Islam and the Humanities & Islam and the Liberal Arts
Tariq al-Jamil is associate professor of religion and chair of the department of religion at Swarthmore College. He is also coordinator of Swarthmore's Islamic Studies Program. al-Jamil is an expert on medieval Islamic social history and law, with a particular focus on Shi'ism. He has conducted research on Sunni-Shi'i relations and addresses issues related to the academic study of Islam and the social history of Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. His published works and research interests include: Islam and inter-communal violence, pre-modern religious identity, religious dissimulation, the transmission of knowledge in Islam, and women in Islamic jurisprudence. He is the author of Power and Knowledge in Medieval Islam (I.B. Tauris 2017). Al-Jamil received his B.A. from Oberlin College, M.T.S. from Harvard University, and M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri '94 is professor of religion and humanities at Reed College. GhaneaBassiri focuses on Islamic social and intellectual history in the classical and modern periods, Islam in America, material dimensions of religion, and religious diversity in US history. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (Cambridge 2010). In 2006 he was named a Carnegie Scholar and in 2012 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. GhaneaBassiri received his B.A. From Claremont McKenna College in 1994, and his A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Professors Tariq al-Jamil and Kambiz GhaneaBassiri's Athenaeum conversation is co-sponsored by the Kutten Lectureship in Religious Studies at CMC.