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Modern Islam

The Department of Religious Studies offers graduate students the opportunity to study modern Islam (which we define principally as the colonial era to the present) in a vibrant interdisciplinary setting. Our program’s approach emphasizes how the study of modern Islam intersects with key subfields in Religious Studies, especially religion and politics, religion and law, and religion and race. Graduate students in modern Islam work primarily with Brannon Ingram, whose research interests include Sufism, law, and politics in modern South Asia, the history of Islamic education, modern Qur’anic hermeneutics, and how Muslims have debated and contested the category of ‘religion’. While the department’s study of modern Islam focuses geographically on South Asia, Northwestern University is also one of the premier institutions for the study of Islam in Africa. Graduate students interested in Islam in Africa can benefit from the Program of African Studies (one of the oldest in the United States), the Herskovits Africana Library, the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa (ISITA), and the Program in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Studies.

Core Faculty

Support Faculty