Description of
the Program and its Initiatives
The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at
Stanford University seeks to facilitate and promote the study of
Islamic cultures and societies, including history from the
beginnings of Islam to the twenty-first century, systematic study
of Islamic social contexts, the religion of Islam in all its
internal complexity, and the diversity of human experience as seen
in literature and the arts originating in societies affected by
Islamic civilizations.
The Abbasi Program is the central forum for interdisciplinary
research and teaching in Islamic Studies at Stanford. The global
extent of Islam and the growth of its diasporas require that the
program cover large geographical regions such as the Middle East,
Central, Southern, and Southeast Asia, many parts of Africa and
southeastern Europe, and minority communities spread throughout
Western Europe and the Americas. In addition to geographical
breadth, Islamic Studies at Stanford promotes the use of varied
scholarly resources from the humanities and the social
sciences.
Participating faculty and students bring perspectives and
methods from numerous academic fields, including anthropology, art
history, economics, history, international relations, languages,
law, literature, philosophy, political science, religious studies,
and the study of women and gender. The program coordinates and
promotes the offering of undergraduate courses and graduate work
leading to a Ph.D. in several departments in the School of
Humanities and Sciences. The Program complements Stanford
inter-departmental offerings in Islamic Studies by a rich variety
of conferences, workshops, and public events.
With endowment gifts from Sohaib and Sara Abbasi and from
Lysbeth Warren Anderson and matching funds from The William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation, the program is a priority at Stanford and
integral to the university’s initiative in international
studies.
Affiliated Faculty and
Scholars
AFFILIATED FACULTY
AFRICAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES
Salem Aweiss -- Arabic
Khalil Barhoum -- Arabic, Arabic literature, Arab culture
Ravi Dhillon -- Punjabi
Shahla Fahimi -- Persian
Khalid Obeid -- Arabic
Nalan Ozisik -- Turkish
Ramzi Salti -- Arabic
ANTHROPOLOGY
Alma Kunanbaeva -- Central Asian myth and literature, Kazakh
language
ARCHAEOLOGY
Ian Hodder -- Archaeology, archaeological theory, excavations at
Catalhoyuk in central Turkey
ART HISTORY
Bissera Pentcheva -- Byzantine and Medieval art
FRENCH
Elisabeth Boyi -- Intellectuals and cultural debates in France and
the Francophone world
HISTORY
Joel Beinin-- Modern Middle East, modern Egypt, Arab-Israeli
conflict
Robert Crews -- Muslim communities in the Russian empire and
Central Asia
Sean Hanretta -- Islam in Africa, African history, African
religions
Kathryn Miller -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Medieval
Spain, medieval science and medicine, commerce and diplomacy,
Christian and Islamic law in the Middle Ages
Richard Roberts -- Social history of West Africa before and during
colonial rule
Aron Rodrigue -- Ottoman Empire, Jews in the Middle East, Sephardi
Jewry, Jewish-Muslim interactions
Priya Satia -- Modern British History, Colonialism and
Imperialism
POLITICAL SCIENCE
Lisa Blaydes -- Authoritarian Regimes, Electoral Systems,
Egypt
David Laitin -- Comparative Politics, Ethnic Conflicts,
Somalia
RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Shahzad Bashir -- Sufi Islam, Persianate Islamic Societies
Robert Gregg -- early Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpretations
of scriptures, religions of late antiquity
Behnam Sadeghi -- Islamic Religion, Islam's first two
centuries
SPANISH & PORTUGUESE
Vincent Barletta -- Ibero-Muslim Culture, Andalusi Literature,
Aljamiado Literature, Early Modern Iberia and the Maghreb
AFFILIATED SCHOLARS
Michael Cooperson (Visiting Professor, Abbasi Program in Islamic
Studies; Professor of Arabic, UCLA)
John B. Dunlop (Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Interim
Director) -- Russia and Islam
John Eilts (Curator, Islamic and Middle Eastern Collections,
Stanford University Libraries)
Donald Emmerson(Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for
International Studies) -- History, politics, economics of Southeast
Asia
Heather Ferguson (Postdoctoral Fellow, Abbasi Program in Islamic
Studies & Department of History) -- Comparative early modern
empires, Ottoman social and cultural history, discursive projects
and vocabularies of power, Islamic legal history, identity
formation in the Arab provinces
Gail Lapidus (Senior Fellow, Emerita, Freeman Spogli Institute) --
Ethnic conflict in the former Soviet Union, the Russian-Chechen
war, Soviet society, politics and foreign policy
Alan Mikhail (Mellon Scholar in the Humanities, Stanford
University; Assistant Professor, Department of History, Yale
University ) -- Ottoman Empire, Early-Modern Islamic History,
Environmental History, History of Islamic Science and
Medicine
Abbas Milani (Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; Director of the
Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies) -- Islam and the West
== The Abbasi Program in the News ==
"Stanford conference on
Afghanistan, Pakistan draws passion, anger"
Afghan and Pakistani Scholars
Hold Panel on Region
A hard look at the future of
Islam: Overflow crowd attends inaugural lecture
Other
information
The Abbasi Program's website
[1]
The Abbasi Program's Facebook Page (Group Name: The Abbasi Program
in Islamic Studies)
[2]
Sohaib Abbasi's Biography
[3]
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