A dual Canadian-American citizen, I earned two BA's from the University of Washington (Seattle) in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and in International Studies: Comparative Religion (with a minor in Anthropology). I spent a full year during my undergraduate degree studying Arabic in Cairo, Egypt, through the Arabic Language Institute at the American University in Cairo. After graduation, I returned to Cairo as a Center for Arabic Study Abroad fellow for another year of Arabic. An interest in religion and conflict took me to the University of Ulster for an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies.
I began to study Islamic Law during my doctoral program in Religion at Emory University. During the course of my graduate training and fieldwork, I spent one more semester in Cairo as a Center for Arabic Study Abroad II fellow, but my primary research site shifted to Morocco, where I spend two and a half years supported by fellowships from Fulbright, Fulbright-Hays, and the Social Science Research Council. I have returned to the region periodically since then, most recently as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in 2017.
My research focuses on Islamic legal history in medieval and early modern North Africa (the Maghrib) and al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) as well as colonial Mauritania.
My first monograph, Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Iberia, was published in November 2021 by the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and distributed by Harvard University Press.
Prerequisite: *3 in HIST at the 300-level or consent of Department.
Winter Term 2023Winter Term 2023
Fall Term 2022
The style, structure, and doctrine of the Qur'an in the light of the Western critical evaluation of the text.
Winter Term 2023Prerequisite: one course in Islam or consent of Program Coordinator.
Winter Term 2023An in-depth study of the problems of Islamic Studies.
Winter Term 2023