Jocelyn Hendrickson, PhD, MA, BA
Contact
Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts - History, Classics, & Religion Dept
- jnhendri@ualberta.ca
- Availability
- On Sabbatical 2021-2022
Overview
About
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.
Research
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 Africa, was published in November 2021 by the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and distributed by Harvard University Press. Leaving Iberia is the winner of the Canadian Law and Society Association's 2022 W. Wesley Pue Prize and the Canadian Association of Hispanists' 2022 Best Book Prize. Leaving Iberia was also the Honorable Mention for the American Society for Legal History's 2022 Peter Gonville Stein Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Canadian Historical Association's 2022 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize.
Courses
HIST 609 - Directed Study
This credit/fail course is required for students in the thesis-based M.A. program. Students are introduced to scholarship relevant to their research and supported in developing a research proposal.
INT D 205 - Introduction to Ancient and Medieval Studies
RELIG 422 - Advanced Studies in Islam
Prerequisite: one course in Islam or consent of Program Coordinator.
RELIG 520 - Specialized Studies in Islam
An in-depth study of the problems of Islamic Studies.
RELIG 580 - Directed Reading Course I
Prerequisite: consent of Department.