Islam from the Ground Up

Current events and popular culture alike direct our attention to the centrality of discourse on the Islamic world. In this course, we examine the historical origins and development of Islamic religion and practice in light of the sources and communities that shaped them in a variety of contexts. The goals of this course are to learn the fundamentals of: how people have studied the Qur'an, the concept and development of "Shariah", sectarianism, approaches to gender and sexuality, and Muslim theology, philosophy, and mysticism in pre-modern and contemporary Muslim life.