Season, the Personally Speaking published-expert series highlights the recent research findings of our talented faculty. Presenters have each been selected by a committee of their peers to represent a sampling of the broad interdisciplinary work being conducted within the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences. Presenters also have a knack for sharing their personal inspirations in a way that thoroughly engages their audiences—who are invited to reciprocate after the presentation. In this way, the College aims to build new connections between our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and members of the Charlotte community. The series is a partnership of the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences with J. Murrey Atkins Library. Presentations may be recorded, but are usually not livestreamed.
