Mahan Mirza, Ph.D. ABD Yale University

I am delighted to be joining the faculty in the Religious Studies Department this fall 07. With a specialization in the texts and traditions of Islam, I anticipate teaching a broad range of courses on Islam and its development in history, Islamic thought and spirituality, the Qur’ān, and Islam in the modern world.

My dissertation consists of a close reading of the works of the medieval Muslim scientist and polymath al-Bīrūnī (d. ca. 1050). By looking at his explicit statements as well as reading in-between the lines, the work investigates Bīrūnī’s worldview and method of inquiry, with special attention to the conflict between reason and revelation. The dissertation contributes towards more general questions of medieval Islamic thought and its relationship to modernity. These larger questions are relevant for the study of contemporary Islam in a global as well as western context. To this end, I have recently edited a special issue of The Muslim World on the theme of “Contemporary American Discourses on Islam: The Politics of Representation,” which is available online by subscription at: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/muwo/97/1. Another project with which I am currently engaged is serving as the Assistant Editor for an Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought with Princeton University Press. My future research interest is in the direction of examining the use of the Qur’ān by Islamic revivalist movements as a vehicle for the revitalization of faith in the modern world.

Resume

Syllabi