The Alwaleed Bin Talal Seminar in Islamic Studies brings experts from an array of disciplines within the field of Islamic studies to Harvard. These seminars are meant to bolster intellectual engagement within the field of Islamic studies more broadly on the Harvard campus, and to allow students to engage with cutting-edge insights and scholarship on Islam and Islamic studies. The seminar series serves as an educational opportunity for students, researchers, and faculty to interact and learn in a seminar-style setting from world class experts on topics ranging from Islamic philosophy, Islamic history, Islamic law, Sufism, Arabic and Qur'anic studies and modern Islamic thought.
Spring 2022
Sohaira Siddiqui, Associate Professor of Theology, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar
Co-sponsors: Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and Department of South Asian Studies
Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion, Smith College
Co-sponsors: Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Frank Griffel, Louis M. Rabinowitz Professor of Islamic Studies, Yale University
Co-sponsors: Department of Philosophy and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Fall 2021
Reflections on Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate
Thursday, September 30, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Mohammed Bashir Salau, Professor of History, University of Mississippi
Co-sponsor: Department of African and African American Studies
Mimesis and Mythos in Aristotelian Arabic Poetics
Thursday, October 21, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Lara Harb, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
Co-sponsor: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Being and Becoming Islamic: Traditions from the Islamic East
Tuesday, November 16, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Teren Sevea, Alwaleed bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Co-sponsor: Harvard Asia Center
A Song Too Serious to Sing: Islam and the Licit Musics of the Arabian Peninsula
Tuesday, December 7, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Bradford Garvey, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, Brandeis University
Co-sponsors: Department of Music and CMES Arabian Peninsula Studies Lecture Series
Spring 2021
Thursday, March 11, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Chiara Formichi, Associate Professor in Southeast Asian Studies, Cornell University
Co-sponsor: Harvard University Asia Center
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Omid Safi, Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University
Co-sponsors: Mahindra Humanities Center Medieval Studies Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center Persian and Persianate Studies Seminar, and Aga Khan Fund for Iranian Studies
Thursday, April 29, 2021 | 4-5:30pm
Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Brandeis University
Co-sponsor: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Fall 2020
Tuesday, October 20, 2020 | 4-5:30pm
Garrett Davidson, Assistant Professor of Arabic and Muslim World Studies, College of Charleston
Co-sponsor: Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School
Thursday, October 22, 2020 | 4-5:30pm
Christiane Gruber, Professor and Chair in the History of Art, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
Co-sponsors: Department of History of Art and Architecture and Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
Tuesday, November 3, 2020 | 4-5:30pm
Ahmed al-Rahim, Associate Professor and Director of Islamic Studies, University of Virginia
Co-sponsor: Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies
Tuesday, December 1, 2020 | 3-4:30pm
Amira Bennison, Professor in the History and Culture of the Maghrib, University of Cambridge
Co-sponsors: Mahindra Humanities Center Medieval Studies Seminar, Department of History, and Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School
Spring 2020
Amy Singer, Hassenfeld Chair in Islamic Studies and Professor of History, Brandeis University
Co-sponsor: Department of History
Thursday, April 30, 2020 | 3-4:30pm | via Zoom
Nükhet Varlık, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University - Newark and the University of South Carolina
Fall 2019
Gender and Curriculum in the Islamic Studies Classroom
Thursday, September 26th | 4-5:30pm | William James Hall, 1550
Kecia Ali, Professor of Religion, Boston University
Co-sponsors: Studies in Women, Gender and Sexuality
Anglo-Persian Texts and the Colonial Understanding of Religion
Thursday, October 24th | 4-5:30pm | William James Hall, 1550
Carl Ernst, William R. Keenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Co-sponsors: The Aga Khan Fund for Iranian Studies
Early Shiite Law and the Construction of the Shari'a
Monday, November 25th | 1-2:30pm | Wasserstein Hall 3016
Robert Gleave, Professor of Arabic Studies, University of Exeter
Co-sponsors: The Law and Religion Lecture Series (The Committee on Study of Religion, The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish & Israeli Law at Harvard Law school, Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School) and Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School
Spring 2019
The Quran in the American Imagination
Zareena Grewal, Associate Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies
Yale University
February 25, 2019
12:00-1:30pm
William James Hall 601
City and Countryside as Understood in Medieval Arabic-Persian Dictionaries
Roy Mottahedeh, Professor Emeritus of History
Harvard University
March 28, 2019
3:00-4:30pm
Al-Ghazālī and the Epistemology of Legal Analogy (Qiyās): How Greek Logic Ascertains Islamic Law
Felicitas Opwis, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies
Georgetown University
Thursday, April 11, 2019
2:00-3:30pm
Race, Religion, and Revolution in Islamic West Africa since 1770
Rudolph Ware, Associate Professor of History
University of California - Santa Barbara
Thursday, May 2, 2019
1:00-2:30pm
